Happy New Year!…Video from Sydney Harbour Bridge…Making errors throughout the year…

View from a local beach, on a stroll around the country.

This morning for the first time in a year, we posted “Photo from one year ago today, January 1, 2016” that indicated “2016” as opposed to “2015.” We’ll see how long it takes for me to make an error and post 2015 in this daily highlight regarding a photo from the prior year.

It is easy to make mistakes while writing each day of the year. Since we began our trips in October 2012, we’ve published the following posts for every year:

There are many ponds on the farmland.

2012 – 159 posts
2013 – 346 posts
2014 – 376 posts
2015 – 365 posts
2016 – 373 posts

With our goal of posting once a day, why did we post less than 365 times in 2013?   It was at the halfway point of 2013 that we decided to publish daily.

Why did we spend more than 365 days a year in 2014 and 2016? First, 2016 was a leap year, which added one more day on February 29. Secondly, when we’ve flown or cruised frequently we often posted a short blurb earlier in the day, later uploading a more comprehensive post.

Recently planted agricultural field for hotter summer weather.

As for errors, they’re inevitable. As much as we’d prefer to be “error free” no matter how much proof reading, we conduct, we easily miss typos, grammar errors and my nemesis, paragraph spacing issues.

We’ll start with the paragraph spacing issues. Blogger has a faulty system. Posting multiple photos have an impact on the ability of users to correct line and paragraph spacing. 

Farmland on a sun-drenched day.

In addition, when the Wi-Fi connection is slow, the spacing of lines and paragraphs becomes a major problem. If there is one thing that takes the most of my time, it is to try to correct the spacing. It’s not so much a problem with other blog publishing programs like WordPress. 

Why aren’t we moving from Blogger to WordPress? We’d lose all of our stats and have to begin again, perhaps losing many of our past posts. As an avid “numbers cruncher” and stats fanatic, this would be awful. So we used Blogger, hoping that one day they will make changes to impact this one area of concern.

View of our vacation home from a nearby park. (Similar image shown recently).

Beside the paragraph spacing issue, we make plenty of errors. I can read and reread a post several times. Once I upload the post, within moments, Tom is busy reading through every word and photo caption. There is rarely an occasion when he doesn’t find any errors which I immediately correct per his suggestions. 

At times, I’m appalled by the nature of an error. How did I not see this when reviewing the post? I suppose it’s human nature. We easily miss mistakes we’ve made. That’s why they’re called mistakes.

Mom and her colt.

As the New Year rolled in last night, while we watched the festivities in Sydney on TV for which we’ve included the this fabulous video, I considered making a New Year’s resolution for the first time in decades, no more errors in the posts.

But, as I contemplated this possibility, my eyes landed on our slogan at the top of our home page which reads: “Wafting Through Our World Wide Travels with Ease, Joy and Simplicity.”

Close up Bottle Brush plant.

In my old life, perfectionism was the order of the day, an endless objective, never fulfilled. That’s changed progressively over these past four plus years. We’re finally nearing the pinnacle of acceptance of our flaws, our idiosyncrasies and our eccentricities. We’ll never strive for perfection again. 

Instead, we strive for ease, joy and simplicity. Within this concept lies no accommodation for attempting to be perfect at anything. The burden of striving for such an impossible goal has long since passed.

Bottle Brush plants growing in the yard of our vacation home.

So, instead of a resolution to avoid making errors when posting, we choose to accept the reality that posting 365 days a year (or more) is a breeding ground for errors. 

Of course, if we’ve misspelled or misrepresented information on a locale, an item we photographed, a culture or a people, we kindly ask you to let us know so we can make corrections accordingly. We never intend to provide faulty information. In this aspect, there’s no margin for error.

The Holland America cruise ship was passing by a few days prior to Christmas.

For the rest, we ask our readers to bear with us, knowing our intentions are genuine and heartfelt.  Accuracy will always be our goal, perfectionism will not. Maybe we all may benefit from not being so hard our ourselves. It’s a lesson we continually strive to achieve.

May your New Year bring you personal acceptance, peace and love. Happy New Year!

Photo from one year ago today, January 1, 2016:

Riverfront property in the neighborhood in Pacific Harbour, Fiji. For more photos, please click here.