I have so little time for sitting and thinking. I find myself musing in the car as I drive. Or standing in the lab watching the clock during a reaction time. Or waiting for… something to happen at work. It does not lend itself to deep insightful essays. My thoughts are broken up like a dropped glass.
I do find myself finding joy to dwell in. So much stress and anger in public spaces these days. I’m not sorry for turning my back on that, to look for more beauty.
I also find myself longing for rest. There is always something to do. Several somethings to do. Lists of them, even. I’m back in the vicious cycle of getting sick because I am not resting enough. And I do not see the open time to take the rest.
And I need a new host for my website. Something keeps changing in the backend – I have Bluehost – and making it difficult if not impossible to upload photos and images, even just straight from my phone. This week adding products to the web store from my POD fulfillment place has suddenly started failing, with an error telling me the server is timing out. I pay for a service, but I am not getting it. So make note: don’t use Bluehost!
It’s all overwhelming. Interspersed with long stretches of boredom where I cannot do anything, because I am paid to wait. At least I’m paid. Counting my blessings…
I’ll be having a print sale as soon as I have time. If I can upload what I need to list them on the website. Grrrr
Comments
4 responses to “Short Time, Fast Thoughts”
I was just about to ask you about hosting, as it is waaay past time to start my “author platform.” It’s easy (and valuable) to warn people off a particular service or site, a bit tougher to put your reputation on the line to tout one. I’ve been strongly considering Squarespace. Thoughts?
I started out with a WordPress site, and WordPress hosting which back then ran about $20 annually. That didn’t allow me so much flexibility, so after a couple of years I moved to self-hosting, with GoDaddy. I had issues while with them – traffic spikes would crash the blog. About two years ago I moved hosts to Bluehost and have had a variable experience with them. They, too, have trouble handling traffic spikes. And they broke something when they updated the cPanel on my site a while back that was not allowing images to upload properly, even though the images were under the max file size (by a long way). Now, that’s not an issue most people are going to have – but I am an artist and a photographer so images are very important to me.
At this point, I’m looking at moving to a host that will allow me more traffic and better service (if I have to contact Bluehost it is a several hour ordeal).
However! For a new author all of this is overkill. I have 14 years of blogging, images, and I have an e-commerce component that allows me to sell direct to my readers and fans of my art. I have a print-on-demand plugin I use to sell fun merch like tee shirts and mugs and the like. Most authors neither need nor want to fuss with all of that.
I can’t weigh in on Squarespace, I have never used it. I went from Bloggr as a mommy blogger to WordPress and will likely stay with WP forever, albeit with a more competent host (which will cost more. I’m paying roughly $150 a year currently).
I’ve heard too much “WordPress delenda est” and stories of missing comments over on MGC to consider them.
I have had BlueHost for years, but I’m very low traffic to my site. I get on the chat, and usually have answers within a few minutes, I rarely have to call them. I know Larry C had a lot of problems with them. So it seems to be a hit or miss thing. My art is scattered all over the place (4 different gallery sites, and that doesn’t include stores and social media) so one day I need to get it all together!
Wix and Squarespace have good ratings for a beginning site and I know a couple of artists that have gone to squarespace for selling their art, and seem to be doing okay, but, I’ve never tried it.
As for cPanel, they do have an “old” version of cPanel that you can get to, maybe try that?
Lastly, I know about racing thoughts, and no time for anything. Taking those moments in between, to try to get a least a little “meditation” on life and the more beautiful parts of it, will help. I have also found that sometimes I need to sit down and look at how life has changed, and I find that my routines are actually broken somewhere, because something old doesn’t work anymore, and re-organizing time will sometimes free up time and ability.
And last, lastly, sometimes it’s okay to ask for help from those around you, even though it’s hard. We want to protect everyone, and sometimes we have to let them protect us.