Unlike prior “test posts” which literally only 3 people saw on my request, this is a Real Test, and an announcement of sorts.

I’ve finally made good on a goal I’ve had for a long while: creating my own website that can serve as a single platform for all of my blogs. As of last night, all of my prior blogs – 127 posts total, according to the cool new data view I get from this platform – have been moved over. I’ve been taking my time going through each one and doing some minor but much needed editing. I’ve still got a few to go (the 3 most recent Travel blogs), but otherwise it’s as good as it gets for now.

The blogs come in two flavors:

• Living in the Gray, which is where my personal entries are. I’ve been woefully silent on this one for awhile for many reasons but have a feeling this may inspire me to finally get some stuff out my head that’s been brewing for awhile.
• Travel, which is where – duh – all of my prior travel blogs are. Twelve in total – seems hard to believe. And after much thought, for now I decided to list them in the sub–menu chronologically. I also believe if you happen to be new to the travel blogs, that’s the best way to read them as well – from the bottom up. That’s the way I’ve been editing them and I realized there is a progression to them, both in travel content as well as to the backstory of our lives which is told through each.

Eventually I’m going to monetize this thing and see how that goes, but I still have some research to do before I do that. I’ve learned a lot in the past couple of months I’ve been slowly working on this to know that hobby blogging and professional blogging are very different, so want to make sure I have a better understanding of the behind-the-scenes stuff before I allow ads on my site.

Here’s where the Test comes in: This is the first entry I’m posting in real time. Well, technically the 2nd (thanks to Jon, Tracy and Debbie for helping with the first!, which has since been removed). But this is the first I’m posting and leaving up, and testing the sharing function through other social media platforms. No other way to see if that works :).

One of the many reasons I wanted to do this was to have an easy, central place for all readers of my blogs to interact with. In the past, they were all over the place, with the predominant place being Facebook. What that meant were readers on other platforms, or those who I’d just sent the links to via email because they don’t do social media at all, never saw the interaction. And the interaction, I believe, is a meaningful part of the content, especially when folks ask questions about what they read.

So my hope and request is that all comments going forward get posted directly here, instead of on Facebook. My preference was always that comments get added directly to each post, but Google’s Blogger tool didn’t make that easy because you had to have a Google Circles account to do so, and I certainly understood people’s reluctance to create a whole account they wouldn’t otherwise use just for that.

But on this platform, it’s simple to do, doesn’t require a whole different account, and I’m excited about the prospect of getting all that in one place. You are still, of course, welcome to send me stuff directly via email, that is always welcome.

But for those of you who would like to play going forward, I would love it if you’d do two things:

1. Subscribe to the blog, which you can do from just about page on it, which will send you notifications of new entries to the email of your choice. (And you’ll get an email with a link to confirm – be sure to check your spam/junk folder if you don’t see it…)
2. Comment somewhere on it so you can see how easy it is, especially if you’ve been a commenter before.

The above actions will also give me an opportunity to see how this works when more people start interacting, which I need to understand before I decide to go super public with it. (And I just saw something in Preview that said there are 395 subscribers, which I know is not right – only 3 that I’m aware of, the aforementioned Jon, Debbie, Tracy – so will have to figure that out. Also the actual bullets and numbers that look right in edit don’t show up in Preview, so will see if it looks different when I actually Publish. All that mostly for my benefit so I don’t forget…) [Update: part of the mystery has been solved. Apparently when I linked my Facebook account it factored in all of my connections there as well. Now to just figure out the dang bullets…]

So that’s it. And just to complete the test function, I’m adding a photo I took yesterday with my new selfie stick. I realized when I did the Puerto Vallarta trip that it would have come in handy so broke down after overcoming my reluctance to be one of “those people” Dan and I used to make fun of. Careful what you judge and all that….

My first self-stick selfie, June 23, 2018

Was able to add the caption and Alt Text in the process of uploading this. So if you’re using a screen reader, let me know if that worked!

And away we go. For some reason I’m really nervous hitting “publish”….

PS: Did anyone else hear “for the next 60 seconds,…” in their head after reading the title of the post?