How I found my lost blog

When I was forced to take a break from writing my blog, it felt weird.  I struggled with aggressive attempts to figure out my technical errors while I balanced my feelings of wanting to passively sit back and reflect on why it happened in the first place.

What did I do wrong to let it happen?  What precautions did I forget to take?

I learned a lot about myself as I reflected.  I know for sure that I enjoy the writing process, and I missed it terribly when I couldn’t write my blog.  It had become what I thought was a welcomed habit consuming my morning routine.

I wondered if I had gotten off track on purpose, and my blog wasn’t meant to be?

Back when I was able to write each morning, I put off everything else, just to do what I enjoyed doing.  I had made it a selfish habit, one that I became addicted to for the wrong reasons.  I wasn’t doing it for fun, I was doing it because I had set the goal that I thought I had to meet.

My goal was to show up every day to write.  But why?

That reflection happened right before the technical issues started.  As if the blogging gods knew I needed to get my shit together even more than my reflections had revealed to me, my blog broke to an inchoate status due to issues I thought were outside of my control.

About those technical issues…don’t get me started.  Okay, since I got you wondering…I’ll elaborate on how I found my blog once again.

I figured out my technical issues, but not on my own.  It is with thanks to my hero husband, who not only can cook, but he is also a computer-technology-god in my book.  Check out this burger he made me the day I discovered my blog broke…comfort food at its finest.

After the Mr. watched me struggle for close to a week following the glorious burger eating fest, he could tell his damsel in distress had reached her breaking point.  No amount of his good cooking was going to fix my concerns, so he came to my rescue.  Together we fought the battle and figured out what I had missed in the blog settings to fix the problem.

I’m smiling again as I type away on my blog.  It feels good, but weird at the same time.  Each morning when I couldn’t write, I would fight my desires and tell myself:

“It’s only temporary, you’ll eventually figure it out, just give it some more time.”

But the longer it took, the less I wanted to try.  I felt defeated.  I was giving myself permission to be okay with losing all the work I had invested in over the past year of my dedicated writing.

That is until I read this quote:

“Knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks sat down to make a stand.  She fought silently when she knew what she was doing was the right thing to do.  Even though Rosa sat to make her point, she stood up for herself.  That’s what I needed to do.  I needed to stand up for myself.  Yeah, yeah, I get it, on a much smaller scale, a blog versus civil rights – there’s no comparison!  But the quote fits, so let’s just get rid of our judgments, use some creative liberties, and get on with how I overcame my fears of what was lurking on my blog where I wasn’t looking.

Until I believed in myself, I was willing to give up and be at peace with the outcome of losing everything.  I was tired of trying to figure it out on my own, my brain hurt trying to make sense of what happened.  But if I broke it in the first place, I could fix it, and I couldn’t be the only blogger to have made the same mistake.  Somehow, there had to be a fix.

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true.  I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. – Rosa Parks

That’s when I hauled my ass to the computer to figure it out.  I gave it my best shot to follow instructions the Happiness Engineer gave me.  He passive-aggressively set me straight on my understanding of the problem.

Once I had the help of my hero, my Mr., who understood what Happiness Engineer’s jargon meant, that’s when I was able to fix my problem.

I’m no longer seeing this screen, and that makes me happy!

 

I’ve taken charge of my lack of understanding of how it all works, I’ve made extra notes on my password file (memory assisted aids are appropriate once you can’t remember your login information), and I’ve learned to keep a screenshot of everything that involves settings in WordPress.com versus WordPress.org.  I now know I didn’t understand they were two totally separate beasts, connected via JetPack who was the nasty culprit all along.  JP had done its own passive aggressive attack on my blog by simply becoming inactive.  I reactivated it, and wah-lah, presto, change-o, things worked once again.

It was like I turned the clock of time back to the beginning of winter before my problems started.  But then I sprung back to reality – we really had yet another winter storm to contend with.  Ugh.  When will the battles with snow end???

This aggressive winter is taking way too long to melt away to spring.  I was hopeful my week-long blog problem finally being resolved would reveal rays of sunlight and warmer weather.  Why can’t some higher power bring spring here?  I know the poor Robins must feel as though they’re in a time warp and missed all the seasons, too.

It is April 2018, isn’t it?  

Unlike being able to take control of my mistaken blog settings, I know I have no control over the weather.  I shall find peace in my limitations and look at the beauty of the white snow against the blue sky.

And, now that I found my missing blog, I am smiling once again, because I’m back to writing for fun.

Thank you to Denny for tagging me on the 3 quote challenge!

Post inspiration:  Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday:  Passive/Aggressive

PS – thanks for stopping by to read my post, I’ve missed hearing from you!  Hope you’re doing well!!