Technology “dead-legged” me again this week. For those of you who didn’t go to junior high, “dead-leg” is one of the many phrases for the trick of coming up behind someone and pushing—okay, kicking—the back of their leg as they take a step. If you hit the right spot (Hey, come one! Like I would even know where that is? 😉 the person stumbles. It’s similar to, but not as elegant as, gently tapping the ankle as it’s moving forward, just before it moves in front of the other leg, so it winds up crossed behind the other leg. You can get someone to trip nearly every time with that one (from comments I’ve heard).

I had my three final articles for November loaded into my Blog-Zine site and ready to be published. My plan was to go click-click-click and have everything finished in a couple of minutes. But I posted the first one and noticed it looked odd. The formatting was mixed up. Same for numbers two and three.

I went into the edit mode of WordPress and the appearance of my article was different. It wasn’t simple font with some HTML code saying “strong” for bold or “em” for italics or things like that. It looked just like a Word document in Times New Roman with bolded letters and italicized letters. But the spacing was completely messed up, as in gone. It was one long paragraph.

I had to find the originals, copy and paste, and then re-format them so they would look right.

I’m pretty sure WordPress didn’t change, because I have to ask my site to upgrade or it won’t get a new version. My browser updated recently, but it was before I posted the new articles. I have NO CLUE what happened between me uploading the articles and being ready to post them. But they look fine now. Check it out.

I realized a while back that I need a little more technological savvy to get comfortable building a Coaching business. Now I post to this blog and occasionally my Evil Twin Blog in Blogger, I participate in a group blog in TypePad, and my Blog-Zine is in WordPress. I’m gonna’ be so confused!

I even volunteered to be part of the small committee for the Parenting Coaches’ group that will focus on marketing in general and blogging and web sites specifically. Who am I fooling? Apparently, that group! Actually, I’ve learned a few things that put me a step or two ahead of the crowd so they think I’m knowledgeable. Poor things. See how we’re doing so far. The blog is called Parenting By Strengths.

I added a little more confusion this week. I finally chose a theme for my own TypePad blog. I’m going to post about the struggles and finds of doing personal professional service marketing. I know! I can hardly wait, too!

Check out my Anything But Marketing! Blog. Post taunting or commiserating comments as you see fit. There are a lot of us who want to work with people but get completely stuck by the idea of having to market ourselves, which feels insincere and even cheap. Hopefully we’ll come up with some approaches we can at least tolerate and maybe even some we can enjoy.

Onward! Into the technological void! (no bathroom humor intended)

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey