Driven By Pain or Pleasure

I think most people are driven by a combination of the need to avoid pain and the desire for pleasure.

Last night, I officially reached a pain threshold that made me decide to avoid any more pain with my attempted blog changeover. It's just more problems than I can contend with right now. I want to be writing, not dealing with problems.

In fact, as I sipped a glass of merlot, I realized that I had way too much on my plate these last few months to tackle a major change like moving my 8 year old, popular blog to a new URL and name. Any sane person wouldn't even have tried.

For better or worse, my blog title and URL has reverted to SLING WORDS. I apologize for the inconvenience and confusion. I know I'm confused!

Notice To Kindle Edition Subscribers

If you recently signed up as a subscriber to the Kindle edition of my blog under the new name JoanReeves.blogspot.com, you're probably still in the 14 day free period so it won't cost you anything. I pulled the new name from Kindle Blog Publishing this morning.

If you are so inclined, please subscribe to SlingWords. The URL to subscribe to the Kindle Edition of SlingWords is now live at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003H9LK7I even though it shows the old blog design on the webpage.

If you were a former subscriber to the Kindle Edition of SlingWords, then your subscription was automatically cancelled, I learned, when the URL changed. Even though the URL has now reverted to the original, you may have to go in and subscribe again using the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003H9LK7I

What I Learned

1. If you want to make a major blog change, give it at least 2-3 months of planning and laying the groundwork.

For the past 6 months, I've been involved in de-cluttering, selling a house, buying a house, and moving everything I own into storage. Well, everything but my big, honking computer desk, files, etc. -- all of which are now taking up much of the space in the living room of my weekend home.

I simply did NOT have the time, and at the end, the energy, to tackle all the work in changing the blog, editing the XML of a new template, notifying all the websites that carry my feed, notify the subscribers, etc. The list of the reach my blog has was surprising, but I pretty much managed to tick everyone off by not reaching out well in advance.

2. Make sure you have the template designer's full cooperation if you have to edit a template.

I know something about HTML and XML but not nearly enough. The subject is exhaustive and exhausting. I've spent about 14 days dealing with the problems of this changeover when what I want to be doing -- and should be doing -- is writing!

The Lesson For You Who Are Just Starting

Set up your blog with your name as the URL from the very beginning. In fact, go in to every social media that currently exists and claim your name as an account whether you have the time to do anything else about it or not.

Takeaway Truth

Hopefully, the pain is over. Now I can return to the pleasure of blogging once I get a couple of XML problems solved. If I can't solve them, then I'll zap this template and use another. Wish me luck!