Preparation A-che

The title of this post is Fuckin’ Tired because I’m well-rested and wide awake. Was that convincing? Noooooooooooooooo…….

Apologies. Passed out on the keyboard. 

This is the first journal-style post on my site, and I’m writing it without the site being ready for — I don’t know what. 

I’ve prepared and prepared, was close to launching, then prepared again. What did I do after that? Guess. Go on, guess! Oh, you did? My bad, didn’t hear you. And, you guessed correctly, more of that preparation shit. 

Now it’s a Sunday evening after days of major site changes, followed by — I’m not gonna say it. 

Pressing Words

WordPress sites are insane, but with over 5 years experience, I’ve gotten pretty good at realizing I still suck. I’ve put in thousands of years building sites, a billion breaking them, so I know it’s more important to be writing, than making sure all the links work and spelling is correct.  

Time to just — wirte.

“What about all that Search Engine Optimization you learned?”

That’s my brain talking.

Fuck you, brain!

Where was I? Tired. Right. And I don’t care about physically tired, that’s not important, at least in terms of this post. I’m brain tired, as evidenced by the little spat we just had about SEO shit.

“Because it’s how people will find your writing, nerd.” 

Brain, you fu —

Search Engine Optimization won’t help anyone find writing that doesn’t exist.

I just realized it’s time to write a little personal and professional update. Regardless of what’s planned, this is what’s available. And, to be honest, I kinda like it. It’s what you need to see, the real shit behind the scenes. With an emphasis on ‘shit’. It’s good to show the reality of an overwhelmed individual alone in a room trying to make stuff.

Doneski

Knowing when your site is ready is like knowing when an oil painting is complete. Technically, it never is. You just stop fuckin’ with it — or you don’t.

This site is the hub of everything I have planned for my professional career, so I’m gonna be keep fuckin’ with it forever. 

That’s why I finally built a WordPress site. A quarter of the world’s sites are built with WordPress, so I’m pretty sure it’ll be around for a while.

Turns out, it’s tougher than I thought, especially when you don’t know what the hell WordPress really is. 

Are you on WordPress.com or WordPress.org? What’s the difference? Which theme are you using? What about a builder? Does your builder have a theme, or is your theme a builder? Cool, now what plugins are going to do all the things the theme and builder can’t do? How are they interfering with your theme and builder? Ask your host. What’s interfering with them? A bug? Deactivate all plugins? What’s your blood pressure?

Wait! You wanna talk to people? Sell them stuff? You wanna ship that shit? Fuck. We gotta start over. 

So tired. 

But after several years, feels like I know how to navigate the WP world in order to get the result I’m looking for. Key is to realize you’re not gonna find a button for it. Hell, you might not even have activated that button, or tickled the widget in the right quadrant of its genitalia for the activation option to appear. 

And customer support — just send an email and pretend the problem doesn’t exist until you get a response. WP sites are about patience. “I want it now” sets you up for expensive failure in the form of something you own flying at another thing you own, and maybe haven’t finished paying for.  

Must Sleep

I built my first site using Dreamweaver back in the 1800s. Since then, I’ve built a hundred more (nope, way less) sites since using very user-friendly drag-and-drop platforms like GoDaddy and Wix, and more complex startup platforms based in the UK, Israel, Turkey and more. Maybe it was Hungary. Maybe it was a Hungry Turkey. Ah? Am I right? 

“No.” 

It’s my brain again. It’s my brain not on drugs. It’s not like the public service ad with a fried egg. There’s no difference. I’m either high, or not high. 

“Not high — at the moment.”

‘Bout to be drunk, though.