Hello and happy Monday! In case you’ve noticed, I have been a little MIA lately. I definitely have not been posting as much as I normally do and I hope that will change. I’ve been busy with things outside of the blogosphere and had a few things happen that have kind of held me back from being as present here as I would like.
Firstly, (is that a word?) I have had some technical things going on behind the scenes on the blog that have really drained me mentally since I am not a code writer or legal expert. I had a few glitches with plug ins and code that took me a while to figure out. Those things are not fun when you don’t know what you are doing. It has required a lot of research, many emails and worrying on my part. Most of which (the worrying) was useless since I had no control over any of it. One of the biggest disappointments was and still is an issue with Pinterest where they accidentally blocked my blog and labeled it as a spam site. As of this post I still cannot use those clever and convenient little Pin It buttons to pin anything from the blog. This has been going on since February and the folks at Pinterest say they know it is a mistake on their part, it was an algorithm accident and they are working on fixing it. Four months seems like an awfully long time to me, but I don’t know what goes into correcting the problem on their end and after letting it drive me crazy for two months I finally just decided it’s no big deal. This blog is not a way that I earn a living. It is a hobby and is a way for me to let my creative side have a place to release. I was taking it personally that Pinterest didn’t care about my little blog or me. And they don’t – not that it is a bad thing. When you look at the big picture, being able to easily pin items from my blog to Pinterest is NOT the end of the world. I found another way to pin items and I hope that soon the geniuses behind the scenes at Pinterest will be able to figure it out.
Another issue that popped up is the entire Privacy Policy issue. If you are not familiar with GDPR, you can read about it here in this article by The Washington Post. Privacy issues have been all over the media lately. Everyone’s private data seems to be exposed by another new company every day. And Keith and I know what a nightmare that can be. We were part of the Target data breach in 2013 so we have experienced first hand what can happen when someone steals your identity – but that’s a story for another post. Because of the changes with the EU’s GDPR, anyone that collects personal data anywhere in the world has to abide by the rules set forth by that directive. Which means even me – when I ask for your name and email on this little blog. Failure to follow the rules can result in fines – large fines – even for a little blog like mine. So, I had to make sure that I had a Privacy Policy in place. Now this did cause me to worry a bit since I am not a legal expert and did not want to hire someone just to create something like this for me. Most all companies and sites that ask for personal information updated their policies to be compliant with GDPR by the end of May, when it went into effect. This was something that could impact my livelihood so I knew I needed to make sure I spent some time on this. Luckily, WordPress offered a tool to help with this and so this past week I set up a Privacy Policy that I hope will meet the rules of the GDPR should anything ever happen. I mean I am just a little blog that asks for minimal personal information from followers. But, it was another aspect that was mostly out of my control that I had to deal with.
Other things have also contributed to my missing presence here this Spring. My blog kind of goes hand in hand with my Social Media presence, which is small compared to most. I mentioned earlier that I am on Pinterest. During the current pinning issue, I became disillusioned and stopped visiting Pinterest regularly. Which made me sad, since I love Pinterest, a normally happy place for me to relax and find inspiration. And I also became disillusioned with Instagram, my only other Social Media outlet. I don’t have a huge following on either, but I almost always enjoy going through my feed. And I have used Instagram to track my Project Life 365 daily pictures as part of my memory keeping for years. I found myself numbly scrolling though my feed, sometimes wasting so much time that I could have been productively doing other things. I felt I was just going through motions and it was more of a chore to try and get through the feed to see what everyone had posted, make comments and like everything my friends had posted. Oh, and not to mention IG Stories. It seems everyone is embracing this new format and effective stories actually require some thought and prep to execute well. I like to do things well rather than half way, so I spent time trying to figure out how to make pretty stories and experimented with the little extras. It soon became something else that was taking a lot of my time and Instagram was becoming something I felt I had to work at and not fun, so I decided to take a break and told myself it was okay if I didn’t have a post every day. I could still document my memories – I just didn’t have to share it with the world. I am posting again but I am not letting it rule my life. And I am back to enjoying Pinterest again, too.
We took a trip to California to visit Keith’s parents. It was a quick trip and it was spent helping his sister who has been caring for both of them and helping them adjust to the newest phase of their lives over the last year. They have had some medical issues and in the last few months have moved to assisted living. It has involved huge changes for all. Keith made several trips last fall and winter to help out and our trip involved doctor appointments and just spending time with them. Even though it was a short trip, we were both drained when we returned. It’s a different stage of life that everyone goes through and definitely not what any of us expected. It has made us think about our future and how we need to make sure we plan for things that happen so that we hopefully will be able to have the care we will need just like his parents have. We never thought they would have to leave their home of sixty years but luckily Keith and his sister were able to find them a great place where they are part of a community of people just like themselves and they don’t have to worry about taking care of a house and everything that goes with that. Not to say that there have not been issues or bumps in the road – they are both adjusting to the changes in their health and the changes in their environment. And we are adjusting with them. We have had good days and bad days – it’s hard to be 3,000 miles away. There are lots of emails, texts and phone calls between Keith and his sister and brother as they figure out how to best navigate the ins and outs of getting the best care for their parents.
Lastly, my day job, the job that pays the bills and allows me to have this hobby blog has been busy and stressful. Busy and stressful in a good way but busy and stressful none the less. A lot of good things have been happening with the company that I work for and our team has been fortunate to be able to be some of the top performers in our region. But there are just a lot of new initiatives and demands so a lot of times when I come home at night I have a hard time turning off my mind. I’m the kind of person that lays in bed trying to go to sleep sometimes and figures out solutions to issues or problems at work instead of getting the sleep I need to go in the next day refreshed and ready to tackle the world. Not to mention that menopause also helps to keep me up some nights. And I am expected to be able to complete certain things that my team will dream up like it’s as easy as drinking water or breathing air. So, I have been taking some online classes to brush up on my Microsoft Office skills so that I won’t disappoint my team. I never would have thought that I would be thankful that I took Algebra or so many other math classes in Junior High and High School. I mean I just was not cut out to be an engineer but those classes did help me when it came to using formulas in Excel! Oh how envious I am of kids in school today that learn these things as part of their everyday schoolwork. The computer class I took in school dealt with writing code to create a simple form letter and I hated writing the code. Today, teach me how to run the software that someone else wrote the code for and I am good to go. I have actually enjoyed the classes I took this Spring and they have helped me immensely with projects at work, so they were well worth the time.
So, here you have it. A few random bits to explain what’s been going on in the life of Three Little Kittens – just like the tagline for the blog reads. I hope to be able to post on a more regular basis here soon. I definitely want to continue to post my Sunday Bliss series and I really, really want to finish posts about My Viking River Cruise soon. I mean, it was four years ago that I started. I have lots of other travel adventures to share, lots of other photographs to share (like the Columbine photos from our garden in this post) and lots more Jewelry I want to make. Thank you for coming along and following us here on Three Little Kittens.
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