January 27, 2009

Whistling past the graveyard?

I compose all of my blog entries in a "test journal," which is pretty much exactly like this one, except for the fact that you can't read it. I try, as much as possible, to polish each entry until it is fit for general consumption. I can't always catch all of the typos, spelling errors, and grammatical pratfalls, but I do my best in an attempt to not look like a total idiot.

Once I have an entry pretty much the way I want it, I copy and paste it into AWV, and publish it. This process leaves behind a backlog of finished posts in the test journal, which I occasionally go in and clean out.

From the Blogger Dashboard, I click beside the journal name on the link labelled, "edit posts." This brings up a list of all the posts in the journal, with the option to edit, view, or delete each one. I click on, "delete," and am taken to a page that displays the entire, unformatted textual content of the post, and asks for confirmation that I really do want to delete that entry.

Down at the bottom of that page I click on the button labelled, "delete it!" and am suddenly gripped by a paralysing fear that I have just done something VERY BAD. My eyes dart to the top of the page, where I am positive I am going to see the words, "Aurora Walking Vacation," and come to the sickening realisation that I have just deleted, never to be retrieved, one of the posts on my main blog.

What my eyes always see (so far, at least) are the words, "The Test Journal!" and I chuckle to myself, and say, "yeah, I knew that."


4 comments:

Daniel Poehlman said...

I'm learning to embrace Google Docs, and now I only use my test blog for major layout and format changes.

It takes some getting used to, though.

émilie b said...

A red "delete" button is of course the worst word to click on (except maybe "format").

Anonymous said...

Sorry guys, but this seems like nothing to me. I'm in the process of transferring stuff I need/want from my desktop to my laptop with the ultimate goal of GIVING AWAY THE DESKTOP I'VE USED FOR 7 YEARS.

Sometimes I sneak up on the backup of the files just to make sure some obscure file I remember is actually on there.

I have severe anxiety issues. I may never let go of the old computer.

Dawn Allynn said...

Paul, you crack me up. I totally understand this fear, I have experienced it myself a million times (not always for a bad reason either, I have deleted many things that I cried over immediately) but what is so great is how well you put this into words :)