A Suggestion to WordPress

In response to the extremely frustrating experience I just endured, I would like to take this opportunity to make a suggestion to WordPress, and you all can back me up if you like.

Dear WordPress:

I understand that you probably think that your Autosave feature is the bee’s knees. I agree that in most cases it is a genuinely helpful feature. But occasionally it is itself the cause of great misery and misfortune.

I just spent almost an hour typing up what I thought was a fairly excellent blog post. It was well over 1000 words. All I had to do before posting it was to enter a title. Somehow, when I moved to do that (I still don’t know what the hell happened), the cursor jumped back down from the title space into the post space, and approximately 800 of my words got overwritten by one letter stroke.

Guess what happened then? Yup…Autosave chose that exact moment to kick in, saving the “change” to my post and thus completely destroying it. There is absolutely no way that I’m going to recreate that post exactly as it was, nor do I have the time to try and figure out precisely what I had written and in what order. That post is, as far as I’m concerned, gone forever. Because of your Autosave feature.

I understand that most people probably love this feature. I myself have been saved by it a few times when my computer decided to crash in the middle of the post. But if I may make a suggestion…there should be an option to have Autosave save two or three different files, one at a time. Save in file 1, then file 2, then file 3, and when you come around for Autosave number 4, save over file 1 again. This simple addition would have allowed me to quickly close out of the post, load up the file from before my post was destroyed, and save my hard-written post.

Just a suggestion. Just a suggestion.

Sincerely,An Extremely Frustrated Blogger

Actually, this explains a LOT…

As you know, last week it was my birthday. I got a couple of nice presents, but one of them isn’t in my possession yet because it has not yet been purchased. You see, my husband suggested that he would buy me a new bathing suit for the (hopefully) coming summer. I’m not usually the kind to spend much money on such a thing, so he thought I could pick out a really nice one for a change. I loved the idea, but here’s the thing…if I’m going to get a really nice bathing suit, I want to look good in it. So on Saturday night I gritted my teeth and decided that this is it: I’m restarting Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution and this time I’m sticking to it.

Sunday morning started a bit askew, since little missy was up in the middle of the night, which resulted in all of us sleeping in until almost 10 am. But I gritted my teeth, and after a healthy breakfast of whole wheat toast and boiled egg whites, I headed downstairs and did workout number 1. I then attempted to go about my day without resorting to any of the mindless snacking I’m famous for, while waiting for my meatloaf to finish cooking and anticipating the fact that I was going to have to measure my portions to keep from eating twice as much of it as is smart.

So you see, my day was full of willpower. Painful, frustrating willpower. And that got me thinking about something I once read in a Cracked.com article. At the time of reading the article I raised my eyebrows a bit and doubted the reality of the claim, but on Sunday I did a bit of Google research and lo and behold, it looks like it’s true.

Willpower is a finite resource.

I know, I know, it sounds like an excuse, right? But apparently there have been a lot of studies done on this idea, and so far it’s holding water. It looks like the more willpower you use in one area of your life, the less you have left for other areas. In other words, you might struggle all day to keep yourself from snacking, and actually manage it, but then when it comes time to do your exercises you just can’t seem to work up the willpower. It’s not entirely your fault…you haven’t got any left. This explains why you can feel so good about yourself early in the day and happily resist temptations, but later in the day you crash and start (for example) devouring everything in sight.

So does this mean we’re all doomed to failure because we can’t keep up the willpower thing forever? Of course not, although it’s definitely going to make things more difficult. Willpower (apparently) is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised. So the more willpower you are able to exert today, the easier it will be tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. It’s likely to be a slow process, but in the meantime you have to figure out how to dole out your willpower as necessary. If resisting snacks and treats all day depletes your stores so that you can’t bring yourself to exercise later, figure out how to let yourself have a little something, thereby saving that bit of willpower for when you need it. It’s a delicate balance, which in itself probably uses up willpower.

In fact, you know what? It’s not a delicate balance; it’s a vicious, circular cycle that makes me want to punch walls.

*cough cough*

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I need to work on my willpower muscle. I’ve worked up great levels of determination before and used up all my willpower after a week or so, and I don’t want that to happen this time. I want to succeed this time because dammit, I want to look good in a really nice bathing suit! Is that so wrong? 😛

The Cure for What Ailes Ya

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

13. Overcoming writer’s block

Truly one of the most frustrating parts of writing. Sometimes, no matter what you do, it’s like your brain just turns off and nothing will come out. Or what does come out is complete, unadulterated crap. Either way, it can leave you feeling pretty useless.

My personal cure for writer’s block sounds a little dumb, but I swear it works…write fan fiction. No really! Fan fiction is great for writer’s block because the world, the characters, and all the important information is already created for you. All that’s left is to make something happen with all that information. Even better, take something that exists as other-than-written media (like tv shows, video games, etc) and write it out in novel form. It can be very interesting to use your imagination to flesh out visual media by writing it out in novel form, and it really gets the creative juices flowing. Writing a page or two of my Final Fantasy fan fiction (which is just a novelized telling of Final Fantasy III/VI) always gets me ready and able to move back to something original. 🙂