This week has been very productive for me in the areas of blogging that I usually don't talk about... But also outside of it... Writing down my ten things of grats' has become one of my favorite parts of the week, as it reminds me—someone who is so prone to feeling melancholic—that there is always something to be grateful for...
...by finding those ten things... and by going through what other bloggers have linked up to the hop.
Ten Thing of Thankful #14
First—Music.
This week, I discovered something completely new to me: a band called Mirar. This type of music—while, yes, it's not for everyone—scratches my brain in all the right places. I've been hooked on it since yesterday, especially the song "Rachma"
Second—When favorites release new music.
SKYND dropped a new song, "Jimmy Savile". Every time they release something new, I listen to it on repeat for a few days.
Third—Reconnecting with old favorites.
I "refound" a song I used to have on repeat: "I, The Devourer" by Synestia and Disembodied Tyrant. My boyfriend calls this type of music the "bangs one head to the wall—repeatedly" type, but yup, I was dancing to it yesterday.
Fourth—Weekly Six Sentence Stories and the SSC&B.
One gets to read and one gets to write and as a bonus... one gets a community.... There's way worse ways to spend the evenings... Thank you Denise, for providing the prompts.
Fifth—dVerse Poets.
Much the same, I have found so many great authors linking up their poems on there that I often get the writer's envy...
Sixth—Gifts
My boyfriend occasionally works with an Estonian poet and lyricist whose songs are well known here. Since they're quite close, he often sends my boyfriend home with a little gift...
He also runs his own publishing house... so cool... and every now and then I end up with a poetry collection or some other interesting book to read.
Seventh—Freshly deep cleaned apartment.
I spent the whole day tidying up our living spaces yesterday—behind and under the furniture and so on....
Anyway, in the evening I managed to drop a whole can of beer by "mislocating" it on my nightstand... I had to clean behind the bed again... But there is some type of new cleaner for laminate and imitation wood that smells like honey wax and vanilla and makes my furniture and floors smell good...
Eight—When laundry is all done.
The bed sheets are currently in the washing machine, and I already can't wait for the evening, when I get to climb into bed with fresh sheets and inhale the vanilla orchid scent I use on my laundry.
Ninth—Sales
My companion has his birthday this month and is running out of the perfume I gifted him four years ago. I discovered I had some bonus points at the shop where I buy my shampoos, so I decided to get him a new fragrance instead. It hasn't arrived yet, but I already know it's going to be good!
The one I absolutely loved has been discontinued here. I adore deep woody, spicy, warm vanilla notes on men, and the fragrance I used to buy for him now costs well over €200—if you can even find a bottle... Thankfully, I found a much more affordable alternative... one that I know will have me attached to his neck, sniffing it...
Tenth—Had time to work on my blog.
Before the hiatus, I had migrated from a shared hosting plan to DreamPress. Since then, DreamPress has added a CDN, image optimization and better caching.
I started from a cleanup by reevaluating what did what and what is now covered by my hosting and Divi itself... I moved quite a few things around... also, I migrated from AIOSEO to The SEO Framework, which, considering the changes in Google Search, is a much simpler fit on a literary site, and while yes... it can generate metas automatically, I edit them myself...
I also updated the look of my site, tried to make the navigation simpler, and posts easier to read on all devices by separating the visuals of my mobile and desktop site completely. There are still a few things that annoy me (like the sixes operating within category on tags pages), but I wanted to push it live already... because I think it performs and looks better.
I added a Honeypot trap alongside Akismet, so now I get NO spam comments or emails from bots... which no longer can be banished by rate limiting or capchas alone.... I mean... I got 60 comments in two hours while uploading my sixes this week... the audacity... the fix took five minutes... four months of thinking... I need this...
I also redid all the images in Canva yesterday because I wanted them to be more visually cohesive across all my posts. Canva is an absolute favorite of mine for design work...
And while yes, I have a few changes I need to make from an accessibility, Google Lighthouse and Semrush standpoint... And a few more minor things... like my autoposter yeeting itself from the functions after I changed my image optimizer...
funny thing... I think I know why it gives me the "metadata null" error on my images, but I don't want to fix it... because it has broken four times after the new WordPress update... annoying... so, I'm looking for a simple and lightweight alternative... I just need it to send updates and very rarely go through some old posts...
There's more of my work:
All of the six-sentence stories.
The Nervous Poet Entries for the SSC&B.
There is also a page for all of the poetry.
More personal entries can be found at the Blog.
The IT studies blog in Estonian for a course at the university.
the Band "Chaos in Spring" is on YouTube, Spotify and other streaming services.
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