When I Retire List

If you're a regular follower of this blog, you might get tired of all the times I refer to 'when I retire' throughout this next year. But here's another vow I'm making to myself.

I'm going to be a better follower of my bloggy friends. I try to make sure I comment back to people who comment on my blog. And I have my list of friends on my sidebar so I can easily see when they've updated their blogs and make sure I visit them.

But I follow a lot of other blogs and don't get to them nearly often enough. I love blogfests but then I feel guilty when I don't get to visit everyone participating. And beyond the guilt, I know I'm missing out on lots of interesting and useful posts.

So when I retire and become a full time writer, part of every day will be spent keeping up with all those I've not been giving my fair share of attention to. I'm going to visit all over the place.

And I'm sure between now and then I'll discover even more blogs. I hope those new friends make it easy to follow them by putting their follow buttons near the top of their blog if they're using blogger. I hope they turn off word verification to make it easy to comment.

When I retire.....

So is it just me or are those word verification scrambles getting harder to read? It nearly always takes me two tries to get it right. Do you make it easy for someone to follow your blog?

Up and Running.

I finally got my personal laptop back in the game.  It's running faster than ever thanks to some simple advice from the great guy at the computer fix-em-up shop.  I wish I could tell his boss t give him a raise.

After a few days of using my slow desktop, I really came to understand how irritating word verification can be when visiting blogs.  It's just one more step, but that one more step cuts into the time I've set aside to visit blogs.

On the other side of the coin, I've heard lots of chatter lately about malware and spam finding its way unto blogs and disrupting or even destroying lots of work.  I guess having the word verification can help prevent some of that.

I use Norton protection on my personal computer, but the guy at the fix-em place told me it does really slow down a computer.  He gave me some advice on what to use instead when my subscription expires.  It's amazing what talking face to face with an expert can do for understanding something that usually causes me lots of confusion.  In the world of writing, we call that networking.

I wish I had the time to network a little this fall by attending a big writers' conference.  But I have neither the money nor the time.  Face to face can really help clear the fog of confusion at times. 

At least I still have all my bloggy friends to network with online.  They've helped me so much by answering questions and providing links to even more information.  And now that I have my laptop back, I'll be cruising along at high speed to visit them more often.

What was the last memorable face to face networking opportunity you had for your writing?