Saturday, February 26, 2011

50 Posts In, Things I Like about Blogger

I just realized that I'm not going to be around tonight, so I might as well do an early post.  When I arrived at the Dashboard, I noticed this is my 50th post, so it was time for some reflection . . . and some happydance.

The first thing that I absolutely love about Blogger is the easy formatting.  I used to do Livejournal, where you'd have to actually know at least some minimal code to get things to look snazzy.  As I said, minimal, but still far more than I wanted to deal with in the midst of writing.  I can manage to leftbrain/rightbrain my writing to an extent, but if I'm having to add code as well, it breaks my train of thought.  Eventually, I just got bored and stopped.

Speaking of my concentration, as I have mentioned on other posts, mine isn't that great. My concentration, that is.  Which brings me to another thing I like about Blogger.  It autosaves every few seconds and keeps my posts for me. Or, you know, I can just hit Save Now and it does it then.  And yes, I know that any word processing program would do this for me.  But the sad truth is, I tend to hate them. I liked Word Perfect back in the early 2000s before they added the whole universe to it.  Oh, and I can't afford it now.  Just working on my journal as ideas happen or when I have time and knowing it's floating in the clouds and not somewhere on my hard drive makes me happy.

I also like the interaction with other sites.  Whenever one of the people I'm following updates, I don't necessarily have to go to my Dashboard about it.  Almost everyone posts a link to their blog update to Facebook.  I say almost everyone, because I personally don't. Well, I have a few times, but only when I felt the post was needed to clarify whatever Facebook crazy thing I was doing.

Even though I don't have to GO to the Dashboard to find posts, I do like the Dashboard. It's well organized, allows me easy access to whatever I want to do, and isn't annoying.  Let's face it, quite often the launching points of places like this can be deeply annoying.  I think launching sites should be like personal assistants.  They tell you what you need to know, remind you of what is important, and otherwise leave you the hell alone.

Being left the hell alone is important for blogging.  A site that annoys you will, again, break your concentration and keep you from expressing whatever idea you came there to express in the first place. There have been a lot of blogging/journal places in the past.  I think their need to be or become annoying/user unfriendly is the reason why so many people walked away.

I'm one of those people who walked. Livejournal, Deadjournal, countless others, you name it.  I've started and deleted so many blogging accounts over the years. I'd start them with such good intentions and end up just mehing over the whole thing.  The fact that I am 50 posts into this is a miracle.

Is that all because of my changing perspective in life? I used to think yes. I used to think that my inability to continue to blog rested completely on me.  I'm not so sure though.  Even though I'm in a more positive happy place emotionally and mentally, I'm still lazy and prone to extreme procrastination. Given that, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps it is the nature of the blogging sites I've used in the past that kept me from continuing.  Even though it is my tendency (and the tendency of many people) to place blame completely on me, I don't believe that anymore.

To quote London and Kelly, it's not that you look bad in the clothes.The clothes look bad on you.

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