In Over My Head

In Over My Head

This is about “How to write a blog”, by someone absolutely NOT qualified or familiar with how these things work. The blog was Sheila’s idea and at the time I thought, “Sure, maybe, if we get that far…”

Well, here we are. The book is published. A simple website has been set up. Not by me, but by a contract worker in India. He was easy to work with at first. I got suspicious when he kept asking me for more work because he had medical expenses to pay. Anyway, I ended our association as politely as I could, but before the point where he promised to work on a “great” blog page. That didn’t happen.

I went online and searched for a site that would walk me through the steps to start a blog. I watched almost an hour of a tutorial and realized that, once again, I was in over my head. There was so much information on the video that I filled three pages of notes as fast as I could write. It occurred to me if there was that much to designing a blog page, it was beyond me. I have a new contract with a woman in Pakistan who I hired to take care of this blog business. 

I have stopped telling myself that I am a dummy. But I am insightful enough to know when I’ve reached my limits. At least I didn’t call my son, Ted, to help me out. I reserve that right for asking how to program my smart TV.

That reminds me of a little story. One day I was visiting Katie in New Mexico. It was after Kemet died and she was living on the mesa by herself. She had recently been robbed and Kemet’s gun was stolen. So we traveled to Espanola’s Walmart and she bought a shotgun – for protection. When we got back to the house it was evident that neither of us knew squat about how to assemble a shotgun, let alone shoot it. Her son Michael had done a tour in the army and was gun savvy, so he was the expert she called to walk her through getting the gun ready to shoot and an actual attempt to shoot it. 

Michael was reluctant but he eventually talked her through the steps and the gun was ready to shoot. Michael was equally reluctant for her to shoot the gun, but she was determined. So we walked to the edge of the mesa and she pointed the gun at basically nothing and pulled the trigger. We were both surprised at the kickback.

I thought that was so cool, and something that Ted would enjoy hearing about. As I blathered on about the awesome thing we had just done, he stayed really quiet. Finally I asked him what he thought of our adventure. To my surprise, my little story had irritated him to no end. All he could say was “Michael gets the cool call, and all I get is questions about how to program the VCR.”

If I ever buy a shotgun I will definitely call Ted for instructions. After all, he once owned a BB gun.