Day Two - More Disasters

It started quite well. The money we were expecting arrived, but then we compiled a list of the "screamers" who needed to be paid. I broke out in a cold sweat at this point, as it slowly dawned on me that there wasn’t enough for that lot, let alone enough to have a good Christmas.
When you’re this close to the edge, a number of things start to happen. Chatting to people becomes a chore, you lost your confidence in all situations, and you end up hurrying around with a bowed head, hoping not to run into anyone. Sex disappeared from both our agendas some time back – love is still there and a feeling of togetherness, but you can’t feel sexy when you feel like shit all the time. Sleep becomes both a sanctuary, when you can get some, and a nightmare (pun intended) when you can’t. Lying awake at night, it’s just so hard to move your thoughts off your situation and onto nicer things. I’ve noticed we have both withdrawn into ourselves and are both reading much more – anything really to take your mind off things.
The day almost turned into a total disaster when I wiped all the files off our business website, thinking I was clearing this server, ready for this blog. I immediately contacted our host, but they couldn’t help. I was shaking and close to tears at that point, as we had lost all our data. I really thought it might be the final straw. Thankfully not all of my luck has deserted me, and I realized that I hadn’t deleted the database which runs the website, and I was able to restore the whole thing, but had to work until midnight to do so. I was so relieved you wouldn’t believe it. Maybe that was the turning point?
In terms of this site, I spent quite a bit of time configuring it the way I wanted. It runs on Drupal, and I have set the theme, added clean URL’s (the standard Drupal ones aren’t search friendly, and added the Drupal modules I wanted. I then set the menus up and have kept everything very simple. Each post for the year will go into a month category, so readers can start at the beginning and work their way forward.
I also put Google Adwords onto the site. This is quite straightforward and the ads are now appearing. Until the site gets decent traffic, and who knows if it will, they won’t earn anything, but if we do get some traffic, people will click them and I’ll have a little income.
I also put a Paypal donate button on the site. This worried me because it feels a little like begging. In some ways I supposed that’s exactly what I’m doing! The bottom line is if I don’t earn some money from this, I’m going to get deeper into trouble, so my feeling is that if people find these posts worth reading, then maybe they will be happy to donate a few dollars or Euros to help me out. I do know that in the good old days when I had some money, I was always happy to donate a little when asked on websites, particularly if I liked to content or whatever I had downloaded from there. Anyway we’ll see what happens. I’m hoping for a little to help, rather than miracles, and I’ll keep my promise to let you know what I get on a daily basis.
Please tell your friends and anyone else you know about this site, if I can just get some decent traffic, maybe we can do something to appease the banks and other people who are shouting for money. I did put my car on sale today, as we can manage with one, so fingers crossed for me that someone will buy it.
That’s all for today. I’m going to let the site run now, and plan for tomorrow which is a busy day on the normal work front as I have to prepare for a couple of meetings the next day.
Good luck and thanks for stopping by!