Brightwind News
Friday, July 11, 2008
Brightwind is back!
Brightwind returns today! For a long time I haven't been sure where to go with this site. Ever since my mother got cancer way back in 2005, I've had all sorts of ambiguous feelings about what I should do with my life and even more ambiguous feelings about how in the world I could write about it. But now, that ambiguity is just floating away like so many clouds; I've been learning so much, talking to really interesting people, and most importantly rejuvenating my spiritual life through a series of journeys, prayers and meditations. Some of this is very personal of course, but much of it is on subjects I think lots of people can understand and appreciate.
So from now on, I'm going to start sharing thoughts and pictures and whatever comes to mind more. I might do various updates or changes or whatnot, but really my main purpose is that I can keep in touch and share ideas with my friends scattered about the world, who can also leave comments and share their ideas and thoughts too!
The few minutes you spend here on Brightwind should be very bright indeed, I hope, though not necessarily very windy.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
You know what? What do you know? hmmm....
A strange thing has happened! I’ve suddenly realized why I haven’t updated this website since February.
I’ve changed.
That’s to say: the things that have happened to me, the questions I’ve asked, and the truths I’ve been exploring in my life this year have made me understand that the previous Brightwind no longer fits my mould. I have to reframe this website’s management and organization to do things in a rather different way.
So. It is with some amount of mixed sadness and relief that I tentatively announce to the thronging millions who have been checking my website for the last 11 months each and every day that David Bowers will no longer write for Brightwind. Instead it will be taken over by a small cast of fictional characters (created, scripted, and copyrighted by a mysterious group of 1 to 10 people and/or demi gods).
May your life, dear reader, be eternally blessed with interesting questions.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
another change of direction...
I haven’t known how to say this, so I haven’t said anything for a long time. I suppose I still don’t know how to say this, but I should really say something… My fear is that I’m going to sound depressed and upset and I’m going to make other people feel that way as well, so let me state for the record that I am not depressed at the time of writing this entry. Life just threw another curve-ball, that’s all.
I was in China just about a month ago. I had a great time in Macau in February, saw lots of great friends, even met up with a few great friends in Nanjing and Shanghai in the end of February and the beginning of March. And then I got a phone call from my family back in the States saying that my mother was in the hospital.
Turned out that she had a brain tumor, and that the surgery would take quite some time for her to recover from, and that I was needed back in Colorado Springs, Colorado to help take care of her during the next few months. Of course when she told me this I was more than happy to come help my mother! Who wouldn’t?
So the long and the short of it is that I’m not in China anymore. I’m deeply sorry to all my Chinese friends that I missed while I was there for about two weeks. I swear I miss you even more now. Of course I’m very happy to be here with my mother, and I’m grateful for the chance to help her out, but I won’t pretend that my heart doesn’t cry out with longing to return to China, be with my friends, and continue my graduate studies.
Mom and her doctors and everybody are all hoping that I’ll be able to come back to China in September. I think I’ll wait a little while before thinking about it too much. I hate it when I get my hopes up for something and then I have to change plans again. That’s been happening a lot over the last few years, so I’m taking a break from plans of any sort as much as I can.
So that’s the latest on my whereabouts and current condition and all. If you’re concerned about my mom, you can find out the latest on her health at her own personal website: nancybowers.com/updates
Please keep her (and me too, while you’re at it) in your prayers, if you’re the praying sort. If you don’t pray, you could always just send us loads of money instead…
Ha ha… just joking. I know that’s not very funny, but hey… one ought not to be serious all the time. God loves laughter, you know…
Sunday, August 01, 2004
More New Directions
This last month and a half have reordered so many things in my life. I hope you will pardon my absence. Some people say that change is hard, and while that’s true, I feel that my particular changes this time are very good indeed.
I would rather not say directly what all the changes in my life have been, yet. You’ll know that soon enough anyway. It will affect this website, but as to exactly how, I’d like to let that be a surprise for later.
The one thing I should say now is that I’m planning to go back to America for an extended trip of more than a year. I’m currently getting ready to go now, and I expect I should be there in about a month. During my first month or two in the States, I plan to dedicate a significant amount of time to making this site work the way I want it to. Then during the months after that, I hope to mainly just write new content for it, without working too much on the underlying code.
I like surprises, so I’m going to let you wonder for a while what Brightwind will become. I myself am eager to discover more about that as I go, anyway. I may end up even more surprised than you! Whatever happens to me in my life, and however Brightwind evolves as a website, getting there will be a gradual journey, so I hope that you’ll be patient with me as I work at it. Thank you for being here all this time so far!
Friday, June 04, 2004
New Directions
Brightwind has been running for several months now, and it’s given me a lot of chance to think about what it could become in the future. I’ve tried posting everything from inspiring essays to film reviews, and from short stories to photo galleries. All this experimenting has given me a better sense of the kind of thing I like to write, draw, photograph and so on.
In terms of the site management, I was going strong with the Typepad system for a while, and just when I was getting into its rhythym, the Typepad service became inaccessible from China and I was forced to move over to a new provider and a new blogging engine. I chose Expression Engine, even though it was expensive for me, because it seemed to have the widest potential for growth. With it, I could make Brightwind into any kind of website I might want to have.
But this added flexibility and power, combined with a wider appreciation for what I really want to accomplish here, creates a much larger work load! The current design is not flexible enough to handle everything I want to do, so basically I need to work out something totally new.
Here’s the list of ideas I’ve thought through concerning ways Brightwind’s content might develop:
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