Dear Blog Readers,
I began with My Vegetarian Blog, www.myvegetarianblog.com, back in July 2009. After several months, I realized that although I am passionate about being a vegetarian and about vegetarian living, there are many other topics that I am passionate about too – my nature and architectural photography, theatre, music, literature, teaching, politics and environmental conservation. I struggled with posting my photography on My Vegetarian Blog, since although I am happy to share my photos, I felt that they were not related to vegetarianism. I had the same underlying feeling when posting about plays, musicals, concerts, music in general, my teaching and exercising. Back in September 2011, after brainstorming new blog names, I created one that I really loved and that was available – My Creative Reflections – www.mycreativereflections.com.
I struggled the last six months with whether or not to change my website/blog over to My Creative Reflections. I felt conflicted about leaving My Vegetarian Blog. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was ten and am actually slowly making the progression from being a lacto-vegetarian to a vegan (again…long story). I do indeed want to continue with teaching myself how to cook and bake, vegan style. I intend to return to “The Vegetarian Family Cookbook” by Nava Atlas and post entries of my efforts to cook recipes from the book. I still own the domain name www.myvegetarianblog.com and will continue to do so for only $10 per year. If I ever become really ambitious with my vegan/vegetarian cooking and baking, I might design a new blog under www.myvegetarianblog.com.
However, I have been struggling to keep up to date with one blog, so I am going to focus my energy on establishing this newly renamed blog/website of mine. On Tuesday, March 6, I finally decided to call the hosting company affiliated with my blog and make the official switch to my new website. Unfortunately, although I contacted the hosting company numerous times since September, including making the transition from the one website to the other on March 6, I discovered to my great dismay on March 7 that my 1, 700 photo and image links that I had posted to my blog in the last 2 1/2 years were all missing. After contacting the hosting company again, a tech guy said that none of my photos/images are displayed on my new website since they were all linked to my former website. He regretted to tell me that there was nothing that he or anyone could do to help me. My only recourse was to go back through each blog post and upload every photo/image again. Very discouraging! I moaned that that could take me 6 months to complete!
This coming week, March 12 through 16, is our March Break. I am planning on continuing the frustrating and unending process of uploading all of my photos and images again. I post mostly my own photography. However, probably 25% of the images are ones that I found on Google Images, which will be difficult to rediscover. Since my parents purchased a new laptop for me back in September 2010, the majority of my own photography is still “trapped” on my old laptop. I’ve tried several times in the past to “rescue” my photos that are saved on my old computer, without much success. This just means that over a year of my photography that was posted to my blog is only saved on my old computer, which I cannot access…Undoubtedly, I will have to erase entire posts. Sigh. Cry. Scream.
Just this evening, I decided to change my Twitter name, too. I brainstormed different ideas, but most of my possible Twitter names were already taken by other people. My original Twitter name was Vegetarian Blog, which I set up back in July 2009 to go along with my blog. I figured that since I changed my blog name, I should change my Twitter name, too. I ended up going with my name and my favourite number – JennieClark23. I have never mentioned my Twitter account on my blog. I’m proud of myself – I just somehow figured out how to post a Twitter button on my blog that links to my Twitter account. As of today, I have 1,832 Twitter followers, which is rather unbelievable. I just wish more of those people read my blog!
Photo of the Day:
Since I have to go back to the beginning in various ways with my blog, re-adding all of my photos and images to each post, I thought it would be appropriate to attach my 2nd photo that I ever took with my new camera, back in June 2010. This photo was taken from my balcony. Our building’s balconies have been under construction since September. 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday, construction workers have been drilling away the old balconies, removing the old balcony railings and slowly – and loudly- reconstructing the balconies. The drilling and jack-hammering and smashing of cement has made me want to run away – or take an extended vacation – on many occasions! I haven’t had access to my balcony in almost two months. No photos taken from my balcony for the undetermined future!
-Jennie
P.S. One good thing about changing my blog/ website – no spam since I made the change-over. If only it would stay that way!
