Digital bucket on my head

You know, I used to think I was pretty web savvy.  I'm fairly on top of things and when I'm not I can figure them out by messing around with them.  Lately though it has been revealed to me that the world wide web can clean my clock.  There is so much out there that I have a big question mark over my head about.

As you know I have decided to create another blog devoted to dog training.  This is a personal blog but I want my other blog to be professional and, hopefully, wide reaching.  So whenever I have a few minutes here and there I've been setting up various things for this blog.  During this process I have been rudely reminded that I'm a small fish in a very big pond.  I'm just kind of floundering about like the kid with a bucket on her head running into things everywhere and generally creating mass chaos in my wake.  That is indeed how I feel.

My blog savvy friend has promised to help me but we've both been so busy with various projects that we haven't really connected yet.  That has led me to kind of dive in on my own with very little direction.  I do have my blog set up though it is not beautifuied at all and I refuse to share it or write on it until it is.  I have also spent the morning setting up various other accounts to go with this blog.  So now I have a new email address that has been set up to forward to my main email address.  Check.  I also dove into Twitter and created a Twitter account for the blog because why not do it all right?  It did take me a good half an hour to somewhat customize that Twitter account to a somewhat likeable theme.  I'm sure I went about it the hard and long way but such is the way of a kid with a bucket on her head.  My friend tells me that I should also create a Facebook account but that's where I've run out of steam.  I already have two Facebook accounts, one public and one private.  I shutter to think of being that person with three Facebook accounts, two blogs, Twitter, three active email addresses and a partridge in a pair tree.  That is a lot of digital balls in the digital juggling universe.

I have so wanted to give myself a forum to be a little more involved in dog training.  I need more directions for that career to go in.  Since I have the degree, why not use it to write articles about the subject.  I'm going to be serious about it too.  Some will be opinion articles but some will be researched and cited.  I have about a million topics in mind so that should keep me busy for a while.  I am not going to be posting willy nilly though.  I'll choose a day and post on that day.  Either Monday or Friday maybe.  That way my article is anticipated and I have a week to write them.  I will steer clear of the "oh my dog is so cute!" posts.  Yes my dogs are very cute and I generally obsess about them but I have other forums for that, as you can see above.  The only time I will use more personal stuff is when my personal experience on a topic is the idea.  One such idea I have is about my extremely unmotivated dog and how to deal with that.  Or the health of an aging dog.  Or dog and cat interactions.  Other personal things I'll probably use is my personal journey becoming a dog trainer.  There are a lot of personal aspects I will be using but the idea is that it is a more professional blog.  So I will not be linking these two blogs at all.  People hopefully reading my articles about dog training do not need to read about my pet peeves.

Anyway, I will tell you the name of this blog.  The Midnight Barker.  Get it?  From 101 Dalmatians and the midnight bark.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about you should be ashamed of your Disney knowledge and go watch 101 Dalmatians immediately.  For those of you who are comfortable with your Disney knowledge but still need a little help, the midnight bark is how the dogs share information in the movie.  So there you go, The Midnight Barker.  I think it's pretty clever and totally riding the wave of Disney cool!

BUT... do not go looking for it yet because it isn't ready!  NO CHEATING!

Guru in training

I have been informed by my dear friend Whitney that I suck at blogging.  No that's not what she said but the general meaning was there, haha.  I do admit this is true.  Beyond posting a new blog post and then sharing it on my Facebook, I'm not a big blogging guru.  Apparently there is much to learn.  So now, if you look at my lovely blog (which by the way I am proud that I figured out how to customize it at least a little) there are some changes you can take advantage of.  Above ↑ you will see a little bar below my lovely picture heading with "Email" in it.  If you submit your email address there you will receive my blog posts to your email.  Over to the right → you will see this little like three line design followed by "posts" and "comments".  If you click those, my blog will be added to your collection of blogs or other things you are following, if you are techy like that.  WAY down at the bottom ↓ you can share my blog on Facebook or Twitter.

So hopefully that helps get my blog out there a little more.  Not that there is anything of great importance on here as I am mostly writing it for myself and I'm not sure how many people read it.  But if you do read it you can now choose different ways to be notified of my various posts.  That being said I do promise to post more often.  When I get busy and stressed I only tend to want to do bitchy posts.  Then I feel like I'm just complaining and I don't really need to cement it in words.  But this is supposed to be a reflection of my life and sometimes in life I get bitchy and complain.  I guess anyone reading this will just have to handle that.  I do want to try to have more of a presence.

In my heart I am a dog trainer but I am also a writer.  I do write quite frequently but mostly keep it to myself.  I've been writing since I learned how to read and write, which came later in life than most people.  I have a pretty good case of dyslexia.  Dyslexia means I have a hard time reading or doing other activities such as math because decipher I symbols differently.  Basically I learn differently than everyone else.  So when I was in elementary school the teachers didn't know how to teach me and I wasn't learning anything.  They told my mom that I was just stupid.  Luckily my mom knew something else was going on and took me to get all this testing done and soon found out I was dyslexic.  After a couple of years of tutoring I was reading at a college level and able to work around being dyslexic.  I still struggle with some things, like my spelling or with math, but dyslexia didn't stop me from a love of reading and writing.  Heck I have a degree in English Literature with a focus on Creative Writing.

So coming back from that tangent, I love writing.  I have been writing since I knew how and have several pieces of poetry published.  In high school I took three times as many English and writing courses than was needed.  I also kept a blog that I recently reopened and looked at.  I was really open and honest in that blog.  Though before you ask, no I will not be sharing the link with you.  I downloaded the whole thing and plan on going back through it and rereading it.  In knowing who you are, I think it is important to remember who you were.  Doesn't mean you have to keep being that person but you should at least acknowledge life experiences.  So, though I may not want to share all my teenage angst with you, I probably will pull bits out here and there.

In the spirit of blogging and writing more I will make the effort to at least post something everyday.  I get caught up in these silly rules like "I can't post more than one post a day" and "If I'm going to bother posting it has to be something of substance".  Bah.  I don't think the blogging world has such rules, which is one of the reasons I so enjoy it.  So I will move the Blogger App on my phone to the front and do more blogging in general.  Yes, there is an app for that.

I really want to start writing about dogs/dog training and all that good stuff that I am passionate about so maybe in the next couple of weeks I will be starting a second blog to do that.  Whitney will have to help me set that one up so that it is SUPER cool and advertised.  Oh yeah.

Rambling post but there you have it.  Should probably find time to do some work between all the blogging I am going to do.