Who Am I as a Blogger

AKA: Blogger.com is giving me fits

What's the Word June 7---polka dot

My poor blog followers, all one of ya, must think I'm schizophrenic. Don't feel alone, most people think that of me. I bet you're wondering, "How many times is this woman going to change the appearance of her blog!" I really don't mean to mess with your heads, but you know what, Blogger is messing with mine.

When I first started my blog, I had this cutesy picket fence background. Or wait, did I start first with the zen garden background? Maybe this is a sign of me not knowing who I am when I blog, or knowing what audience I want to reach, or what I'm going to emphasize. I'm on my 22nd blog, and I still can't answer those questions. Who am I as a blogger?

Picket fences portray an image of "hearth and home". Is that what I wanted?

Lately, I've doggedly been blog hopping and posting peoples' buttons on my page, lavishing comments right and left, hoping someone will come visit me. I've been Linkyed and Networked and added just about every app I could get a hold of, because it seemed that that's what was being done by most of the blogs I visited. I wanted to be like them, because they seemed to have it all together.

To be honest, it's been fun and I've learned my way around posting buttons. But I'm not happy. I want more. I feel shackled by the platform I'm using, but I can't afford to upgrade. I've been working with page design since computers came out. I was the first one in my Technical Writing class in college to use a computer for my final paper. The school had just gotten two Apple computers in the library, and I taught myself how to use the word processing program (It was called something like Beacon Street).

When home publishing software became available, I began more serious desktop publishing. But I was left with a DOS version of WordPerfect when what I wanted was Adobe. Still, no one could stretch a software's capability like I could, even if it did come on five 5 1/4" floppies. Now, who needs floppies when you can download it from the internet?

Eight inch, 5 1/4 inch, and 3.5 inch floppies. Do you remember these?

Back to the blog. I thought I had settled on a color theme and background, but yesterday I took the plunge and changed to Blogger's Dynamic Views template. I hate it. I can't embed Flash or Javascript. My posts are all one long, long, long scrolling page. If people want to follow me or see my blog archive, they don't know where to look unless they bump into it inadvertently. There is actually a popout widget on the right hand side of the page that has some of that stuff. But the dang thing gets in the way of the scroll bar.

While I was at it, I tried some more backgrounds. A vintage-looking kitchen wallpaper with lemons, a modern pixellated rainbow, even polka dots. For right now, I figure less is more until I know what I want. Who knows, I may even begin to appreciate the simplicity that I've got. But (whine), none of the fonts on the page tabs look right, and if someone comes along and decides to view the blog in, say, Magazine view (upper left hand corner where it says Classic), my pictures don't line up right. Oh, what's a blogger to do?

I'm going to quit spending so much time changing things and spend more time on crochet, which is what started this in the first place. I've let my inventory get dangerously low. And I'm going spend more time on content that matters rather than looks. For now, I'll be grateful I can get this much for free, and when I can, you can bet that I'll be upgrading!

Nothing says free like "Free"

Please visit me at my shop or my FB page.