Offline temporarily

I will be offline for an indefinite period. My Mac is down and in need of some repair. I hope to be back up and running within a week, God willing.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Blog redesign

In case any reader visits this blog today and perhaps the next few days, you might see a few changes as I am experimenting with changing the layout and template. Blogger introduced a new set of templates and customization tools and FINALLY this blog will get 2 sidebars! As a result of this I shall be reorganizing things that currently exist on the blog, and then since having 2 sidebars will permit me to add new stuff without clogging up the works, I may add stuff I’ve been wanting to. Info in next paragraph, for readers who have a blog on Blogger and who might want to take advantage of this.

Blogger in Draft: The Blogger Template Designer

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Discontinuing most advertising on Sober Catholic

No one has ever commented or emailed displeasure with the Google AdSense advertising that I had been running on this blog, but nevertheless I have decided to discontinue it for a variety of reasons.

One: I wasn’t making any money off of it. Less than $20 in the past year. There is a correlation between traffic and ad clicking, and while I have decent readership, I guess hardly anyone was clicking on the ads. This is fine as I rarely do that myself on other people’s blogs.

Two: the ads may have been misleading or offensive. Quite often they were about alcohol and addiction treatment program (obviously, they were generated based on post content) or on something “Catholic-y”. The misleading aspect is that the ads may have offered information opposed to the goals of this blog, and the offensive aspect may be that some of the “Catholic-y” ads may have been created by anti-Catholic bigots. Quite often this is done by bigots masquerading as Catholics to draw people away from the True Faith.

Anyway, I in general dislike advertising. I will not get rid of it entirely, but will only run ads that I know are not contrary to the Faith and therefore I have more control of.

I may get some sort of PayPal thingy where readers can donate money if they like what they read, but that will be later on when I think about it more.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Template issues

There seems to be a problem with the template (the way the blog is laid out). I haven’t done anything to the template, but for some reason it appears that the items in the sidebar are showing up below all the blogposts instead of along the right hand side where they belong.

I am not sure why this is so, but it is probably a Blogger (Google) issue. I shall investigate, not that I can do anything about it. 🙁

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Brief blogging break

I think I blogged daily, sometimes multiple times a day, since the beginning of Lent. I’m going to take a short break from blogging. Just for a few days.

See you later in the week.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Easter blog posting update

I’ve read the Mass readings for tomorrow (Wednesday of Holy Week), and offhand I can’t come up with anything to post about them. Something may come to me, like in the past when I’ve stared at a blank screen and then “BOING”, inspiration. But as of now, there may be no Lenten blogpost for tomorrow.

There will also be no new posting during the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday). There are a few old posts from years past that I’ll recycle, particularly on the Holy Thursday “Mass of the Lord’s Supper”, and the Stations of the Cross Meditations. I was thinking of coming up with some quickie new meditations on the Stations, but probably not. I’m thinking that “quickie” won’t cut it. 🙂

Have a good Triduum, I hope you can spend time at a Catholic Church these days. Major graces working on your soul those days. We’re talkin’ big time, here.

Until Easter, see you!

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Twitter (again)

Once again I am trying the web service known as Twitter

.

Twitter is a “nanoblogging”or “microblogging” service that is increasingly popular. I had tried it before (see this post ) but couldn’t figure how to make use of it.

It seems to be more useful now, especially since I joined Tweet Catholic, a group of Catholics on Twitter. Tweet Catholic is a part of flockNote , a service which you can share information, news and links with like-minded people. There is a link to FlockNote in my sidebar, you can use it to subscribe to this blog and to other blogs.

Anyway, my username on Twitter is @sobercatholic, join and follow my “Tweets!” There is also a gadget-thingy in my sidebar which lists my last bunch of Tweets.

Twitter is a great way to build a community and rally the flock around stuff. As with any technology, it can be a way to waste time. It is what you make of it.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

A general apology of sorts

I feel the need to offer an apology for the lack of posting recently. My wife just told me that I apologize for “not blogging” too much. That’s possible. But perhaps my conscience is bothering me. Or maybe I’m just a melancholic moody alcoholic in recovery and those moods get the best of me. But, I have been very guilty over the past year or so of promising daily posting and coming up with various plans to get myself to do just that. I have not followed through by virtue of the fact that I have never posted daily apart from novenas or a special series on things.

A part of me says that I shouldn’t feel lousy about myself as I have been through a series of major life-changing events this past year, every one of which is usually at or near the top of lists that state: “Doing any one of these things runs the risks of relapse.” (Relocation, job-changing and marriage, all in one year!) But still, I was raised with the notion that if you say you’re going to do something, follow through and do it. The fact that I didn’t relapse and was never seriously tempted to do so is a testimony to my Faith and sobriety. Not a testimony to me, but to the tools at my disposal.

Nevertheless, my intentions have exceeded my ability to deliver. I suppose my eyeballs got too big at blogging possibilities and my grasp reached for too much and I should have toned down expectations and just delivered what I could when I was able.

At any rate, please take this apology as a sincere attempt to work through stuff and get back on a track of sorts. The situation announced in my “blog update-personal news” post is holding true. The office is getting organized.

Blogging, as I always state, will continue. Stopping is never an option.

Thanks for your patience.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

FYI: blog update-personal news

This is just an FYI posting that may hopefully explain the frequency of blog postings from here on out.

There is going to be a shift in my priorities when I get behind the keyboard of my Mac and bang out words. Blogging is going to be secondary to my attempt to resurrect a fiction writing career.

I have always loved writing. Ever since I was a little human I enjoyed it and have wanted to write fiction for a living. I have never been successful and probably own the world’s largest collection of excuses for not succeeding (with misplaced priorities probably first on the list with alcoholism a very close second) but that is no excuse for giving up or not continuing to try.

I have exhumed from some boxes all the literary trash of 3 decades of attempts and shall start to piece together some semblance of organization and will proceed from there with whatever story nuggets that suggest themselves as viable ideas. I actually have a clue as to what I shall start with, a novel I started after I sobered up in 2002. (Don’t ask about the plot.) Even then I thought that writing was one of the things I was going to “recover” in my sobriety. But I still want to review the whole melange of detritus.

What does this mean for my three blogs? Nothing as I doubt that anyone would actually notice anything different in posting frequency. Sober Catholic will still average 15-20 posts a month like it already does, Trudging Paulcoholic’s Road will hopefully get to 15-20 posts a month and The Four Last Things will continue to be sporadic. The only difference is that I will no longer promise stuff like I occasionally do about getting to posting on a daily basis. I will probably blog on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, which are my days off, and Sunday mornings (I now go to the Saturday Vigil Mass.) I will focus on fiction on a daily basis, either actual writing or research.

Rest assured, all three blogs will continue, as will the Catholics in Recovery social network. Blogging has actually been quite responsible for whetting my appetite for writing. Life is settling out for me from a happily tumultuous year (relocation, new job and then another one when I quit that one, a new wife that I’m keeping) and I’m thinking that I should get serious about some central dream that I’ve held for as long as I can remember.

Perhaps I’m “seasoned” enough and have “lived enough” so that fiction writing is possible. I don’t know. At any rate, that’s where I am now and plan on doing.

Continue to read the blogs, they’ll still continue on. Join Catholics in Recovery, we can use you there if you’re not already a member!

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

blog update

Just a short note to anyone wondering, but this blog is still alive despite no postings for nearly 3 weeks. Posting shall hopefully resume this week. Life, work and stuff got in the way. Things are OK, just haven’t been getting around to posting!

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)