I’m blogging!
I’m so excited! I’ve gotten my first blog installed, working and (almost) figured out.
I feel just like the first guy who invented the wheel! In fact, there’s a 50-50 chance that first “guy” was a woman — maybe even a grandma like me. I can picture her jumping up and down, crying “Ooga-booga!” I know just how she feels! And her next thought was probably “I’ve got to tell the rest of the tribe about this! This has possibilities …”
Well, when she invented the wheel, she most likely didn’t really “invent” it. She found a nice log and figured out how to use it. What I’ve figured out how to use is the blogging program called WordPress. (And available for free!)
I’ll be giving the blow-by-blow description of what I learn as we go along.
At this point, I imagine there are some people saying, “Oooo! Cool!” and others saying, “You’ve figured out how to install WordPress … have you also figured out how to tie your own shoes?”
Yes, it’s fairly simple — now that I know how to do it. But it did take a little struggle to get there. I’m writing for the people who are fairly close to me on this path of learning.
Blogging is a very liberating way of writing. If you were to write a book, before you even began you would have a certain premise. You’d have an introduction, then would build up some chapters flowing in a logical progression to a conclusion. You would start out knowing approximately how long the work would be and with a pretty good idea of how it would end.
So, if I were writing a book on, for example, “Can The Average Grandma Make a Living Online?”, it would necessitate my having already found the answer to that.
But a blog is immediate. I’ve asked the question, and in the blog, I’ll document the exploration. I can’t tell you the conclusion, nor can I tell you how long it’ll take. But I invite you along for the ride.
An even bigger difference between a blog and a book is that the blog is interactive.
I used to go shopping frequently with a good friend. (She has since moved away; hence the past tense.) Sometimes I’d drive and sometimes she would. We’d be happily chattering away when the one in the passenger side would interject, “You need to get into the other lane here.” or “Watch out for those kids there.” or “I think you come to some construction right around the next corner.”
That’s an example of how interaction works. (I occasionally used to try the same sort of helpful “interaction” with my late husband but he’d just get annoyed and reply, “I know how to drive!”)
Okay. Let’s get down to brass tacks.
- The purpose of this blog is to explore ways people of varying degrees of technical ability can make a full-time living online.The primary guinea pig here is me. My daughter, April, is the second one.
I’m under a fair amount of pressure to make this work. (I’ll write the whole story in the “About Me” page …)
I’m Shirley Chase — better known to certain members of the population as “Grandma Shirley” (Just your average Grandma.)
Most of the entries will be explanations of how I did this, that or the other.
I’m no “expert” at any of this (which is going to become pretty obvious), but I’ll tell you what worked for me, as well as what didn’t.
I’m starting right here where I am today, with the installation of my blog. But that’s not really the beginning. I had to get a domain, find a hosting account, a whole bunch of stuff (like find out what a “blog” is for) to even get to this point. I’ll write a Prologue to explain what I did up to now.
So here we go — let’s get started.
For many years, I’ve kept a log of everything I do when working on the computer. I keep a clipboard with notebook paper on the desk beside me. Then I just note what I do as I do it. Later I transcribe those notes into a plain text document using Notepad.
From there I have a sort of complicated procedure that has evolved over the years. I won’t bore you with it at the moment, but one of these days I’ll give you all the details because it works quite well.
I strongly recommend that everybody keep some sort of log for things done on their computers. Even the best memory can’t keep track of this, and your personal log will tell you things the computers logs won’t.
However, what I’m getting at right now is that, since I’m accustomed to keeping this log anyway, I can just adapt it for blog entries. (Like, take out the cuss-words, leave off the complaints about the weather, etc. Normally, all that goes right into my log.)
Today I’ll be experimenting on getting a small test item for sale in the blog I’m making for my daughter, April. Stay tuned to see how that works out.
Written by Grandma Shirley - Online Grandma
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