Wow! I can’t believe that I’m already halfway through my 30-day challenge. I’ve completed 15 days of the challenge; and please don’t take me the wrong way when I say I feel every bit of those 15 days. Hee! Hee! Yes, the struggle is real, folks; but I keep a-trekkin’ along.
Keep in mind that I’ve taken on the challenge with this challenge of adding extra to-dos that weren’t already a part of my regular daily/weekly routine. So, the “extras” are forcibly slotted in and find themselves occasionally taking over the spaces where my “regulars” tend to hang out. But, that’s okay. All of it needs to get done — the new tasks (projects) that take a period of time to accomplish, the one-and-dones, and the repeat offenders as well as my never-ending companions. ALL THE THINGS NEED SOME ATTENTION.
So, this challenge has been an absolute blessing. No, I’m not contradicting myself. I might have sounded like I was headed toward WhinersVille, but I’m not whining or complaining about this challenge at all. I fully expected this endeavor to be tough. After all, work (extra work) would be involved. And, I knew I wouldn’t always be functioning on all productivity cylinders. That was to be expected. And yes, it’s been a little hectic and quite tiring getting to this halfway point, but I’m getting so many items done — items that probably would remain on my forever to-do list (and continuously stress me out) until I’d finally decide to pick them up and do something about them.
Let me just say this: if I truly had the stamina and the wherewithal, I think I would be up for participating in a 365-day goal-setting challenge. I’m just saying. Oh, the things I could get done. But reality brings me back to myself and lets me know that a continuous 365-day challenge (similar to what I’m doing now) isn’t going to work for me. However, a doable goal would consist of starting a new 30-day challenge some time in the future (late in the year, perhaps). We’ll see. Guess I’d better get through this challenge first.
Pretty long introduction, I know . . . I know. But, I think I’m ready to finally move on and let you in on what I actually did on day 15. It wasn’t very exciting, but it was one of those peace of mind tasks that I’d been putting off because I misjudged the actual work involved.
Day 15 of the 30-Day Challenge: Creative Movement:
Task: To manually back up my Degrees of Maternity blog site (to include all text and images) to an external hard drive.
Reason for Task: Because I want peace of mind. Have you ever had a horrible nightmare that all the hard work you put into something disappeared in a moment of time, in a wink of an eye, in a glitch of an online content management system? Well, I can’t say I’ve had a nightmare about it, but I’ve had some really strong thoughts.
Personal computers . . . business computer systems . . . whole online platforms can have problems. In other words, unfortunate things can happen to machines, too. Therefore, I’ve been wanting to get an external hard drive for some time, so I could use it to save all my Degrees of Maternity blog posts and images for safe-keeping (in another place other than WordPress).
Let me stop here for a moment to make an important announcement. I need to make sure you know that WordPress does perform the necessary backups for those sites hosted at WordPress.com and WordPress is pretty confident in communicating that the data they house for its users is quite safe. However, they do provide an opportunity to manually back up your site, if you so choose. The brilliant minds at WordPress probably figured they’d have some content creators like me who needed that “extra” reassurance about safeguards around their data. Yay for WordPress!
Duration of Task: It took less than an hour to complete this task, once I figured out which route to go to save (back up) my blog site. And, I’ll periodically go through this process. Hopefully, the next go around, I’ll have the external hard drive figured out. (I discuss my challenges with the external hard drive and my workaround in the “Outcome of Task” section.)
Outcome of Task: I had ordered an external hard drive from Amazon for myself and my adult son, who has a little backup work of his own that he’s conducting (nothing WordPress-related). And I remember him telling me that I probably didn’t need the external hard drive but could do just fine with a flash drive. He didn’t seem to think that my 400+ blog posts warranted a need for the external hard drive.
Well, I tried using my newly-ordered Seagate tech and it just wasn’t cooperating with my laptop at all. So, I tucked it away for another day when I have time to figure out what’s going on. I’ve just chalked this little experience up to computer or operator error.
My son, though, had no problems at all on his Mac. He was able to use his external hard drive (the same exact one I ordered) and back up his stuff with no issues at all. Oh, well. I still got the job done. WordPress makes it incredibly easy to export text and images from your WordPress site (from the “Tools” section) and downloads it to your computer. Then, you’re also sent a link of the exported data by email. It was a quick turnaround for me on this step of the process. (However, I do believe that the time to export grows with the size of the WordPress site.)
Anyway, I copied over my stuff onto a flash drive and I’ll be doing this periodically to make sure I have the most up-to-date information housed somewhere else besides WordPress. Just in case. Furthermore, I learned a valuable lesson through this whole task. Don’t put off something you can get done today for another day without having the full details of what the task will involve.
My mind had formulated the thought that I would go through some convoluted process of transferring each blog post separately onto my computer and then move it over to the external hard drive. How naïve can I be? I’m no techie, so forgive me for existing in the technological maturity of several decades ago. Okay, WordPress is phenomenal and had my stuff downloaded in a matter of seconds. So much for making a task out to be more involved than it actually was.
Practical Application of Day 15 for Your Life and a “Thank You” from yours truly:
First of all, do your research when taking on new tasks that you’re not familiar with. You just might find out that you’re working yourself up in a frenzy for no reason and that the task’s not as difficult as you were envisioning it to be.
Secondly, where there’s a will, there’s a way. When I started out on this challenge, I honestly didn’t know how I was going to fit it into my life. I had no absolute clue, but I knew that I didn’t want to disappoint my Degrees of Maternity friends out there. You, as Accountability Partners, have made the difference in my determination to get through this challenge. I know you didn’t ask for the job, but here we are. And you’re a natural. Your support in following my journey through this challenge is what’s getting me through. Knowing I have wonderful individuals out there who care about what I’m doing enough to tune in and “read”, “comment”, and/or “like” what I’m reporting on is amazing to me.
I started out this “practical application” by stating that “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Mindset is everything when it comes to goal-achievement. Those who think they can tend to find a way to do what they’ve set out to do (even if the path toward successful completion changes on them). But mindset isn’t the totality of success. There are a lot of other factors that play a vital role in arriving at your goal destination, especially factors that involve the incredible support a goal-getter receives while taking on challenging tasks.
Thanks so much for being an important part of the support I’m receiving, here at Degrees of Maternity (with this challenge and with my overall content creation journey). We all need a little encouragement from time to time — even those with the most positive of mindsets. So, keep up the great work, Accountability Partners. You’re doing a great job!
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