Plan B for bloggers

When it is going well, blogging is a joy, but when every component of the mix seems to fall apart at the same time, it can get tough. First it was a dead hard drive, and then a weird glitch that wouldn’t let me use my back-up either. And then, writer’s block.

No hardware

Sat staring at the screen of death unable to blog, I likened the last couple of weeks to a pilot without an aeroplane. A place to go, but no way to get there. (Matt was cool, offering me the chance to post the MyBlogLog Sunday feature on this blog, which I could have done, had I had access to a working computer.) Long story short, I eventually got the hardware sorted out, rescued all my data, reinstalled my blog as it was, and started to blog.

No inspiration

I should have been hyped after all that techno nonsense, but to be honest, for the first time, I experienced writer’s block, and found it hard to jump out of serious mode – not good for a humor site. I usually click on a few sites (Google Trends if I am really desperate for clues) and end up with a headful of ideas. But it didn’t work.

I am committed to the Pisstakers blog, and I couldn’t just leave it and do nothing. So, rather than publish articles I knew were sub-par (which is different to posting articles you think are OK but others think are sub-par) I decided to do some work on my side bar. It doesn’t get more exciting than that!

It’s all in the widgets

I had a grain of an idea, but it wasn’t exactly working out until the Eureka moment. Do you know what it is like when you are feeling bad, but the second after you consciously give up, suddenly you see a solution? I think it is a great sensation, to feel your sub-conscious come to the surface and talk to you in words that, for once, you can hear.

Ding, ding, ding, with a sniff of an idea based on my Humor Quotes widget, I revolutionised my sidebar and the system has provoked so many ideas in my mind, that the time away from writing blew away the cobwebs, gave me new impetus, and it is good to be a-blogging again. (As George Carlin said, “I have lots of ideas, but most of them suck!” and I will no doubt be forever tweaking the sidebar.)

And I am glad I was feeling good this morning, because if this were last week, when doom and gloom reigned, the dodgy router I woke up to might have ended up in the yard in pieces. Does any of this sound familiar?

Random Posts