Tag Archives: old blog

communication, musings

Reposts, random messages, and reasons why…

Actually… some messages are useful and some are entertaining.

Regular readers may have noticed that lately, I’ve been reposting a lot of old book reviews and articles from my original Blogspot version of The Overeducated Housewife, which I discontinued in 2019. Those who also follow my travel adventures might remember that last year, I spent several months updating old posts from Blogger. The travel blog wasn’t so huge that I couldn’t migrate it to WordPress. Unfortunately, doing so led to massive formatting problems. I spent a lot of time updating and reformatting posts that were years old. That process is mostly finished now, save for the odd hiccup. I did have to edit a couple of old posts yesterday, which I only noticed because someone hit them on Statcounter.

I was not able to migrate the Blogspot version of this blog to WordPress. I think it’s because the file was simply too large. I started my blog in March 2010, so that was a lot of material to move. The system just flat refused to do it for me. I’m actually kind of glad, too. Some of it was stuff that doesn’t need to be reposted… non-sensical drivel I posted while bored or uninspired, or posts about time sensitive issues that aren’t relevant now. There were a few other posts that I didn’t repost because I wrote them when I was angry and they are potentially hurtful to others.

After spending months reformatting the travel blog, I decided I didn’t want to have to do that with the original OH blog. That thing had over 3000 posts over a span of almost nine years! By contrast, the travel blog had maybe a third as many. Reformatting is very tedious and thankless work. I think it’s better to just repost the stuff that I think might be interesting.

Some people might wonder why I would repost anything, especially book reviews that are very old. It’s mainly because I’ve discovered that people get nostalgic and look for information about things that may no longer be covered online. I’ve found myself listed in bibliographies, often by Internet handles. I get a kick out of that. But really, the book reviews of titles that are now out of print can be valuable to some users. In some cases, what I (or others) have written in book reviews may be all the information that can be found of books that have gone out of print. Book reviews are pretty evergreen and, as you’ll see below, some of the better articles, especially about true crime, are legitimately useful to readers. My angry rants about very personal or insignificant issues, or people no longer in my life, are much less so. 😉

I also like to preserve my own thoughts and memories, especially when there’s a news story involved. For example, on my travel blog, I reposted an article I wrote several years ago about a trip to the Eastern Shore that I took with my parents in the early 80s. On the way home, we stopped in Chincoteague, and I ended up visiting a water slide that was owned by a guy who, years later, made the news for being a sex offender who castrated himself while he was in jail. That true crime case is now many years old, but I guarantee there are people out there who remember it and want to read about it. I could have put it on this blog, but when it comes down to it, that story is ultimately a travel tale, and the travel blog needs some love. I do mostly try to keep the mood light on that blog, but not every travel story is delightful. I like to keep things real, if I can.

In the wake of all of the reposts I’ve been doing, I’ve been getting some strange comments and messages from people. Sometimes, I get communications through the contact form. I mostly appreciate the ones that aren’t spam, since most people who contact me are respectful. Sometimes the spam messages are hilarious, like the one I got today. Check this out…

Um… I wasn’t aware that I had any “drug addict criminals” to send anywhere…

Sometimes, I’m left scratching my head as to why someone would contact me about something. The other day, I got a message from a very decorated academic. I looked him up on LinkedIn, per his suggestion. He invited me to contact him if I ever wanted to know about Title IX and suicide on college campuses. I was puzzled, since I don’t think I’ve ever written about that subject. I consulted Statcounter to see which article the guy had accessed me through, looking for a clue as to why he’d written to me. The article he hit had nothing to do with the topic he was proposing. It was something I’d written about an advice column about divorce. But maybe the guy thought I could cover that subject or would be interested in it? I’m not sure, because he didn’t explain.

I probably would enjoy talking to this man. Maybe I should try interviewing willing subjects. I mostly write about stuff in my head, but two heads are better than one, right?

I got another recent communication from someone who wants to know more about a true crime story I wrote about years ago and had reposted. I didn’t actually know that much about the crime itself; I just happen to know someone who knows the perpetrator because they grew up in the same town. In fact, my friend had once brought him to our college and I actually met the guy. But at the time that I met him, I didn’t know he had killed someone, and I am not from the small town where the murder happened. I just know someone who knows him. Somehow, the commenter thought I knew more than I do, so she was hoping to glean insight from me. I ended up directing her to my friend, who is more in the know. I thought our exchange was over until this morning, when I got this message…

I have never done a podcast. Maybe someday I will do one, but at this writing, that is not in my bag of tricks.

I might be good at podcasts. Once upon a time, I did radio, and I was relatively good at it. I’ve been told I have a good voice for the airwaves, although I don’t like listening to it myself. Maybe someday I’ll try it, just for fun. We’ll see if my ego can take it if no one wants to listen to me.

One thing I would like to mention to those who do send me a message– bear in mind that unless you explicitly tell me, I won’t necessarily know what you’re referring to when you make a comment on the contact form. Those messages aren’t linked to any specific posts, so unless you are clear about which one you’re referencing, I am left to guess. Sometimes, it’s obvious, but other times it’s not. The message from the academic was a head scratcher. The one below was easier to figure out, but still not 100 percent obvious.

This guy was referencing a repost about strange crimes that happened in the small town where I went to college. But I had to clarify it, because it wasn’t necessarily plain.

The WordPress version of my blog is about 2.5 years old now. I’m glad I changed formats from Google Blogspot. I’d been wanting to do it for awhile, since the Blogspot format feels kind of limited and dated. I hesitated for a long time because I was enjoying a pretty good presence on Blogspot. When I discovered that someone was deliberately stirring up trouble for me offline, I decided that it was finally time to move the blog somewhere else and use a platform that would allow me more control over my content. WordPress allows me to password protect certain posts, so that invited readers can access them, but the general public can’t. On Blogspot, I could either make posts open to everyone or make them open to just me. Or, I could make the blog open only to invited readers, which I didn’t really want to do. Not every interested reader wants to be a member of an invite only blog.

I know Blogspot has been revamped a lot since 2019, and maybe what I’ve observed about its shortcomings is no longer true. I do keep my Dungeon of the Past blog on Blogspot, but I seldom update that blog and may discontinue it once my AdSense finally hits $100. I’m getting close.

It was painful to move this blog. Moving from Blogspot meant losing the somewhat robust readership I had, as well as earnings from Google AdSense and Amazon. The money wasn’t a necessity, but it was a nice perk. I would like to be able to earn some money on my own, you know. It’s a point of pride… even if all I earn in a year is enough to buy me a six pack of beer. I’m lucky enough to have a husband who supports me in all ways. He certainly doesn’t have to do that, but it’s nice for me that he does, given our lifestyle.

Since I moved the blog, it’s steadily been getting more readers. I have found that, by and large, I like the people reading now more than I did a lot of the readers of my original blog. People who are reading now tend to actually care more about the content. I don’t get nearly as many rude or abusive comments on this blog. Of course, I also moderate comments here, while for the longest time, I didn’t do that on Blogspot. I’ve found that moderating comments cuts down on hostile drivebys. I require people to identify themselves, so they must really want to say something to me if they comment. When I didn’t moderate, people would be more willing to comment, but many of the comments were mean spirited. I have feelings because I’m a person, too. Also, comment moderation cuts down on spam, although as you can see from the first screenshot, I still get spammers via the contact form! I still would like to know where Wilton gets the idea that I have drug addict criminals to send to his rehab. How strange!

Anyway… I do have a few current events in my mind that I might write some fresh content about today. Or I might repost more stuff from the past. I hope those of you who are annoyed with the reposts will continue to have some patience. People are interested in some of that old content, and sometimes I get inspired to make fresh content based on the comments I get on the throwback stuff. This post, for example, is one of those that wouldn’t have been written without reposts. Some might find it a boring read… but I know I have at least one regular reader who was amused by Wilton’s offer to host my drug addict criminals. You see? People are interested in all kinds of stuff. Luckily, so am I.

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musings

Not so new anymore…

So… it’s been about a year since I took the WordPress plunge. How time flies!

I won’t lie. The change to WordPress was difficult. It was a necessary change, to be sure, but moving platforms definitely created a pain in the ass for me. My original blog, which started almost ten years ago on the Blogger platform, got a slow start. For the first few years of its existence, I didn’t really share it with friends, so it wasn’t read by many and got very few comments. I never thought I’d ever get to the point at which I’d need the extra features offered by WordPress. My blog was just a place for me to record my thoughts.

It was my husband’s younger daughter who initially prompted me to start blogging. Back in 2010, she was sixteen years old and extremely alienated from Bill. Her mother raised her in the LDS religion and she had swallowed the whole thing with gusto. Back then, blogging was popular pastime for Mormons and Bill’s daughter had embraced the hobby. Bill found her blog by accident; it was full of religion and sanctimony, and her tone was offensively arrogant. She wrote a lot like her mother does, which greatly distressed Bill, because his ex wife is very narcissistic and toxic. He didn’t want his daughter to be the same way. Still, Bill had been kept completely in the dark about his daughters since Christmas 2004. He missed his girls and wanted to know how they were doing. As their father, he felt he had the right to know, especially since his younger daughter was still a minor. So he kept reading his daughter’s blog, and he told me about what he’d read. I chose not to read the blog myself, because I knew it would upset me.

Then, in March 2010, when I started the original incarnation of this blog, I was making some money writing online. I had been doing it for years, was good at it, and I enjoyed the process. Since I had a lot of free time and writing is something I like doing, I decided to start a blog of my own. I figured if Bill’s daughter could blog, so could I. My blog started off kind of boring, but as time passed, I started finding more things to write about. I also found it a good place for venting, especially since no one really read the blog in those days.

Four years after I started blogging, the places where I wrote for money all went *poof* pretty much simultaneously. Then, a few months after that, we moved back to Germany, where my travel blog became somewhat popular. Although I mostly just advertised the travel blog, people in the military community eventually found my main blog, although not as many as I would have expected.

Some people seemed to like the blogs. A vocal few hated my blogs, and told me so. I think most of them were either threatened or jealous, since they mostly complained about the name of the blog and not the content. Most of the haters eventually moved on, but there’s always at least one asshole in every crowd. A few of the assholes felt the need to invade my privacy. A year ago, we left that community, and I finally got sick of the intrusions. So, since we had just moved house, I decided my blog would be moving, too. It was definitely time.

I had been thinking about moving the blog for awhile. Blogger is a great platform for starting out, but it has limited functionality. Quite a lot of the functions Blogger did offer were consistently wonky. For instance, regular commenters were having trouble using their screen names and were coming up as “Unknown” when they’d leave feedback. Comments couldn’t be edited easily; I’d make a typo and have to copy and paste, edit, then repost. The search function was terrible; it would only go back a couple of years, when I had almost nine years worth of content.

I didn’t like having Google as my “landlord”, either, since I cherish the ability to be free to write as I like. WordPress is great for that, since I can password protect posts that are “troublesome”, and I paid for the domain, so I don’t have to worry about offending Google advertisers. I also like that there are more options for controlling comments, which means I get a whole lot less spam and/or inappropriate comments.

Still, the old blog was easy to find, free to use, and had regular readers. It was helpful for many people, with book reviews, commentary on current events, and discussions about mental health and other topics. More people liked the blog than disliked it, as far as I could tell. It made me some money, and I had been there for years. There was a lot of history there. Some of the history wasn’t pretty, but it was still important.

I didn’t like the idea of moving my blog just because of a couple of intrusive, dishonest, bullying snakes in the grass who wanted to silence me and refused to mind their own business. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for being less popular. I missed the peace and anonymity I enjoyed before people cared about my writing. I missed feeling free to express myself without a bunch of backlash from people who weren’t interested in my side of the story and just wanted to be shitty. I knew resetting the blog would make it easier to go back to basics.

Ultimately, the positives of changing venues outweighed the negatives, and I made the move. I think I’m better off for it, because most of the people who now read regularly have gotten to know me and don’t seem to think I’m the devil simply because I speak my mind. A few of them have even become friends, of sorts. I still don’t feel free to write the way I’d like to, but it’s getting better. I don’t care that this blog doesn’t make money. I don’t write for money or popularity. I write for my sanity. Some people don’t understand that and judge me, but I guess everyone judges, and everyone gets judged. That’s life. You don’t approve of me or my lifestyle? Build a bridge and get over it.

There are days when I don’t even get ten hits on this blog. When I was on my old platform, I’d get a whole lot more traffic. Sometimes, the hits were gratifying, but after awhile, they made me feel kind of paranoid, particularly when it became clear that some people simply wanted to paint me as someone I’m not and use my writing against me. Hang around narcissistic people and you’ll soon find out what a smear campaign is. I could tell one was brewing because I refused to be silent and tolerate their bullying.

2020 is going to be a better year. I already feel a lot better this year than I did a year ago, which is typically what happens when one leaves a destructive environment. It takes awhile to “detox”, but then things are better. That’s how I feel now. I’d like to write about last year in more detail, and I probably will at some point, although obviously I can’t make it public. At least not until some more time has passed.

I don’t think the people who prompted my “move” understand or care about the damage that was done to me by them. As far as I can tell, they are squarely focused on themselves, putting all the blame on me, and are completely unwilling to take any responsibility. Clearly, they don’t care about my perspective because, as usual, I make a convenient scapegoat– just like I once did to my husband’s ex wife and daughters. To them, harassing me was about safeguarding dishonest, unscrupulous, abusive people who seemed determined to make my life hell. Story of my life. Well, at least one of my husband’s daughters has discovered the truth. The truth always comes out. I’m optimistic that this is the year it will happen on several levels. 2020 is the year of clarity, after all.

So I’m going to keep writing, and although I won’t be reopening my old blog, I will keep reposting some of the better content to this one. I don’t know how long I’ll keep writing here… maybe I’ll move on at some point. Maybe I’ll even rejoin the work force at some point. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and be struck by lightening so I can escape this existence. All I ever really wanted was to be left alone, anyway.

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I love it when…

People find old blog posts I wrote and try to comment, then can’t. I was looking at Statcounter this morning and noticed someone had found my article about Kelsey, the 13 year old girl whose father cut off her hair a couple of years ago. That post, which was written in February 2018, attracted a lot of comments when I was still allowing comments on that blog.

At the time I wrote that post, I was hesitant to immediately throw Kelsey’s dad and stepmom under the bus. Of course, I didn’t condone what they did– I don’t think they should have cut the girl’s hair. I can absolutely see why that would be horrifying for anyone, particularly an adolescent. But I also disagreed with those who were calling the haircut the “height of abuse”. Sorry… I am quite sure she was traumatized, but I can think of much worse abuses than a bad haircut. Hair grows back. I don’t want to list the other things that I think are much worse than a forced haircut. I’m sure smart people will understand what I mean.

Anyway, I didn’t write an update, although a couple of people had asked for one. I read that Kelsey went to live with her mother, which is probably for the best. I don’t automatically assume mothers are always the better parents and I didn’t necessarily agree with the mom’s choice to make this a viral event. But it sounds like, in this case, Kelsey might be better off with her mom– I don’t know for sure, though, since I don’t know these people. If I had actually gone into public health or social work, which is what I got my master’s degrees in, I might have even been in a position to know the real scoop. I’m glad I didn’t go that route, to be very honest.

Lately, that post has been getting a lot of traffic. I’ve seen a couple of people try to comment, but I currently have the old blog set up so that only “blog members” can comment. I am the only “blog member”, so currently, no one else can comment there. Anyone who wants to comment on my old stuff can do it on Facebook on my official OH page. People don’t want to do that, though, because they like anonymity. I get that. I just don’t want to encourage comments on the old blog, since I’d eventually like to retire it or move it to this new site. For some reason, I can’t seem to import the old blog to this one. I need more skills. I can see that people are still interested, and more than a couple have wanted to comment, but would rather not interact on Facebook. Understandable, I guess.

It always cracks me up to see how upset some people get when a person dares to express their opinions, even when it’s just on a personal blog like this one. For a long time, my old blog was pretty much under the radar and I could be totally free with my thoughts. As my old blog got more popular, I found myself being harassed by people who were offended by things I wrote. Some people liked my posts… probably more people liked them than disliked them. But every once in awhile, I’d get irate comments from people who either identified too strongly or were actually involved in things I’d opined on. Or some were projecting their own situations on subjects I’d tackled and weren’t able to see or agree with my perspective.

Although it’s a little disheartening to start over after having spent about nine years building my old blog, in a way, it’s also very freeing not to have so many people reading anymore. I don’t mind entertaining other people’s viewpoints, but I don’t tolerate rudeness. I look at my blog as my house. I wouldn’t go to someone’s house and insult them, so I don’t see why I should have to tolerate that on my blog. Moreover, my opinions are just that– opinions– and they are my own. You don’t have to agree with me, but you can’t come in my “house” and be an asshole. If you do, I’ll show you the door.

I don’t know if today’s attempted comment was complimentary or a complaint, but I did notice that the person who tried to comment did find his or her way to this spot on the web. I guess this new blog isn’t interesting enough yet. On the other hand, a few days ago, I got a ration of shit from a man who was upset that I could tell two idiots are Trump supporters. I guess he’s a Trump supporter and offended that I would lump the two guys who shot each other while wearing a bulletproof vest in with guys like him. Folks, I think anyone who still supports Trump isn’t long on common sense. But that’s just my opinion, yo. You don’t have to agree. Since it’s “my house”, I’m going to say what I want. Don’t like it? Leave.

Another thing I notice is that some readers think they actually know me… and they assume they know what I’m going to do. I do have a couple of readers who know me offline, but most people who read this rag are people I have never met in person. Or, if I have met them, I don’t really know them that well.

For instance, on my old blog, I had a follower who assumed the fiction blog I’d proposed starting was going to be full of nastiness toward someone she knows offline. The funny thing is, the person she thought I was writing about is a complete stranger to me. I have never even met the person. If she’d given me a chance, and not meddled in my business, she would have soon found out that writing about her friend wasn’t actually my plan… and the person she thought I was referencing, was, in fact, a figment entirely of my imagination. I doubt she’d believe me, because I think her mind is made up about the kind of person she thinks I am. She kept reading anyway. I will eventually start my fiction blog, though, and she will not be able to stop me from expressing myself the way I want to. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.

I think people who read blogs– especially ones that include a lot of TMI like mine does– erroneously assume they aren’t still total strangers with the writer. There’s something that drives people to read these posts. A lot of the most popular ones are about popular news items. I find that if you don’t support popular opinion, you get a lot of shit from the peanut gallery and people want to set you straight. I have repeatedly written that I write to process. It’s something I do to be constructive, stay mentally active, and learn new things. I’ve had people make all kinds of false assumptions and accusations. A lot of people seem to think they can mindread, which is really interesting when they’re total strangers who only know what they’ve read. But people do that. I do it myself.

Like everyone else, I write about my opinions and impressions, mostly based on what I read in news articles, books, or see with my own eyes. I will admit to being wrong sometimes, but I’m not stupid. And honestly, telling me off doesn’t do a whole lot to change my mind. It’s a poor form of communication. I don’t know what today’s would-be commenter would have had to say. Perhaps it would be yet more chastising about how off base I am, or how heartless I am… or yet more commentary and insults about how I’m not actually “overeducated”. Do you feel better saying that to me? Maybe I should start charging people for that kind of therapy instead of turning it into more blogging.

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