To Bangkok, Houston, Albuquerque, Lincoln, Denver and back again!

And while I have had article ideas rolling around in my head, I have also been struggling with the focus of this blog, asking one of the best questions anyone can ask when making a decision: “What’s the point?”

Trying to Focus

Actually, focus is a pre-blog struggle, and one that my first blogging mentor, Seth Waite, emphasized in his very helpful but now inactive blog, The Blogging Agenda. At the time, I thought I knew what the focus would be – helping other Baby Boomers take their aging in stride, stay physically healthy and not become jaded because of our or others’ perceptions of what we should be in our 50’s and beyond.

As I progressed, however, I had a hard time gaining an audience – in part, because I wasn’t hanging out with those whom my blog might benefit. I found myself hanging out, instead, with blogging and writing experts who, though challenging and educating me, also made me realize how far behind I am in those realms.

In addition, I’m not considered any kind of expert in the field of aging well. Yes, I am comparatively healthy, take no medication (yet) and continually pursue and think about ways to keep myself from growing feeble as I age. But that doesn’t make me any kind of expert.

It makes me one more voice in this worldwide cacophony of advice and opinion they call the blogosphere.

When writing for the blog, I mentally vacillated between wanting to make it a personal journey and a research project. Response to the blogs seemed to vacillate as well. Probably because of the title, the article on Surfing Snails – written a year ago – remains the most popular blog. It’s significant that it’s one of the ones I most enjoyed writing.

But the unpaid time and effort it has taken to write the articles – popular or not – have not produced a good return. Small return for large effort produces burnout – particularly when the same amount of effort brings financial reward when expended for paying clients.

So where are you going now?

My intent now is to develop a website and blog that are more in tune with what I do for gainful employment.

For at least twelve years I have been doing what is now known as Virtual Office Assistance.

Since moving from the Chicago area in 1998, I have worked as a virtual administrative assistant for a Chicago-based General Contractor, while also working full time – first in the Career Resource Center of a university in western Tennessee, then as an office manager/copywriter/bookkeeper/project manager for a small advertising agency in the Mississippi Delta. I have now become their remote editor, proofreader and copywriter. Recently, I have also expanded into the insurance world, laying out ads and doing some research and web marketing for a small agency in Houston.

Though I still find the learning curve in the web writing/blogging sphere steep, I do not find it so in the area of administrative assistance. The organizational and software skills come naturally. MS Word, QuickBooks and Excel are daily tools, and I have used both Access and PowerPoint. My equipment is new; I regularly take phone dictation and use internet faxing services. It’s all in place. I’m good at what I do and eager to expand my capabilities.

However, I’m still not ready to give up on this blog. I still believe that as long as we have breath we can approach the world in wonder; we can recognize that we live in a wonder-filled world. This blog helps me express that passion and may give others an avenue to do the same. So until time and energy constraints make it impossible, I’m keeping this avenue open — if only to talk about the reasons for all that traveling!

Last Sunday’s Nature program on our PBS station interested me for two reasons:

1. It was entitled Sharkland and was going to expand my recent inexplicable fascination with basking sharks; and
2. It was filmed in the oceans around the tip of South Africa, which still occupies a good portion of my heart. (We lived in Cape Town for 18 months, Johannesburg for 10 years).

With 400 species of sharks in the world (who knew?), the basking shark received only honorable mention on the program. My guess is he’s too tame – toothless and a harmless predator, unless you happen to be plankton.

Food Chain of the Sea

The program wasn’t limited to sharks. It also filmed Cape gannets eating so many fish they couldn’t fly, which allowed them to be swallowed by fur seals, some of whom have learned that the bird comes garnished with a stomach full of fish. The seals are then hunted down by the great white shark, the top of that particular food chain.

Surprising Predator

You’ve heard of the sting-y Portuguese man-of-war, right?  It looks like a jelly fish, but even washed dead upon the beach, its long tentacles can deliver poison that can cause your skin to sting, burn and turn red at the very least, and for those susceptible to it, cause difficulty with breathing and even cardiac arrest.

But do you know who can crawl right up to this man-of-war and devour it without hesitation?

A snail! That’s right – a snail!

Sometimes it’s called a plough snail, because

1. It burrows into the sand to avoid being either washed out to sea or stranded on higher ground and
2. It lives in Southern Africa and that’s the way they spell plow.

They also call it a “surfing snail” because it uses its large fleshy foot to surf up the beach to find its prey stranded or washed up on the shore. I did find this “Vodpod” (filmed in Knysna, South Africa) that shows the little suckers in action. BE WARNED: Although they’re cute at first, watching them dine is not for the squeamish.

NOTE to Professional Bloggers:

I know, I know. This is not exactly in my “niche,” but I am making it so. That’s why my web address includes not only the word aging but also wonder, as in discovery, as in being in awe of the world and of the people in it. We live on an amazing planet.

I do not praise evolution for our planet’s wondrous existence. The theory of evolution is just too serious for this level of humor.

I WONDER…

Are sharks still basking in the waters of the Aran Islands?

I only ask because basking sharks featured in a 1934 black-and-white British documentary entitled Man of Aran, which we rented a couple of weeks ago.

In the film the men of Aran (a group of islands on the west coast of Ireland) risked their lives, rowing tiny boats into treacherous waters to capture these enormous fish to use for liver oil.

And it made me wonder about basking sharks.

Credit: Derek Pitman

Contrary to the picture you might get from my initial question, a basking shark doesn’t lie on a sunny beach, donning huge sunglasses, fins crossed behind his neck. He’s called a “basking shark” because he feeds very close to the surface of the water, filtering about 2000 tons of water a day to get his fill of plankton. He and his basking friends are also called sunfish, monsters with sails and in Irish, ”liabhán chor gréine” – the great fish of the sun.

And they are great – as long and heavy as a London city bus – growing as large as 40 feet and weighing as much as 10 tons. According to www.baskingsharks.org (only one of several websites dedicated to their study and preservation), they are the second largest living shark, next to the whale shark.

They’ve even been in the news lately. Did you miss it?

Last month, according to an Aran Isles blog, an Irish Times Marine Correspondent reported that northwest Ireland waters were “teeming” with basking sharks. On July 5, 2009, the *Florida Museum of Natural History reported 900 sightings of the basking shark off British shores since the beginning of June, compared to about 11 a year before.

So the answer to my question is “Yes,” they are alive and well and still swimming in the North Atlantic and sometimes even south of the Equator.

Other discoveries I made along the way:

1. In 1972, basking sharks were featured in a 30-minute cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Studios.
2. Almost 105,000 have viewed this You-Tube video of basking sharks, set to orchestra music. (Anyone know the name and composer of this piece?)
3. Basking sharks are a protected species in the UK, New Zealand, and the US Gulf and Atlantic Waters.
4. These days, visitors (1,000 per day) to the largest Aran Island outnumber the residents (800). (Rick Steves’ Europe).
5. Reading about the Aran Islands gives me one more reason I’d like to visit Ireland someday – not necessarily to see the sharks, but to meet the people who continue to live in a place I would probably consider uninhabitable.

Anything you’ve wondered about lately? Let me know. I’d love to research it for you and feature it here. We do indeed live in a world filled with wonder.

*10-19-2010 Update: The link to the Florida Museum news item seems to be unavailable now, but I found news of an April 2010 sighting off South Laguna Beach, California, reported in the Orange County Register.

Learning how to develop this blog has been – and is – great fun. Discovering anything new has always made my brain feel good.

As most of us know, if you want Internet-related help these days, you ask somebody younger. In developing this blog, my help has come from a son, a son-in-law and virtual blogging mentors. I have been amazed at the amount of free instruction they make available to anyone who wants to learn.

So, appropriately, I want to express my appreciation to:

• My Number Two Son, who advised me long ago to use WordPress, patiently answers my technical questions – all the way from Bangkok – and has never made me feel like it was too difficult for me to learn.
• Favorite Son-in-Law (graphic designer in Nashville) who customized the photo in the header. (The photo, by the way is from PD Photo.org.)

Then there are Daniel, Seth, Gideon and Lori, who all live somewhere on the Internet.

• I’ve been receiving updates from Daniel Scocco at Daily Blog Tips for months now. I don’t always understand the material he covers, but little by little, the vocabulary is becoming familiar. Through Daily Blog Tips, I met…

• Seth Waite, of  Blogging Agenda, whose “How to Start a Blog” series is just what I was looking for: a step-by-step, day-by-day guide to professional blogging.

• Through Seth I discovered Gideon Shalwick at Become a Blogger, whose video tutorials provided the technical instructions I needed to launch the blog, using WordPress as a publishing platform and design source; Name Cheap for domain name registration; Host Gator as a web host; and FileZilla for FTP software. If you need to learn what all this means, link to their sites. They’ll tell you.

While these guys provided technical know-how, without realizing it,

• Writer Lori Widmer and her 2^nd Annual Writers Worth Day motivated me to stop doing what I dreaded every day: Bidding for writing, editing, and proofreading jobs on an impersonal, competitive, I-win-at-your-expense internet job board. When I discovered her network of supportive, professional, self-respecting writers, I knew it’s where I wanted to be.

Thank you, my young mentors.

Let’s talk about it. I know we all learn from our young children – especially that patience thing. What have you learned from younger adults?

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m in my 60′s.

But that’s okay!

Really!

In fact, it’s great!

Because I believe you’re never too old for discovery, for looking at the world with wonder. In fact, I’m convinced that’s what keeps you young in mind and body.

Once you decide you want everything to remain as it is – or (perish the thought) as it always has been – you can declare yourself old, even if you’re only 28.

So this is my place to share my discoveries on many topics, from many sources – my family (especially my children!), my friends, books, magazines and yes, the internet. I hope you’ll join me as we discover and re-discover the joys of life at all ages.