I spent much of the weekend learning web designy-type things, things like how to properly slice up a GIMP mockup image and code it into a real live web site. After hours and hours of research, I also learned that I'll be sticking with Blogspot as my hosting/blogging platform, and here is why: Wordpress.com is great and all, if you're happy to use one of their templates. But if you want to use your own template, you either have to upgrade to their paid service, or upload their software and database to your own web host; and since my main goal here is to stop paying to have a web site, and my secondary goal is to show off my burgeoning design capabilities, that just won't do. Blogger, on the other hand, is both free and fully customizable, and comes with enough widgets and simple hack-arounds to keep me happy. Seeing as how I've been a Blogger gal since the golden days when it was run out of Ev's garage (okay, not quite. They had real office space. But it still had that feel), I feel silly for thinking of straying.
I did find some other possibilities, though. For one, there's Webnode, where my Task Wrangler site is hosted. It's also free and customizable, but there's no support and very little in the way of instructions on how to customize. I figured out the gist of it, but it was going to take longer to figure out the whole thing than I want to wait to get my new site up and running. I do want to learn it eventually, though, just as I still want to learn Wordpress.
A new one to me was Webs (formerly Freewebs). It looked promising as far as being able to customize, but there's no blogging platform in the free version, and I realized that I need to take my inherent laziness into consideration and keep updating as easy as possible. And so it was back to Blogger, as it always is. And so, JMBauhuas.com will be "powered by Blogger" fairly soon, and hopefully this time I'll be able to figure out how to successfully park the domain at Blogspot ("sleepyjean.net," the domain I registered for this here blog, never did take, and if there's one downside to Blogger it's that it's like pulling teeth to get customer support--which is actually pretty big, as downsides go, and would be a dealbreaker if I needed CS more often than once a year or so), and won't have to pay extra for URL forwarding to get it to point here.
***
First, though, I have articles to write, and jobs to apply for. I'm a little apprehensive about that last part. We're still quite a ways from needing to panic about our finances, and thus I feel like right now I've got a prime opportunity to focus on building skills and growing a freelance client base, and that if I stay focused, I might be able to earn enough to stave off Panic Time indefinitely. But there's an opening at my old old job, where I worked waaaay back before I went back to school and finished my degree, that is almost identical to what I used to do there. So now I'm hearing the siryn call of Excellent Health Benefits and a Steady Paycheck, which is exactly the call that always brings me back to being an Administrative Assistant By Day, and which I was really hoping I'd be able to resist heeding this time.
And then the rationalizations start: the "I can work there for a couple of years while we get caught up in our finances and delay my big dreams a while longer," which sounded a lot more convincing at 25 than it does at 35; and the "I can still write books and freelance articles and do web design and craft pretty things and prettify my house and yard in the evenings and on weekends," which I know darn well from experience that no, I can't. I can do one, maybe two of those things, and that will be a struggle, and the other things that make me happy will have to be sacrificed. But, that's life in America, isn't it? That's just part of responsible adulthood, right? You sacrifice the time and energy to do what makes you happy for the peace of mind of a steady paycheck and good health insurance that comes with a day job. You don't sell your house to buy an RV and run away to the Yucatan to be beach bums and live off of your meager freelance earnings. And that is why I'll submit my resume and see what happens.
Sigh.
I did find some other possibilities, though. For one, there's Webnode, where my Task Wrangler site is hosted. It's also free and customizable, but there's no support and very little in the way of instructions on how to customize. I figured out the gist of it, but it was going to take longer to figure out the whole thing than I want to wait to get my new site up and running. I do want to learn it eventually, though, just as I still want to learn Wordpress.
A new one to me was Webs (formerly Freewebs). It looked promising as far as being able to customize, but there's no blogging platform in the free version, and I realized that I need to take my inherent laziness into consideration and keep updating as easy as possible. And so it was back to Blogger, as it always is. And so, JMBauhuas.com will be "powered by Blogger" fairly soon, and hopefully this time I'll be able to figure out how to successfully park the domain at Blogspot ("sleepyjean.net," the domain I registered for this here blog, never did take, and if there's one downside to Blogger it's that it's like pulling teeth to get customer support--which is actually pretty big, as downsides go, and would be a dealbreaker if I needed CS more often than once a year or so), and won't have to pay extra for URL forwarding to get it to point here.
***
First, though, I have articles to write, and jobs to apply for. I'm a little apprehensive about that last part. We're still quite a ways from needing to panic about our finances, and thus I feel like right now I've got a prime opportunity to focus on building skills and growing a freelance client base, and that if I stay focused, I might be able to earn enough to stave off Panic Time indefinitely. But there's an opening at my old old job, where I worked waaaay back before I went back to school and finished my degree, that is almost identical to what I used to do there. So now I'm hearing the siryn call of Excellent Health Benefits and a Steady Paycheck, which is exactly the call that always brings me back to being an Administrative Assistant By Day, and which I was really hoping I'd be able to resist heeding this time.
And then the rationalizations start: the "I can work there for a couple of years while we get caught up in our finances and delay my big dreams a while longer," which sounded a lot more convincing at 25 than it does at 35; and the "I can still write books and freelance articles and do web design and craft pretty things and prettify my house and yard in the evenings and on weekends," which I know darn well from experience that no, I can't. I can do one, maybe two of those things, and that will be a struggle, and the other things that make me happy will have to be sacrificed. But, that's life in America, isn't it? That's just part of responsible adulthood, right? You sacrifice the time and energy to do what makes you happy for the peace of mind of a steady paycheck and good health insurance that comes with a day job. You don't sell your house to buy an RV and run away to the Yucatan to be beach bums and live off of your meager freelance earnings. And that is why I'll submit my resume and see what happens.
Sigh.
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