Lost. . . And Found!

I’ve been away for awhile.  Most of the time I’ve been busy dealing with some family needs that have taken my focus and a lot of my time.  Our daughter and her four children have moved in with us for a time.  The activity of young people (including a two-year-old) keeps me moving.  Changes to our home have been necessary to accommodate bunk beds and bikes and five extra people in our small house.  The walls of our little house have had to stretch a bit.  Things have been stored and moved out to help make them feel at home.  But that’s only part of the story!

Some of you are aware that my blog disappeared last week!  Lost.  Gone.  Not to be seen.  My dashboard and all of my posts were there but no one in the outside world could see them.  If you stopped by my blog, all you saw were ads!  I was perplexed and dismayed.  In the middle of all the changes in my life it felt as if I had been lost.  Even though I hadn’t been posting on my blog for awhile, suddenly I realized how much my blog and the ability to share myself means to me.  Working for days (and nights) with Blogger Help – and being given more than one reason for the problem by different people, plus pointing fingers at various places as the reason – I was the one who finally discovered the problem.  The registration for my custom domain had expired!  Now why wouldn’t I know that, you ask?  Why didn’t I renew in a timely fashion?  Circumstances surrounding changes of banking accounts and card information and email addresses caught me in never-never land.  Change of email address made to my blog account wasn’t passed on to the appropriate place for renewal contact.  There was no notice received, no way for the automatic renewal to take place and all of a sudden – I was gone.  Missing in action!  Once I discovered the problem, it wasn’t an easy fix.  Did you know that once you purchase a custom domain from Blogger, they no longer own and manage your domain name?  The Help people let me know right away and told me who to contact.  Calls  to that company and emails and pleas on the Help Forum – and voicing my frustration about needing simple answers instead of computer-eze – and finally someone forwarded my situation to the right people at Google.  Soon after that happened the information needed was sent and I was able to renew my registration.  Information entered – hit ‘submit’ – and viola!  Back again.  There I was again!  Looking at my blog again.  And I just sat here smiling at my computer.  Feeling all was well with the world again.  Feeling that I had been found again!

I have learned a lot over these past days (and nights) of searching for answers.  I learned technical things and I learned a bit more how the cyber world functions but most of all, I learned how very much this blog means to me because of you, my friends.  This is a way to share and deepen friendships.  When my blog was gone, I felt I had lost ME. It felt as if I had been marooned on a deserted island.  Cut off from you.  I’m back again and there will be changes.  Through the last months I’ve thought of changing my blog – changing how it looks and changing the focus a bit.  Over the past few days, as I thought of the possibility of starting over again if my blog couldn’t be restored, I reviewed and evaluated how I would like a new blog to look.  There will be changes in the near future – good changes that will reflect some of those things.  In the meantime – I’m back.  You’re ‘stuck’ with me!  I will be blogging more often.  Some posts will be brief.  Others will be filled with all kinds of things I want to share with you. 

Thank you to those of you who responded to my emails with questions about the details of your blog.  Thank you for the encouragement you gave me to keep going.  Thank you for sharing your stories and for deepening our friendship by opening a bit more of your life to me.  You may not know how much that means – it was as if you were here holding my hand.  That’s what friends are for.  And you, my dear friends, are dear-to-my-heart friends. Friends I treasure.  Friends I don’t want to lose!