I live a very hectic life. But I love writing, and I love journaling, and I love publishing. So I really do write in this blog every day. Unfortunately, the articles don’t always publish.
You see, I have a workflow like this:
- Come up with the idea for the article. Or, if it is already late in the day, find a cute cat photo for one of the “not much to say, here is a cute cat photo” posts. Those are happening less frequently now, because I actually have a backlog of ideas to write. This is good, really, because it means it’s even easier to start writing!
- Actually draft the idea. Sometimes this is in the Notes app on my phone, like my Juneteenth article which actually was drafted on the 4th of June after scheduling one of the LEIC meetings and realising it was approaching. Sometimes I do this directly in the WordPress app, like my film reviews or the monthly music articles. I actually start those at the beginning of their respective month, so I can paste in music as I hear it and write the blurb for each song individually. Saves a lot of time. And sometimes, this is in Word or Pages. My Trans Visibility Day post started its life in Pages; my yet-unpublished Grandmother post started in Word.
- Put the article into WordPress. Mostly it’s just copy and paste from whatever app into WordPress. Or, if the article started in WordPress, skip this step. Obviously, Notes doesn’t have very sophisticated formatting, so this is where I find and insert links, italicise stuff, so on.
- Publish the article. Now, in the Jetpack app I use on my iPhone, this step doesn’t work! It says Published but the article is still in Draft state. I think this is because the Jetpack app I’m using is old, and my blog is running WordPress 7 (the latest version). The version mismatch means I need to use my desktop computer with WordPress in Safari to publish articles.
And there have been entire days I haven’t even used my desktop computer. Between working full-time at the Library, the “second shift” at Uber, caregiving for my grandmother, and other commitments, there is just so little time.
So the articles are really in WordPress every day, but they don’t become visible until later. Why not just update the phone? Because I need to take a full backup of it first, and it is full of stuff I need to pull off before I do the backup, and I haven’t had the time to pull that stuff off…
The good news is that I have found a bit of relief from some of the debts that we have hit from all the medical events of the past year. And with that, I’m hoping the stress will come down, the Uber time will lessen, and I can return to writing both my novels and the blog more regularly. (And finally update my phone.)