Back-ish.
Hmm. To prove that I wasn't bound by random deadlines I chose to not start again on 1 August. But - just as before when I had a break - I have returned to find Blogger has yet another totally different and annoying format. Am I the only person in the world who liked the the simple, creaky original layout? Now you have to choose from 5 different type sizes and Normal comes up as HUGE while you are writing and is not in typewriter letters but some sans serif or something so it looks like an old book - why oh why? I will soon see how it looks after 'publish' but I SO DO NOT NEED THIS CR@P.

And now CR@P has come up blue with underlining because perhaps it is not a normal American word. I don't need your annoying foreign help with spelling, particularly as you spell large numbers of words stupidly. Grey. Centre. So? Why haven't you turned those blue? I so wish I hadn't come back.

One of the reasons that I didn't want to do this anymore was because I don't understand how to improve this site. I don't know how to do anything and I don't know where to find out. I have various books, including ziB enotS, but each time I set out to make a blogroll or put in a picture I reach an impasse within about two minutes. And I have wasted hours like this and it drives me mad. And I can't get rid of the ancient adware virus which everyone says has such an 'easy' solution. Suppose you were following computer instructions in Russian and you only had a basic phrasebook for tourists to help you - that is what it is like. There is always one crucial word that you can't work out.

The other reason is that I realised that I had stopped finding the writing a release and a sharing of my problems and instead it had started to feel like work. I would find myself worrying that I hadn't written anything that day - but there seemed to be nothing interesting to say. Not surprising as I live here alone in the middle of nowhere. It had become something that I was putting off all the time, like an essay, and I would pass the silent computer with averted eyes. I think this may be the final proof that I am not a natural writer.

The words of B. St0n3 hung over me. Something like - 'Don't start a blog unless you are prepared to make a commitment. You will have a duty to wards your regular readers'. One of my big gifts is that of lateral thinking. Get rid of the regular readers then and the duty and commitment will no longer exist ... da, daa!

Weirdly - since I stopped writing the number of people visiting my blog has stayed almost exactly the same but they are random searches. Far more than when I am updating.

The other thing was that it was taking up a lot of time. When I wrote some not particularly long piece about the past or something, in a quick stream of conciousness way, it would have taken more than an hour. And although I do feel much happier than I did a year or so ago, it is because of reading other people's blogs and not from writing my own.

Oh well... I will press whatever new and scary button they have come up with and I expect this will all disappear.
- posted by Iris @ 8/03/2004 09:26:00 AM comment