I'm fairly new to all-things-blogging. I'm usually a late-adopter. I like to wait until things shake out and I can make an informed decision. I'm not a gadget junkie. I do not like to do things until I know *exactly* what I want to do ("I want to take a look at all the spatulas again, before I make my decision ... "). But I wanted a blog fast and blogger looked good and I figured all blog software was pretty much the same at this point.
Wrong.
Whip Up and
Craftlog have cracked open the crafting weblog universe to me. As I surf, I see things I want on my blog. Like categories. Like automatic next AND previous links (not just previous). I've spent hours and hours this week reading reviews, studying charts, learning new terms, reading feature lists, and trying to install Blogger hacks that don't don't don't work.
And then I come across
Extreme Craft. He's using blogger without fancy hacks (as far as I know). I had a great time skipping around in his archive. It was kinda fun not knowing what I might find.
On the other hand, I only learned about Gocco because
Craftlog has it as a category link.
Ugh.
My anxiety stems from many things.
- I've spent a ton of time spent researching blogs and I still feel like I don't know enough to make a good decision. I could have been creating wonderful things and blogging about them instead!
- I learn better when I discuss things with people or have a person explain things to me. I like to ask questions. Reading documentation doesn't sink in as easily because I stop in the middle of every other sentence to google the definition of a word. By the time I figure out what a trackback ping is and I've forgotten why I was looking it up.
- This is the embarrassing one: I'm a web programmer. I should totally have this nailed. I should have written myself a blog on my lunch break today.
I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to feel comfortable choosing a different blogging tool (or building my own) until I know a lot more about what is out there. I want to test out some of the other tools. I want to see a lot more blogs. And if I'm going to do all that and still craft and still blog, it's going to be a while.
In the meantime, Blogger is free and easy. But, oh, how I wish I had categories!