The June Photo a Day Challenge hosted by Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim was a nice break from my normal blogging routine. It was a good chance to get out there and take more photos, which was one of the two reasons I began this blog back in January (I only cheated and used archived pictures a couple times). But more importantly, it gave me a chance to devote more time to the online linguistics class I started on 28 May. I was totally stressed by the idea of reading all the course material, writing countless papers and discussion posts, and also maintaining a writing schedule for my blog. So now, here I am at the beginning of July, with one more week of class and just one final project to tackle. I feel fairly confident that I can manage that and the blog for seven days (but I still reserve the right to pull my hair out by the end of the week).

In case you’re new here, or it’s been so long since you’ve seen the regularly scheduled programming, let me give you a refresher. Every day I will post one of my own photos, preferably taken that day, or at least taken during the week. The only time I’ll use a photo that is not mine is if I am participating in a flash fiction photo challenge (like Friday Fictioneers), in which case proper credit is always given. Along with each photo, I include some type of writing, trying to stick to the following routine:

• Monday–“Monday Mix”–Whatever I feel like writing about after the weekend cobwebs have cleared–could be fiction, non-fiction, a weather report, a recipe…who knows?
• Tuesday–“Tuesday Tales”–A short work of fiction. So many places to look for inspiration–The Daily Post, Trifecta, and The One Minute Writer among others.
• Wednesday–“What’s she on about?”–My chance to spew on a pet peeve or current event, or any other thing that takes my fancy.
• Thursday–“Deep Thought Thursday”–As a way for readers to get to know me, I’ve been answering thought-provoking questions from The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock, but will soon include some reader-submitted queries as well.
• Friday–“Flash Fiction”–This will be a short piece of fiction, most likely a response to the aforementioned Friday Fictioneers photo prompt.
• Saturday–“Six-word Saturdays”–I sum up the week or my general state of mind in just six words. I’m considering changing this to “Saturday Shorts,” sort of a round-up of interesting thoughts and fun pictures from the week that weren’t weighty enough for their own posts.
• Sunday–“Sunday Best”–I pick my favorite photography or writing prompt of the week, from one of the numerous challenge blogs I follow, and post an appropriate response.

I’ll warn you now, don’t get too comfortable with this programming schedule. There will be another hiccup in the schedule come August, as the hubby and I will be undertaking a trans-Atlantic household move. No worries, though. I’ve already got a month’s worth of “find out more about me” prompts, nicked from the May post-a-day challenge on Story of My Life. Once the movers have come and taken away all my other distractions, I’ll have two weeks to prepare my responses and line them up for auto-posting during August.

One last note. I began this blog using only one-word titles for every post. I borrowed this idea from the TV series The Good Wife. Every episode in Season 1 had a one-word title, every episode in Season 2 had a two-word title, and so on. I’ve decided that coming up with clever, relevant, “please read me” one-word titles for 365 blog posts is infinitely more taxing than doing the same for 23 television episodes, so 182 posts into this pattern, I quit. From now on, my titles will be as long as they need to be to tickle my fancy and/or pique your interest.