In one of my earliest posts on this blog I owned up to being my own worst obstacle. It’s the typical situation for me: I want to make progress but see no clear path, and so while I have many ideas and ambitions, I get frustrated in my inability to implement them.
Right now the biggest bugaboo is the design of this page. It’s functional, but bland. It needs to be engaging and memorable. And getting there requires… what? It’s not clear. I’ve looked at many, many available themes, and none of them seems quite right. I could pay a pro to customize one for me, but that would involve a layout of cash, and even more to the point: I’m so new to blogging that even if I did get the snazziest of pages, I might soon change my mind about what I want. Then I’d be just as frustrated with the new page as I am with this one.
So the alternative is to learn to design the page myself, or at least to know enough about the code to make adjustments to some existing theme to suit my needs. But that does not look easy. I’ll be exploring the ‘Net for better resources to help me along with this (and if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment!). So I’m at that point of intimidation right now, the point where I need to remind myself that, hey, lots of people do web design. It can’t be that hard.
A third option would be to just find a theme that I can live with, and shoehorn my imagination into that template. This is probably the route I will take in the short term. We’ll see.
The solution to all of this? Press on. As long as there is progress from month to month, I shouldn’t let myself get too frustrated about things. After all, it was just a few days ago that I set a To-Do List for myself. There’s plenty for me to spend my time on there.
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June 9, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Random Kath
You know, I’ll ask Mr. Random if he knows of any good resources in this area. You can always ask him questions too - he’s always happy to explain stuff. Besides, we’ve spent enough money for him to accrue this lovely knowledge - our friends should get a little benefit out of it!
I also think option 3 is a good idea. There are all sorts of widgets and things that you can add to pages, and if you know a little HTML there are many simple changes you can make (or so I’ve heard.)
June 9, 2008 at 10:36 pm
admin
Thank you for the offer. You’d think there’d be a good resource somewhere, where everything I need would be in one place. Like a Home Depot, only for blogging. Mr. Random might be my ticket outta bloggy blandness.
Eight million websites about blogging out there, and not a single one offers the complete package. I’m getting a bit tired of seeing 117 different versions of the same “Top 5 Ways Twitter Can Make Your Mother Love You!” articles I keep seeing. “Six Bullet Points On Why Posts With Bullet Points Get Readers Reading!”
Like 80% of blog posts are written with Mad Libs. Yuh know?
I’m just griping. Nobody owes me anything, and I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. And I typically swing from “How on earth did I ever think I could figure this out” to “Whatever made me think that figuring out this stuff was hard?”
I’ll get over it. And past it. And be better for it. Yes? Etc.