Embarrassed to admit, but I’ll say it anyway.  Technology perplexes me.  It frazzles me.  For the past week, my web consultant and I battled the consequences of shifting to a newer version of the domain site, supposedly, to benefit from additional features.  We were too excited with the prospect of enjoying the advantages over the old program, and either failed or refused to expect challenges and issues with the updated mechanism.  The thrill of having something new was just too irresistible, for me at least.

The result – definitely heartaches for me, and headaches for my web consultant.  For this Lola, heartaches sprang from not having the look I wanted for my website, the same look that I was content with on the previous site version.  For my web consultant, headaches built up from having to grapple with technical changes and adjustments required for the visual presentation, and weaving through a mysterious web of computer codes.  And, yes, having to deal with my frequent “nags”.

After some sleepless nights, I realized, stress was unnecessary.  But my frustration persisted.  I wanted the problems solved, but I didn’t know how.  Frequent facetiming with the web consultant was, in my mind, one way to quickly address my questions and concerns.  Of course, I was fully aware that I was bugging her too much when she should be focused on studying and discovering solutions.  Many times, I expressed my appreciation to her for her patience.  Needless to say, she is better than I about technical stuff, and was able to iron out most of the kinks.

Yet, I remained restless.  I felt the urge to do something, too, especially for one issue pertaining to the disappearance of old blogs during the transition.  I remember techies saying that data is never lost – it’s just somewhere out there, stored, and can be retrieved.  That nudged some consolation to me, but I still worried.  So, I then determined to google for instructions and suggestions for resolving the issue.  I spent a whole night reading volunteer tips on the internet, persevered in learning the steps, failed a few times, tried again and again – and then, bingo!  I finally got it.  The path became clear.  I clicked some buttons on the new site’s settings, worked on the prompts, answered some questions, and filled in a few blocks.  The 14 missing blogs finally popped into view.  That felt like winning the sweepstakes – well, not a jackpot, but some pot.  I had the complete list of blogs on the new site.  That was a technological triumph for me.  I was happy … but very tired.

What I want to say is, technical problems seem so big at first.  This Lola loses patience over trying to comprehend technical details and procedures.  Really, the key is patience and perseverance.  Two things I am lacking in with this one remaining issue still unsolved – applying paragraph breaks successfully on text that appears on the site’s home page.  Visuals are very important to me, especially when they’re elemental to clarity, emphasis and a good read.  A line break or a paragraph space, for instance, can drive suspense to a punch line.  That bit of white space can grab attention for the next remark.  Picky, you’d say I am.

My consolation is, the full article when you hit “Read More” or the blog on the edit page carries the correct line and paragraph breaks (but not on the initial text shown on the home page – sigh!).  Reading several comments on the internet, this seems to be a common problem with the default coding embedded in the domain.  I trust that the techies’ suggestions would bring resolution.  I tried a few – they didn’t work for me.  For now, I am relying on my web consultant to fix that annoying kink.

Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week or next month, would mark the return of the elusive paragraph break.

I am writing this blog at 2 in the morning … I couldn’t sleep.  If I try to get some sleep, that paragraph break might morph into a monster in my dream.  Hmm … better to stay awake …

Linda P. Jacob