July 10, 2004

****This post was originally posted at on my TypePad blog.****

Well, here we are, back with a blog service again....

I'll be the first to admit it, I have horrible commitment issues when it comes to the website. I can't decide what I think is should look like, what it should contain, or what sort of navigation is should have. I want everything to be customizable, and yet I want easy publishing. I want to be able to alter the appearance to fit my daily mood, and yet I want a cohesive, continuous theme. I am an American, and I want it all, dammit! Is that too much to ask?

Sigh.

I'm not sure that typepad is going to do what I want it to do. But it's a free trial, and I wanted to play around with it. Once again: "we'll see..."

You know what one of the hardest things is about a service like typepad or blogger? Typing into a box. I feel like I'm typing into the comment section of somebody else's website. Usually, I pick out the colors, fonts, backgrounds, and images and get everything set up in Front Page before I even start typing. That is one of the reasons why I use (used) Front Page, instead of straight html. I like to see the look of the finished product before I start typing. It makes the writing process easier for me--remember, it's all about the mood.

However, given a little bit of time, I think I could get used to it. Typepad should make it a lot easier to post pictures and keep track of things like my recipe pages.

Truth be told, I'm looking for the same thing that I was looking for when I experimented with Blogger --a way to move beyond the composition aspect of the website, and work on the content part. I have all these ideas for stuff that I want to put up, but it always seems like so much work and I don't know how to get myself started. The typepad photo albums alone should help with that mission.

This has been a never-ending battle for me, because I am fixated on the appearance of the site, but I don't really have the design skills I need to make it look the way I want it to. So I spend a lot of time experimenting, when I should be writing.

So, I have been taking baby steps, all of which have been up to the big step--a change in the way I see myself, and behave, as a writer.

Because I crave a creative outlook, after all, but fiddling with FrontPage templates is not exactly the way I want to satisfy it.