A change is as good as a holiday...

Otherwise entitled Why My Blog Looks Different...

As you're aware I've been MIA from Blogland for the last several months.

Mostly because I was busy hog-tying myself with procrastination,

which is one of my best skills second only to Paralysis by Analysis.

Source: Hobby To Hot

I had so many ideas rolling around in my head to post about, that I couldn't decide which one to do first, then I thought that some of them didn't 'fit' my blog,  you see I have a thing about rules and boundaries, I like them, they help me to know what's what and where I stand, I think it's a little OCD but that's okay, and even though the 'rules' of this blog were created by me I was still uncomfortable about it   and so on and so forth.  So in the end I ended up having a 4 month hiatus.

But the good thing is that I learned a few things, first and foremost is...

I missed it, and I missed you!

The second thing is that to do this successfully, I need to plan my posts ahead of time whenever it's possible, and if I have an idea I need to write it down, mostly because I have a crap memory, but also because... wait, no, it's just because I have a crap memory...

Anyhow, eventually not writing turned into not even visiting the blog, and then in some strange way I became afraid to even log on!  Weird right?  I think it was because I'd see how much everyone else was writing, and I would be disappointed in myself.  So instead, I was disappointed in myself for being so stupid!

During the last few weeks of 2014 I decided to mentally slap myself around, pull up my big girl panties, and get back on the horse...

I started by changing my blog description ever so slightly, just enough to allow me to be comfortable with posting rather random stuff.  It went from '... a weight loss journey with the 12WBT' to '...life and a weight loss journey with the 12WBT'  and eventually to '...living life, losing weight, and other random stuff'  which in my mind allowed me to blog about pretty much anything without feeling like I was breaking the self imposed  rules.

Big change right!?

Well it seems that Blogger decided that if I was going to change that little bit, then I may as well change the whole damn thing, because the next time I logged on, my beautiful header thingy with the lovely swirly fonts and the pretty ladies that I had spent hours creating, had vanished and was replaced with what was essentially a massive grey No Entry sign!

You don't need an imagination to know what I said...  and it didn't seem to matter what I did, I couldn't fix it, so I thought 'the Universe is sending you a message here Annie, pay attention!'

So I began to play around with different layouts, but never actually pressing the 'Apply To Blog' button, because none of them really took my fancy, I mean, not a single new template had been added  to Blogger since I started 2 years ago, which is an eternity for a creative like me, and I didn't really like them then, which is why I had customised it so heavily in the first place, plus I was dead scared of losing all my content, or at the very least, screwing up all my formatting.

Then suddenly.

Out of nowhere.

There was a popup that said something along the lines of  'template applied'.

Cue swearing and heart palpitations.

I tried to get it back to the 'old' template, but it just wouldn't take the changes.

What has been done cannot be undone!

See?  Universe.  Message.  Change can be good...

So I figured that if I'm going to change 'the rules' regarding content, and if the Universe wants me to change how it looks, then why just stop with this?  Why not have a blog that I actually like the look of?  Seeing as how I obviously can't get back the original format.

I took a deep breath and made a decision.  One of my quickest ever - remember the whole Paralysis by Analysis thing?  I'd leave it the way it is for the time being, while I look into migrating the whole thing over to Wordpress!

I've already bought Wordpress For Dummies (Kindle edition),  I'm really praying that the title isn't lying... along with Wordpress Websites Step-by-Step, also for Kindle, just in case the Dummies guide really is lying, I've got my domain name, I'm narrowing down the templates, of which there are hundreds  and I'm trying to decide if I want to pay a bit more and have total freedom when building the new blog.

I think I do...

I really hope it's not lying...

The backup plan...

Stay tuned...