TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A TRAVELING BLOGGER

THE UNSPEAKABLE HAS HAPPENED! I have lost loads of photos from my blogs!!! And I don't know how to get them back! Well, I have been asked SO MANY times now- how easy is it to become a blogger? Short answer… if you love writing or telling a tale, becoming a blogger is not so hard. First you need something you are passionate about or have a real interest in, to write about. It can be anything from minding the baby to- travelling Australia! Then you just find your preferred platform (I stuck to Google’s Blogger for mine, but there is Wordpress and many others) get your account set up and sort out your layout (of which you are usually offered a  choice), and away you go.

A Longer answer….. is NEVER that simple! Getting set up and writing the damn thing is pretty straight forward. It’s all the little glitches after that that really wind you up. For instance, do you want to add pictures to your blog? In one way, this is always a good idea as it creates visual interest and captures the imagination quicker than words. A blog without pictures is like a barren landscape… dead boring, and somewhere you really don’t want to be. BUT, then there’s the downside. Writing a blog, for me, is no problem. Words are easy to place on a page. Pictures are Satan’s own invention. A sadistic way of letting a

blogger know how puny and useless they are.

 Firstly you have to take or find the damn photos. Then you have to download them either into your pictures file, on the computer, or direct to your Blog via USB cable from your phone/ camera. Either one takes years off your life. No. Literally- years! I once timed a download of just one picture onto a blog I had waiting to astonish the world. It took 25 minutes! I cooked my tea while I was doing it.

Now this may just be a BLOGGER platform glitch as I haven’t tried others……YET! Or it may be because I am traveling and writing as I go. This means I often find myself with poor or no network access. Yes blogging is great while you are able to use the internet. Strange isn’t it? So in cities, towns, areas of denser human population… Blogging is a fun thing to do. Try traveling. Suddenly, after a half an hour of walking around in circles, across whichever inaccessible terrain you are in, holding the blasted computer up to the sky in a beseeching offering, you realize… That you have developed severe, excruciating pain in whichever arm has been trying to balance the small rectangle, which has now gained all the weight of a fully grown Rhino. And that you have established a following (well more of a ‘hiding’ really).There are now people who are locking themselves in caravans and campers around you, peeping out from behind their curtains and locked doors. Don’t try explaining that you are actually quite sane and just trying to find a ‘connection’. I’ve tried it. Doesn’t work. They ring the police.

So not only does it take you one full day to WRITE the blog, if you are lucky enough to get an internet connection. It then takes you another day to download the photos and TRY to upload them onto the blog. Oh, and did I mention, that even when you get these beautiful, inspiring shots onto your page, they don’t always go where you want them to. This is where you find something else has taken over your Blog. Something evil and twisted. The Blog has gained a life of its own, and has developed the personality of a sulky, bratty ‘princess’.  “You want to place that picture here? No. I don’t want it here. I want it higher up/ lower down/ not on here at all! What do you mean it’s your blog? I’M alive! I can choose where I want to put your crappy old photos, which, incidentally are pretty naff. I could do better.” So you spend precious hours negotiating around the spoiled little……

Finally you have the Blog written, the pictures downloaded and in place (maybe not quite in the place you originally wanted… but they are on the blog) and you send it to ‘preview’. At which point you realize…you need to alter the wording. It isn’t that… good. OK, it is pretty awful right now. AND it’s here where you realize you have a blinding headache, a wrenched shoulder, and NO interest whatsoever in publishing this useless, shitty piece of offal called a BLOG. You go to bed. At 12noon. With paracetamol and a hot water bottle.

    

It isn’t until you emerge from under that warm, welcoming, cocoon of a duvet , one (or two) days later that you are recovered enough to make the necessary alterations and FINALLY PUBLISH. That is…........

IF your computer still has enough juice in it to actually start up again  OR...IF you haven’t lost your internet connection again by now.

So how easy is it to write your own Blog? A hell of a lot easier in a CITY!!!

< (Whoo Hoo.You go girl! You've  actually FINISHED a blog!!!)

Karma isn't in the big things you do in life... it is in the small things that affect others.
The Grey Chihuahua