Reflection: A Time for Angeling

Ah, there's an essay I want to write in the next day or two, on something dear to my heart (back on the soapbox again). But first...

I've written at different points about the SquidAngels, who 'bless' and boost rank on very high quality lenses. And now, a few days short of one year on the platform, it's my season for 'angeling' -- the first one, at least. The terms have gotten shorter, but people now have the opportunity to cycle through for repeated tours of duty.

I've 'blessed' more than twenty these first two days, but one has been my particular project.

Here is where I am linking to the blessed lenses: Squidangeling Season.

Reflection: Don't Let the Party Dress Fool You

Don't be fooled by the party dress and mary jane shoes! The Squidoo web page that that picture appears on has willpower like you wouldn't believe.

There has been a thread going on Squidoo about how having an eBay module on a webpage may cause the page to fall out of the Google index or be ranked very low. Some say this is an unintentional bug (that the eBay module is generating some kind of weird code). Someone did an experiment and removed the eBay module to find the page rise again. Anyway, A Paper Doll Childhood is one of several of my pages that took a hit Google-wise and took something of a dip in terms of visitors. By the time I removed its eBay module this morning, it had fallen fell a few thousand spots in the internal ranking system.

But here's wear it gets curious. When I looked in on it this morning, its stats were kind of paltry in terms of visitors, but it had risen back up a few thousand places in the internal ranking system -- and was once more seated at the top of my personal 62 lens Squidoo stack. (Yup, find the line, "This member's top ranked page is ______" and there you will find the page with the paper dolls smiling out in its little pink dress and patent leather shoes.) Hmm, how does it do it? Maybe the page got an "angel blessing" -- something that can raise Squidoo rankings. Sometimes, though, I am hard pressed to explain just how that page manages to be so successful. Sometimes I think it has a will of its own. (Perhaps it is reading the Law of Attraction?)

Anyway, the larger lesson is one I frequently return to: Appearances can definitely belie intenal strength.

Reflection: High Intensity Threshold

A quote to begin this post, from "Regulation Disorder of Sensory Processing": "These children require high-intensity sensory input before they are able to respond. They are quiet and watchful at times and may appear withdrawn and difficult to engage."

If ones sees someone with that withdrawn, difficult to engage manner, it may not be that they're overwhelmed by sensory stimuli or social interaction. Quite the opposite. They may be starved for the very the things they seem not to respond to -- starved largely by their own neural wiring. They may have such a high threshold for intensity that most of what's around them passes below that threshold... too far below to motivate an emotional response.

I have sometimes gotten 'Squid Angel blessings' for pieces that I haven't specifically asked for them for. It's when I really, really want people to see a piece that I do post it on the angels forum. It's been quite a while. I did it with the monotropism piece, and I also said something on this blog, to the effect of 'friends, please be my squid angels, too' -- meaning help me with my goal of having people see this.) I'm doing that again. Here's Processing Disorders: The Understimulated Brain.

Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos

Reflection: Lenses and Lensographies

I type my blog entries at home, but often I do most of the composing out and about. A few hours back (on a bus) my mind was tossing around a possible 'clever lead-in' for this post. Tired now, I decided to forego the witticisms, and just discuss and give links to some off-site writings...

I put up a second Williams Syndrome piece, Williams Syndrome and Music. I've got several videos included in the piece-- it can be good to enter some more esoteric key word strings sometimes: The video of the little girl giving a rocking (literally!) rendition of "Jesus Loves Me" has been viewed by many people, but the fifteen-year-old with the piano compositions... well, that hasn't been watched much at all. A lot of quality things get buried on YouTube and Google and life.

One of the other things I put up... well, it's a term most people wouldn't recognize because some 'squid' invented it. Most people who write 'seriously' for Squidoo put up a lensography: They arrange their writings/lenses by topic and maybe write a bit of autobiography around them. It's for one's friends and fellow writers, moreso than for the world at large, but it can help people find your writings. I put up Evening Nigh Reflections Lensography. (The web personas are sharing an account, but that doesn't mean they're going to share a lensography -- ah, no, this one belongs to Evening Nigh.)

I've had that lensography up for the better part of a week, and it's the one, among the very recent ones, that's doing best in Squid-Land -- it has a few 'squid angel' blessings at this point. There are links on it to a few pieces that I haven't discussed on this blog. Someone might want to locate A Paper Doll Childhood and print out some dolls for my little niece; the little niece who's old enough to wield scissors will find some interesting cutting there. (I'll add that paper dolls is not such an odd topic for a lens -- there are a handful of modestly successful lenses on the topic on Squidoo -- and that one is off to a pretty good start, too.)

Reflection: A Bit of Recognition

The writing I am linking to here, Promising Lensmasters of 2010, is by a 'Squid' who is the mentor for nonprofit organizations and an honorary angel. The piece she featured of mine is one that I didn't post on the forums or, fot that matter, here. It contains some personal writing and some research references -- one section was reprinted from this blog ("Please Don't Email the Drops").

I've put up several pages since then, and a couple I do want to talk about here in this blog. That, too, will probably precede the next "soapbox post" that I write. I guess I have a bit of blog cklog.

PS It looks like Susanna is going to be following -- and giving some help to -- the people she's taken under her wings... er, tentacles. I went back and added a "With thanks" module near the bottom of that one lens., and I included the picture you see here -- rather an interesting photoeffects find.

Memory: Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry

I was fixing to publish this piece when I wrote in "Evening Nigh's Year in Reflection" that I would continue to be 'the author of people's lives' (aren't we all?) and that I would strive, in the words of The Moody Blues, to "Say it With Love".

I actually wrote this particularly piece a few years back; at the time, I made several unsuccessful attempts to publish it in lit journals.

I went over Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry again and again with a fine tooth comb before I added media and resources and posted it to Squidoo. I waited until the piece had received a few comments (also a couple Squid Angel blessings) before posting it here. I wanted to do right by the piece. The piece, in its new incarnation has 10 illustrated text sections; I used stock photos, of course, running most of them through photoeffect programs. Only one text section is new -- it's a short one that discusses the limitations of labels and of medication... and it's accompanied by the same picture you see here in this blog entry.

It's good, from a pragmatic standpoint, that I've got some real publishing credits (lit journal and anthology) but I'm happy to have "Struggling to Pass Brain Chemistry" under the Squidoo domain, dressed up, like various other lenses, in resources and media and one of those little Amazon MP3 modules.

PS Picked up another one from someone -- down in the Philipines, I believe -- who has commented on other lenses, and is part of the new "Angels crew". She not only read, but listened to the whole thing, and what she wrote was really kind. (The volunteer Angels are of course a part of how the site maintains its integrity, too.)

Reflection: Squid Angels

I have reason to be tired, the past few days, between eduFire, the public schools, and trying to do work on the freelance projects. I didn't want to neglect this blog, though. I was playing around on Photofunia, trying to create a Squid Angel, but I was not successful. First, the face recognition software failed to recognize a face in that nice octopus toy, then it failed to recognize one in this Creative Commons picture. Hmmm... Well, I guess she looks okay without wings.

I wrote, in a more serious vein, of squid angels in the previous post, Riding a White Horse With a Toaster Oven. Looks like some angels have been by, based on forum replies.

That so-important-to-me monotropism piece is linked to on the sidebar now, too, along with a handful of other lenses... 'neath the 'octopus reflection' picture.