blogging

Apologies – I did a stupid thing

Here’s the short version:

I wanted a clean slate. A fresh start.

There is a way to export your WordPress blog so you can keep your words in a separate file, and re-set the blog to its original, blank state.

That was my plan.

So I exported my blog and it came back as a zipped XML file but it’s weird looking and I couldn’t read it.

I didn’t want to mess around and lose my entire 16 years of blogging, so I began to think.

And that’s when it all went to hell in a handbasket.

Thinking is not an advisable activity for me.
When I think, I over-think, and this is where I end up causing trouble.

It was too late to stop. I already started the over-thinking process…

I came up with this brilliant idea.

What if I simply made all the blog posts private?

In my view, if my posts are private, no one can read them except for me, hereby giving my readers the illusion of a clean slate.

Brilliant, right?

Hah…

I went ahead and made the damn thing private. Every individual posts bulk-edited to private.

Then I went to bed feeling all clean-slate-ish.

“Tomorrow you can start fresh,” I told myself as I tried to lull myself to sleep.

Throughout the night, I tossed and turned. I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t fall asleep. I kept thinking, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

I’ll spare you my internal turmoil. Just know that I suffered a lot of regret. I felt… broken. Disconnected. Alone. Unworthy.

That sort of thing.

The next morning, I immediately returned to my over-thinking activity. I needed to remedy my situation, but how?

Unfortunately, the time to sit and ponder was not to be. An avalanche of stuff began to flow in my direction, involving family and an out of town friend and airports pickups and sick kids and appointments and the usual chaos that descends upon us around the end-of-summer/beginning-of-school.

I simply did not have time to wallow in self-pity.

Until today.

Today, I sat down at my laptop and had another brilliant idea:

I decided to re-activate some (not all) of my posts, put them back where they belong. On the internet. Where my tribe will read and engage with me.

Sadly, this is where my brilliant idea turned into a brilliantly stupid idea.

Turns out, when you change a post’s status from private to published, it doesn’t just magically appear on my blog. There was a peripheral activity that occurred, one I hadn’t considered:

Each blog post I re-published also showed up in the feed, the notifications, of my followers.

Essentially, I polluted my followers’ feed.

Which is why I’m writing this apology.
If you got three, four months of my posts all at once, it’s because I screwed up.

So sorry.

Thank you for your understanding and your continued interest in reading my drivel.

46 thoughts on “Apologies – I did a stupid thing”

  5. Kinda wondered what was going on, but didn’t want to pry. Thanks for the explanation. Blogging can be wonderful when it all goes as planned, not too bad when it doesn’t. You got a blog post out of this…

    Liked by 1 person

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  9. Pingback: Beagle drama, mom life observations and a little update – Writer of Words etc

  12. This is the first post I’ve seen from you in a while, so idk about the bombardment. Maybe all is fine. I periodically delete stuff and began completely fresh in April 2021, only saving some poetry and reviews for reposting. I really don’t miss having all that dating babble out there forever 🤣

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  14. This is the first thing I’ve seen since whenever you posted last so I shall remain blissfully happy with you and not say anything snarky about being flooded with posts. Your confession does remind me though that I had plans about 2 months ago to delete some old posts to make more more and I totally forgot. I suppose that means good things can happen even when you mess up! Thanks.

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      1. You got me, but I wouldn’t rule out an issue with WP itself, although I can blame WP for just about everything. I always read in reader and on my laptop exclusively if you want to add that info to your list of who is and isn’t experiencing all the WoW at once.

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  15. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I didn’t get bombarded, but I have other chaos going on, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
    I’m sorry you had some tossing & turning but if it’s any consolation, you gave me a much needed giggle 😝

    💌💌💌

    Liked by 1 person

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  16. Hola! I haven’t noticed anything unusual in my feed (bueno, supposing I am looking in the right place). I can see your older posts too. Maybe isn’t too awful after all. Ah, la technology! Keep blogging, amiga!

    Liked by 1 person

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  17. Pingback: Apologies – I did a stupid thing - A Little TOO Picture Imperfect

  18. One option for a fresh start is to start a new free WordPress site and make the whole site private, and import the zipped file that you exported from this site. Then you’d be able to check and make sure everything is intact before you start deleting stuff from this site.

    Liked by 1 person

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      1. Good point, they did cut down on the storage limit for free sites. A way to deal with that issue would be to just export the site’s posts and pages individually, and then just hang onto the full site XML file that would also include the site’s images and other media to use at some point in the future as needed.

        Liked by 1 person

  20. Aww never drivel 🤗, always a pleasure. The only way to get a clean slate is to delete prior posts. I totally understand, but if you have readers that don’t..well good riddance.

    Liked by 2 people

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