Every day, I think I will have a lightning bolt moment and understand what I am doing when I sit down and face my computer. I just want one place to call home, where everything has order; where my art, my book, my articles will be and I will have the right links to the right places. My address book will be updated and my emails will be read and put in categories instead of having 967 un-read ones. I’ll have a list of links that go to Facebook, Twitter, my Amazon Author page, Open Salon, and my webpage. But this has NOT happened at all.
Why, you may ask, don’t you use your webpage as your home base like everyone else? Are you an idiot? That’s what it’s for! The fact is I hate my webpage. Go see and you’ll know: it’s Tracydavisarts.com and its the most confusing, disorganized mess I have ever encountered. I avoid it like the plague.
I think techies are going to rule the world and everyone else will fade away and eventually become extinct, because we are dinasours. I know I am one. I’m doomed. I try to get my I Tunes to transfer to my notebook mac. No chance. I try to post my articles on Facebook in the social web page network. It wouldn’t let me.
I go into Amazon.com to post a few articles and see how my novel, (I am naming my next novel, “IT.” No more long titles for me) My Husband Ran Off with the Nanny and God Do I Miss Her, is doing. Hurray! It’s number six out of 13,000 novels in the fiction, humor category. I have to share this! But Amazon’s “mail link of this page” doesn’t work unless you use that exact mail system. No problem, patience is a virtue; I will simply copy and paste the link everywhere. I go first to my Amazon Profile Page, which I am allowed to have, because I am a published author! Hmm, now that’s annoying—all I see are my glowing reviews of all the other books I have read, and I can’t find anything about mine. Plus, my entire profile information is blank. I only spent a few hours writing that. In fact, it seems to be the only writing I’ve done since I published the book, because I spend so much time trying to figure out “social networking” and an hour a day should be spent in real life.
I wasn’t upset, though, about the Profile Page blip because I had the very special Author Central Page. I was number six, baby! Spread the news to everyone and make them tell their friends! My special Amazon Author Central Page is a fantastic resource! You can import blogs, but since they were scattered everywhere, it takes a while, but I had them posted right on my Author Central Page like a good little author and plus you could post things on all sorts of sites so I could show that page where the book is number 6 to everyone! I felt so in love with Amazon right then I thought I should make my Amazon Central Author Page my home. I could embedd something if I knew what it meant. I could rss and backlink and add urls just as soon as any of it made any sense.
But the Author Page had vanished. I searched for it everywhere. Zap. Nowhere to be found. Good thing I wasn’t all warm and cozy with THAT page. In no mood to fight with Amazon about it, I’m saving that fiasco for another day. Kind of like getting new health insurance or going to the dentist.
Twitter doesn’t feel like a home base either. I have anxiety even glancing at my webpage because WordPress has to be updated and the process would take me weeks! I can barely log onto the thing. Facebook is nice because I have a lot of friends on there. 500! I know people who have many more, but 500 friends sounds pretty awesome, since I have about three close friends in the entire world that I actually physically know. And I have come to know and actually connect and bond with a group of my virtual friends, which is a strange feeling but a lovely one. The rest of them? I have no clue who they are or why they are on my wall.
