Tip Toe If You Must

“Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life.  Tip toe if you must, but take the step.” – Author Unknown

I love this quote and I love this out-of-focus, iPhone photo.  Tiffany sent this photo to me via text a few months.  This is Princess Sweetie Pie (second from left facing forward)at her dance class with a bunch of other little girls, waiting to take the first steps.  The first steps of learning how to dance.

To me, this photo is a metaphor of life.  At all stages of life – not just the youngest stages of life when everything we do is new.  Because throughout life, taking even small steps in a new direction could end up being the biggest step of your life, as this quote suggests.

That’s what blogging is to me – a small step in the right direction that is one of the biggest steps in my life.

Why?

Because everything I’m learning about blogging is new to me.  Everything.  I’ll be 59-years-old in a few months and I haven’t stopped learning something new.

Just think about the steps it took to create this post.  While to the younger generations and Millennials all these steps are second nature, for most Baby Boomers and beyond, technology represents a huge learning curve.

I have learned to do all of these things in the last 18 months with various levels of pain involved {grin}:

1. Save a photo that has been sent to me via text.
2. Download that photo to my computer hard drive.
3. Upload that photo to a photo editing site (I use PicMonkey).
4. Crop the photo.
5. Resize the photo to fit in the blog.
6. Enhance the photo (because it is blurry and there is nothing I can do about that, but I can change the effects so that it looks like it is intentionally out-of-focus).
7. Correct the color.
8. Change the exposure.
9. Add text to the image.
10. Save the photo to my hard drive.
11. To write this post, I’ve learned to manage the dashboard in WordPress with all of its bells-and-whistles.
12. Learned to write copy for the post.
13. Edit the post for grammar (sometimes, most of the time, left the way it is, like I sound rather than creating elegant prose) and spelling.
14. Create titles for posts.
15. Optimize it for search engines.
16. Upload the photos to the dashboard and into the post.
17. Set the featured image of the post.
18. Categorize and tag the post.
19. Schedule the post to launch at a specific time.
20. Once the post launches, I’ve learned how to share it on social media and learned to engage (better) in social media.

And, this doesn’t even address what I’ve learned, so far, about photography, food styling, recipe creation and development, and creating graphics!

All tip toe steps in an endlessly challenging learning curve in this space we call blogging.

This is just what I know about blogging so far.  There is so much more to learn…

And, the beautiful little girls above are just starting out on life’s adventures.  Just think what they will learn, create, invent, contribute.  It blows my mind…

Tootles,

P.S.  I’ve included all the steps for creating this post above for readers thinking about starting a blog.  Tip toe if you must, but take the step and never look back!