Writing

The Stand

~ Guy Hall

I first read “The Stand” in 1978 or 1979, when we were living in the house across from what was then the High School. It was an old house that creaked and groaned with the slightest temperature changes. And as was my tendency, I couldn’t put a book down when it started to get good, which was pretty much right from the start with “The Stand.” Anyway, it was 3:00 AM. Stu Redman was trying to find his way out of the secret military/medical base that had imprisoned him because he hadn’t come down with the disease that wiped out 99% of the Earth’s population. He found a fire escape stairwell and was walking down when someone under the stairs grabbed his ankle. At that very moment, our house let loose a loud crack. Scared the shit right out of me. So much so, I got out of bed and checked the basement, where my bedroom was, to see if I was safe.

Why am I posting this? There are two situations in which you should not read a Stephen King novel. One is in a cabin in Maine, especially if the story takes place in a cabin in Maine, and the other is in the basement of an old, creepy house in the middle of the night. So, yes, I broke cardinal rule number two for reading a Stephen King novel.

Thus Spoke GAH

~ Guy Hall

But, really, not much to say. Thankfully, words are but air, and typed words are but electrons. Yeah, I’ve no idea what that means. In any case, all is empty. So, how about you read this without thought because it was written without thought.

Be empty.

Block

~ Guy Hall

I am unsure why, but writing has been a struggle. Even when I do my Morning Meditation Writing, I find that I’m pushing for content when content is the last thing MMW is about. So, taking a cue from Wil Wheaton, I will stop treating this blog as a polished, professional journal. It’s just a blog. A, hey, I’ve got thoughts! Rough, unpolished, what’s spelling and sentence structure? blog. So, without further ado, read this post with gusto. Or garlic. Or whatever food happens to excite your taste buds. Or not.

Whatever.

Seriously, it’s your life; do with it what you please.

And by all means, leave a comment.

Or don’t.

Do I have to tell you how to do everything?

Sheesh.

Changes

The Castle
~ Guy Hall

You might have noticed that I lost several months of posts. To make a long story short, I switched hosts. The old hosting service was slow. My blog would take seconds to load. Longer than was acceptable. But the learning curve for migrating a site from one service to another was steeper than I could handle, taking a few months to figure things out. After many hours this morning I managed to rectify the problem. I am now fully with Bluehost, a WordPress recommended hosting service which is providing fast service. Instead of the approximately 10 seconds to load, it’s almost instantaneous.

Damn! I used to wait an eternity for a preview to load. It’s instantaneous now. Same with loading pictures from the library, what took from 10 to 20 seconds now is instant. My efforts at blogging have become easier.

UPDATE: It looks like I did something wrong and caused my site to not load at the proper addy. Thanks to the excellent support team at Bluehost, they got it up and running! Yea!!!!!!

Another Post to Substack

~ Guy Hall

Go With The Flow by Guy Andrew Hall

An earlier Mindful Journaling Meditation

Read on Substack

I Wrote This

~ Guy Hall

Morning Flow by Guy Andrew Hall

Mindfulness Journaling

Read on Substack

On This Day of Thanksgiving

~ Guy Hall

Read the entire post at my Substack.

I wrote this!

~ Guy Hall

I hope you enjoy this very short story of mine.

Update: I somehow managed to delete the original post of my short short story. I have since managed to get it posted.

Please, go read my short story.

Because I Am Anal

~ Guy Hall

Can we all agree it’s “Eat your cake and have it too” and not “Have your cake and eat it too.” The latter is a proper and correct order. Of course, you can have your cake and eat it. If you don’t have the cake first, you obviously can’t eat it.

It’s the former that insinuates greed. Once you eat your cake, how can you then have it? You can’t. It’s gone!!!! So, clearly, “Eat your cake and have it too” is the right and proper saying.

Those of you that think otherwise, you’re mistaken. Just eat some cake and deal with it.

Handwriting vs Typing

~ Guy Hall ~ 2 Comments

It turns out there is an app that allows for writing into text boxes! In fact, I am writing by hand what you are reading. Well, I wrote what you are reading. It would be nice if I kept my tenses straight. In case you are wondering. It is just another keyboard. That is, it’s one selection out of several for keyboards. It provides an interface on my iPad that allows for writing with my Apple Pencil. It then converts the handwriting into text. I haven’t fully explored all of its functionality, but I’ve figured out enough so that I can write on my iPad like it is a piece of paper. It allows for spell checking on the fly, with a timer, so you have time to review. It gives each word a drop-down box to select the correct spelling and punctuation.
It has a learning curve, but I found it not too steep.
It works in conjunction with other apps. I have been able to write into word documents. And, of course, this was written into the WordPress interface. The app is called Handwriting which is available through the App Store.