The Weekly Smile for the 28th of March, 2022 #weeklysmile

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Hi All! I have to laugh – last week I had my long post about it finally being Spring and today I woke up to a covering of snow. Looks like winter is back… Lol. It is not unusual for there to be snow after the beginning of spring. I’ve seen snow in mid to late May! But still… It will warm up later in the week, back to normal.

Not only is the weather weird, but so is just the week in general. Not a whole lot out there that stands out (talking in my life…). Beyond the general world news and a couple of work projects, not a lot to frown about, but few big things jump out as things for huge smiles.

So, this another “It’s the Small Things, Arts Edition.”

For writing, I had a friend just finish The Halley Branch. She really liked it! Now she picked up The Old Mill and will read that next. I hope she likes that one as well :) I talked to her about both books on a couple occasions over the week.

Partially because of my friend, I have started editing my book of short stories and so far it looks good. Thinking short stories, I wrote a couple of short stories last week. I also wrote a series of posts for June (I never write ahead for the blog, until this week!) These posts are for the Dickens’ Challenge. I wrote about Bleak House, so I could do it while it was fresh on my mind (I finished last weekend).

I did little with music beyond practice and just “jamming”. However, it was an odd week on YouTube. My views had been growing and growing for months and peaked out at over 100 a day in January. It then crashed to single digits. There have been a few ups and downs after that, particularly after I posted She Talk Each Night to Ariel, but nothing like that January bump.

Until Friday.

I went from 6 views on Thursday to 165 on Friday. Then 158 on Saturday and 138 on Sunday. Yeah, it is going down, but as long as it stays above 10, I’m fine! As before, the big video is my version of The house of the Rising Sun, but a few others have been getting a lot of hits. Of course, that one video has a lot of photos I took of new Orleans in it.

I didn’t do a lot with the visual arts this week, but I did bring out a couple of versions of the cover for my next book and played with them a little. I really like two and am not sure which I’ll go with. It does make me want to draw. I did a tiny bit of sketching after that, but no real drawing…

That is my smile for this week, a few arts related things – writing, music and visual arts – that all made me smile.

What made you smile?

(A reminder – There will not be a Smile Recap post next week).

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Come on, I’m sure you smiled at least once last week.  Why don’t you share it?  I hope you can join in!

Here is list of “rules” and guiding ideas.  If you don’t have time to read it right now, just remember that this is an exercise to spread positivity.  Don’t smile about the misfortune of others.  Don’t smile in a way to excludes others.  Make sure a 12 year old can read it.

To join in, write a post to share your smile and then leave a comment on this post with a link to your smile.  Or, if you prefer, do a pingback to this post (pingback = have a link from your post to this one) (Note – pingbacks have been very inconsistent – please leave a comment :) ).   You can post any time until next Sunday evening (to be simple, I will say midnight GMT, which is 7 PM Sunday for me).  Note – I am no longer compiling the smiles into a weekly post as I used to – Sorry, I do not have time.

48 thoughts on “The Weekly Smile for the 28th of March, 2022 #weeklysmile”

  1. Pingback: contemplating tigers – Touring My Backyard

  2. Prior...

    PS – my smile this week was today when I posted about “my week with Drucker.”
    I am not sure if you remember when I mentioned this last year but I faintly recall that you said it was a post you would be interested in (am I correct….hmm)
    either way, here is the link if you have time to drop on by amigo
    – https://wp.me/p1VBv6-75S

    and now I am off to see where Janet shared your covid meme – and it was pretty funny T

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      It sound familiar. I’ll stop by and see what today’s post is.
      Actually, Janet shared the video of Yesterday (Beatles tune) parody with Covid theme. I guess next pandemic I will do a Stones cover ;)

      Liked by 1 person

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  3. Prior...

    I love the it’s the small things” theme :)
    and so nice when our friends enjoy our work…
    also, you I enjoyed hearing about your arts and the updates…
    :)
    —

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Yes, it is the small things that make up most of the moments of our lives. We sometimes get so hung up and trying to find those few highest points or being drug down by those few lowest, that we forget to live in the beautiful now :)

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  6. Charlotte Hoather

    Ive found with YouTube if your views come from facebook they’re not always shown, certainly not straight away. Twitter is the one that I have no traction with at all I don’t think I use the platform properly, it used to grow really well and then it started going backwards and people stopped getting my tweets that follow me. I think you have to pay now to boost them.

    I smiled this last weekend because I got time to pop home to visit my Mum and Dad for Mother’s Day weekend.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I have no idea how YouTube views work – I’ll be consistently in single digits, and then have a few days of over 100, and then, just as quickly, it returns to nothing. You are right that views often take a while to show up, but once figured out, it is easy to deal with. I gave up on Twitter pretty early, mostly because it was too intrusive – I would turn off all notifications, it would do an update and turn them back on, which I would discover while driving…
      I’m glad you were able to visit your mom and dad :) Mother’s Day is in May here.

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  7. Pingback: Story Chat Y2 Summary – “Sweet Feeling” by Yvette Prior – Marsha Ingrao – Always Write

  8. Marsha

    Hi Trent, Your stats look like mine do when I don’t publish anything for several days, LOL. I love to try to make people smile with my clever wordage in my blog posts. Just to make sure readers know I’m joking I often add LOL. Sometimes it works. Then I smile. I smile at what others write. I love some of the public art people post because it is truly funny. Thanks for joining us for Story Chat this month, Trent. This is the post I’m linking your comment to. :)

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I get WordPress stats, at least a little, but YouTube stats are just completely baffling… As to WP – I didn’t post today, so, yeah, pretty much nothing.
      The problem with clever wordage is that I hate when I am “too clever” for my own good and nobody gets it. lol You are right that all too often people take things too seriously, so I do try to throw in a ;) or “lol” or something, but it doesn’t always work….
      My pleasure to join in the Story Chat. Perhaps my recent post on the Dickens Challenge would have been more appropriate – I’m doing the challenge with Yvette and have links to some of her posts, so in ways it would have all circled back.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. Marsha

        Yvette does so much, doesn’t she? She is a bundle of energy. It probably would have been better to choose that post. I usually choose the most recent post, if for no other reason than when you are sorting through 277 comments, and reading at least one post for every link you add, you don’t have time to search. However, I’d love to do an interview with you for my Challenge Interview Series. That’s when I take the time to scour the person’s blog and add many appropriate links because I usually follow up the written interview responses with a Zoom the interview so we look at the blog together. Let me know if you are interested.

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        1. trentpmcd Post author

          Yvette is great, and, as you say, a bundle of energy. I like multi-dimensional, multi-faceted people, and Yvette sure fits that description…
          I was more than half joking about the link – in ways it would have been appropriate, but I understand you can’t dig through every blog to find the most appropriate post – you’d still be searching for this latest post! lol, yeah, so no worries.
          The interview does sound interesting. Do you have a links to others you’ve done? I do follow your blog, so I might be able to track one down on my own.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      It was frigid here today, but we’ll hit 60 on Thursday, so… Sorry about the allergies. There are highs and lows of springs – not may favorite season (autumn wind that award), but I always like to see winter in my rear view mirror…

      Like

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  10. dawnkinster

    Sounds like a good week! It snowed here 2 nights, just a little bit of snow, but oh so cold!!! I’m trying to do night photography, tried Sunday night, no moon, one night of clear skies…it was 19 degrees with wind chill of godawful. I took 6 pictures, couldn’t feel my fingers to change settings, pretty much failed miserably and ran for the car. I think I’ll wait till it’s REALLY spring to try again.

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      Yeah, we had some of that cold weather over the last two days – down to 15 and 25+ mph winds. brrrrrr. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, so, here is hoping, and hoping you get some warmer weather as well.

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  12. Pingback: Day 29 of the March SOLSC! #SOL2022 – Mukhamani

    1. trentpmcd Post author

      The snow is gone, but it is still cold… It will be better in a day or two… I don’t see a link, but I’m sure I can find a post with the homemade bag.

      Like

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  15. Diana

    Wow! Snow again but like you said pretty normal for your area. I bet it’s so pretty, and hopefully doesn’t stick around too long.

    I love all your crafty stuff. Your writings, books and beautiful music you create. And to top it off your drawings and artwork!! Such gifts and worthy of the biggest of smiles! 😁 I’m so happy you are putting together your book of short stories, that will be wonderful when completed. I’m so happy you are getting more hits on YouTube. I’m going to make an account for my videos. I’m slowly running out of space here in WordPress and a fellow blogger suggested I use YouTube for my videos. A heavy “sigh” from me as one more account, another login I’m sure with passwords… I’m not too excited as I’m not the most techy person in the world so hoping it’s easy to upload YouTube to WP. (I see you do this on your blog as well. I looked up how to create space on blog, I’m thinking of archiving older posts if I can figure that out. I don’t want to pay for unlimited space at this time.)
    Anyways, so fun to follow your adventures! Thank you for the smiles! 😍

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. trentpmcd Post author

      The snow is already gone, even though today is still pretty cold!
      I do pretty much everything with my computer, so I’m not sure how easy or hard YouTube is using a phone. I think it is pretty easy on the computer… I have loaded music and videos straight to WP, but I like putting them on YouTube and then embedding here. It is pretty easy, so…
      Thanks! I do enjoy exercising my creative side, but have to follow different muses :)

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Diana

        Oh thank you as I looked up how to upload videos to YouTube using my phone. I use my computer to manage and write all my blog posts and my phone only for photos and videos that I can easily upload to WP directly skipping putting them on my computer. (One of these days I’ll download my phone photos and stuff to my computer, but they are all on the Google photo cloud.) Anyways, it looks easy like you said to use YouTube. Hahaha, I’m making a bigger deal out of the whole thing!! 😉 Now I need to make a YouTube channel!

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  16. Chel Owens

    Our spring weather is always up and down as well. It’s a miracle anything finds time to bloom in all that variability. 🌼 I love seeing it, though: the tiny leaves or buds on a frosty morning.

    I’ve also always admired your singing and art projects. It’s nice to get to be so creative.

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