Recovering from a disaster

I think it would be honest to say that today has not been a very good day for me on the web. Yesterday I updated the system software on three different computers and included some new structures for cloud sharing between the machines. Somehow in the process one of my file directories was either lost or misfiled. Without consciously erasing anything, the directories for the program that I use to craft my web site are missing. I’ve spent quite a bit of time today looking for them. That means that I have to start all over with my web site. No data has been lost. I still have all of the blog entries except, mysteriously, the one I wrote this morning before I discovered that I had a problem. At any rate, I will be able to reconstruct my entire web site, but it is going to take several days of work to get it done. In the meantime, I am reluctant to make any changes to my web site because I don’t want to lose any of the information that is there. After all, I’ve been writing a 1,000 word essay for a blog post every day since 2007 and that it a lot of data!

I know that I should have been more attentive to the locations of files, but that is all water under the bridge. Again, I have everything backed up and all of the files are present, just not the directory that is required to keep the web site operating in the right order. Sigh . . . such is the nature of computing.

I have been looking for an opportunity to update my web site anyway. I was planning to launch a new web site around the first of the year, but this gives me the opportunity to get working a bit earlier.

I write mostly for myself in the first place. It isn’t as if I have thousands of people out there on the Internet waiting for my every post. I have received a couple of inquires about what is going on, but that it is. Most of my readers sort of visit the site from time to time and either batch read, or just select a few posts to read. Those who read daily are among the hardiest of souls who both enjoy reading and are willing to put up with my sometimes rambling, sometimes misspelled way of communicating.

Today’s happenings are also, I believe, an invitation to humility. I have been being fairly vain in my web site. It looks as if I was trying to sell myself. The reality, however, is that I’ve got little to sell. I am content in a secure job and probably won’t be job hunting anytime soon. Furthermore, the kind of employers who are interested in hiring someone my age probably don’t require a web site to get to know their employees. I would probably do better investing my time in making a good appearance on LinkedIn and FaceBook.

There is, however, something in me that enjoys the thought of publishing my writing and the web is a convenient way to do that. The discipline of writing and posting every day keeps me writing and enables those who so desire to follow my thoughts.

So, for now, I’ll invest some time and energy in designing a new web site. Hopefully, I can include a few new pictures and some fresh design elements that make the experience fun for those who enjoy surfing the web. There is something exciting about starting with a blank screen and deciding what to keep from the old site and what to include as I move forward.

One thing that I’ve decided to do is to change the name of my blog. I’ve simply called it “blog” since 2007. It is the popular term for this kind of publishing, a shortened form of Web Log. But my style is not really a log and as blogs go, my posts are very wordy. I’ve decided to use the term Journal to indicate that for me it is partly a way of communicating with others and partly a spiritual discipline. Writing helps me sort out my life, my feelings, my thoughts. I sometimes try out a few concepts that later end up in sermons or in other documents that I write.

There is a small danger in that people who have bookmarked my blog, will have to create a new bookmark when I publish the new site. There will be no “revtedh.com/blog" in the new site. It will be replaced with “revtedh.com/journal." That will require a bit of adjustment, but I like the idea of starting fresh and avoiding the lingo that so many others are using. It isn’t that my site is completely fresh and different, but rather that making a new site is an opportunity to make fresh decisions about appearances, titles and navigation. If you are reading this post it means that I have finally gotten things published and that you have figured out how to wade through all of the stuff on my site to get to this part of the site. Thanks for your flexibility and dedication.

As is typical of blogs and journals, the entries will appear with most recent first. That means that by the time you get to this, you probably will have read later posts. I don’t know how deeply this essay will be buried because I don’t know how many days it will take for me to get the entire site up and running. That means that there is a bit of a sense of futility about my writing. I’m writing in the evening instead of the morning. I’m not sure that anyone will ever get around to reading what I’m writing, and I’m trying to be meticulous about making sure that I have everything that I need from the old site before I publish the new one.

At any rate, the adventure has begun and I’ll see what ideas come to me as the journey continues.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!