Category Archives: Blogging

Ask and I'll answer

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Vlogging for beginners

With two of my dearest bloggy pals venturing out into the realm of vlogging, I have decided that I want to give this a try as well. And to make this more fun, I have decided that I will be answering your questions! Granted, this is not a completely selfless thought, because ever since I decided I wanted to do a vlog, have I been trying to come up with something to talk about that would make sense to talk about on video instead of in typing.

Doniree’s post the other day gave me the idea to simply have y’all ask me questions that I will answer. Instant vlog! Sure, I could have come up with this back in March when Emily did her vlog the exact same way, but why make things easy when you can make them complicated, right?

So here it goes, ask away! I’d love for each of you to come up with a question, even if you usually don’t comment (real life friends, I’m looking at you). Once I have a few questions to answer I will record the video with my answers and post it. Let’s make this work.

P.S. If you know of a free webcam video recording software, please do let me know. The one that came with my laptop stopped working when I upgraded to Windows 7, and I have yet to find a good replacement. If I can’t find a way to record the vlog with my webcam, I will use my digital camera instead but the webcam would definitely be more convenient.

A blog makeover

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One of my favorite ways of procrastinating – yes, even better than cleaning – is giving my blog a makeover. And that is what I did tonight. I had found this theme a couple of weeks ago and decided that I wanted to give it a try. I had been eying the Thesis Theme that so many of you are using now, but to be perfectly honest, spending $87 on a blog theme is just not possible for me right now (or maybe ever, because I like to change it up every now and then).

Which is why I was absolutely thrilled to find out that someone modified another theme by the same designer to look similar to Thesis. It kind of does, doesn’t it? Close enough for me anyway. And this one is free. Like most people, I am a huge fan of all things free.

After some further editing on my part, the theme now looks the way I want it to. I kept the background and colors from my old theme because I did love that part of it. I redid my category pictures (changed some pictures and kept some), so all in all, it doesn’t look terribly different. A little less colorful and a little more clean & grown-up (but not boring!) is what I was going for.

My blog's new look!

I cannot believe how long all the editing took me. I am the kind of person who loves playing around with a theme, and who is an absolute perfectionist as to how the theme has to look at the end. If something doesn’t look the way I want it to, I keep trying until it does. That would explain why I am still up even though it is almost 3am and I have a cold and am absolutely exhausted. But you know, regardless of how grown-up my blog may look, I can still be a little crazy sometimes. Now that everything does look the way it is supposed to, though, I can finally get some well-deserved rest.

I would love your feedback on the new look!

Milestone #1, I'm almost there!

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First post on my new self-hosted blog with my own domain! If you are subscribed via the Feedburner feed, you might have missed this, but my blog has moved to http://dreamoncemore.net/. I stumbled upon an irresistible offer of getting one year of hosting and this domain for a total of $9.95. No, that is not per month. That’s all I’m paying for the entire year! Amazing, huh? If you are interested in this offer, let me know, and I will send you the link (it’s a Christmas special). My site was up and working within five minutes of placing the order, and so far I am very impressed with how quickly I was able to set up my blog.

I could say that self-hosting my blog with my own domain is a reward for this huge achievement that my thesis is, but really? It’s just an excuse. I have been missing WordPress so much (can you miss a blogging platform?) and WordPress.com is just not the same. When I installed the blog this afternoon, it felt so familiar, I am loving being back.

I am graduating from university this year!

But to get back to the milestone I am referring to in the title of this post … As of Wednesday, I am done with the writing of my thesis. I still have a fair bit of proofreading and double-checking citations to do but the writing part is officially done with. This thesis has been weighing me down for the past couple of months, and the past few weeks were especially taxing. I was working on my thesis so much and pulled three all-nighters, writing until the wee hours of the morning, and can I just give you one piece of advice? All-nighters are not a good idea. I was procrastinating too much so I didn’t have much of a choice, and I was always really happy with how much I accomplished in those nights, but it was so so hard. On Tuesday night I was up until 9am Wednesday morning, and wrote a total of 13 pages. By about 6am my head was feeling tired and I felt like there was a wall closing in on my brain, so much pressure!  But you know what? Wednesday afternoon I only had the conclusion left to write, so in retrospect, it was completely worth it just to be done with that chapter (and I don’t think the content suffered).

I am proud of how well I ended up doing over the past few weeks after taking months to actually get started on my thesis, and I am happy with the outcome, I am thrilled that my health didn’t fail me, but I also paid a steep price. I cut down on everything else that is a part of my life: friends, gym, classes, blogging, you name it. I felt like such a bad friend, especially to the three friends of mine who proof-read my thesis for me. I barely talked to them about anything but the thesis, and I hardly ever saw them. Or any other friends for that matter, but I feel like I was taking so much and not giving anything. And I really did not feel capable of giving. Especially over the past week I was impatient, with me and others, and feeling incredibly unsocial. For weeks I would simply avoid logging into instant messengers because I did not want people to start conversations with me. I just did not have the patience for that. I was actually glad that two of my roommates were not here until yesterday and that my best friend did not come back from her vacation until Wednesday, because I knew I would not be able to give her the attention she deserves (and maybe I still can’t).

I guess it only makes it worse that I have been watching so. much. TV. I have been watching seasons one and two of Eureka and season one of Fringe to be able to get away from my thesis a little, and that really is a lot of TV if you watch entire seasons. But you know, the TV didn’t actually ask anything of me, I could just take without giving anything, and I never actually had to leave my desk, which somehow made me feel less bad about it. I hate how self-absorbed I was in the past few weeks, but I also know that this was one of those things you only do once in life, so I just had to get it over with. Well, I suppose taking my exams this spring & summer might get similar as far as stress goes.

And you know what? I miss my friends. I miss being able to hang out without feeling bad for not working on my thesis. And that is why I have made plans with three friends for next week already, and I cannot wait! I am handing in my thesis on Tuesday morning (three days early, go me!), and then I will be enjoying a few days of hanging out with friends, going back to the classes I temporarily dropped out of in November, going to work, and just going back to normal. At least for a little bit. Because I will have to start preparing for my exams pretty as soon as I can and that phase will last until July. July! I just hope that better time management, I will not have any more weeks like the past two.