Life as I find it

I’ve been able to flow from one work to another almost all my life. Curiosity got into me, temptation, the lure of quick money, desperation…. you name it, me done it.

Sometimes I wondered if I was some kind of a freak who was good at so many things, yet didn’t have lasting experience with anything and when I moved on, it was usually to something totally unrelared. The only pattern I saw was chaos, which reflected the chaos in my emotional life as well (born in an unhappy family, fostered with grandparents).

My jobs ran included (in approximate sequence) part time work with a cable TV service, running children’s camps, partner in a new layout design business, modelling, teaching English tutions, working on outdoor education/experiential learning programmes, instructing on Himalayan Adventure tours, working as a cook on treks, guiding treks, cultural tour hosting, pack horsewoman on treks, joyrides on horses, conducting surveys in remote villages, “home remedies and first aid” for local horses and dogs, transcripting interviews for documentaries, research for cocumentaries, film making, outdoor adventure training, facilitation on management training programmes, website design, SEO, content development, promotion, blogging……

A varied life…. and it still goes on…..

When I first learnt that a website could be created with a little effort, I remember my wonder - I had thought it to be an exotic and expensive thing, and yet, with a free host and an internet connection and some googled up tutorials, I could do it for free! It seemed impossible and impractical at that time. I had wanted one, and couldn’t afford any money, let alone the fancy quotes I got from designers.

Its been exactly 2 years and 7 months since my first website (which was largely white with some text on it), 13 revisions of my website, as I kept learning new things and stuff. I write on three blogs, run 7 websites (some for friends), earn enough from it to keep myself in necessities, and keep discovering new people, information and dimensions to the world.

This  category of posts - my journey - is a documentation of this strange, but satisfying journey of mine, that needed me to sweat blood, but rewards me just as intensely.

Just as everything was working, I went and meddled with things as always. Got tempted into a server shift, because I wanted certain things.

Was biting nails until a few hours ago. The shift had happened, I’d been busy, my DNS hadn’t rexolved, and quietly, behind my back, my site was in shambles…… this is quite ususal after a shift like that. Problems need to be found and fixed, and I was sitting happily, unaware.

Suddenly, I woke up to the situation, and as usual sent endless messages to the suport at Mochahost, that this was not working and that was giving problems and so on. No reply. I bit my nails some more, send a few more emails. Misunderstanding!!! Now, I was ready to tear my hair from my scalp. My precious site!!! Not working!?!

Suddenly, the sun shone through the clouds, the support people went into gear, and within the last couple of hours, everything is sorted. These guys sure can work once they dig into a problem. The one problem that remains is a mystery….. something in my site that doesn’t let it be recognized at all as online to validate my blog at Social Spark. No clue why this happens. Installed their code and all, but when I validate, it doesn’t find it.

Since it was not life threatening, I sent only one email so far. Now that everything is sorted, I may send maybe one a few days until resolved. The thing is that such things are minor. The big thing is that my website, my precious website is breathing once more!!!

I came across this bizarre (yeah, that’s my favourite word) situation with poor Vlad, who like many of us here is a blogger writing about his interests and writing paid posts as opportunities arise. Now, this situation seems to have a lot of angles to it, but from what I basically understand….

This Vlad accepts to write a review about ePerks. From all that I have heard, this was a positive review (I can’t find it). However, comments on his post were very strongly negative. These had some intervention attempts by an anonymous commenter and the whole thing heated up.

Well… he addressed that exploding comments situation inviting an exploration into ePerks in a follow up post. The company itself did what ….. they shouldn’t have, if they valued their reputation. They threatened him. Now, for a company that buys reviews from bloggers to build thier reputation, to threaten a blogger for writing - and from what I hear, Vlad did not criticize the company until then - is like having an axe… don’t know where to put it… look…. there’s my foot…..

This is basically what happened. This was followed by an explosion of bloggers speaking up in support of Vlad (like I am doing right now). It really is no longer the issue what the services of ePerks are anymore. The issue now is their image. For a company paying to get reviewed, it sure has more unpaid reviews now, and none of them that they would want to pay for. I doubt if any of them include a link either. Some examples would be:

• iHype & ePerks - How To Kill A Startup by Andy Beard really looks into this situation from many angles. I found this post really helpful in understanding the situation.
• Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent by Aaron Walls speaks briefly about the right to free speech and the risk involved in mass acquiring of links without building relationships.
• Memo to ePerks.com: You idiots! Trying to censor a real estate weblogger is a poor way to defend your reputation — such as it is… by Greg Swann along with some other posts, all equally “defending” the right to free speech.
• There are many others who have got angry about this whole thing.

My perspectives on this:

• ePerks: This was an incredibly stupid thing to do, which I guess I don’t need to tell you by now. If you pay for a review, you get a review. The end. If you don’t like the comments, go camp out on the comments form, address the commenters (which you did). However, threatening a blogger for something he did not do….. You don’t have a leg to stand on. Opinions are opinions. The smart thing would have been to acknowledge the comments, apologize if anyone had suffered inconvenience, and invite them into a dialogue to resolve the issue, or make your stand clear. This could have got you a few free nice posts, for graceful handling. Now, it is just about digging yourself deeper and deeper, and the damage is really beyond control. How many bloggers can you sue? Do they even live within your reach to do that? Really, I see no happy solution for you beyond a massive apology, an attitude shift and big payments to bloggers for damage control.
• Vlad: I see you doing what you were supposed to be doing initially, but I wonder if you really understood the imact of your second post. While it certainly invited investigation and feedback, I felt that it enouraged making extreme stands, which is good to get lots of comments, but really, how important are comments - at what price?). Though I don’t see how it would have changed anything considering the nature of comments that followed.
• Common man: I understand your frustration at being scammed and applaud your sharing of your experience so that it may serve to warn possible victims, or provide feedback to ePerks, if they do attempt a change of attitude.
• The blogging community: I expereince this rush of support for Vlad as one of the strengths of this platform, and the community. I don’t know Vlad at all, but being in his situation (having written about a scam earlier) I know that it is a risk that we get unnecessarily caught up in legal hassles. While we know that there is something inside us that wants us to stand for the truth, it is equally difficult to face legal feed regardless of who will win eventually. I don’t know most of you personally, but this act of solidarity makes me feel that there is support anyway if we stand for our beliefs.
• For me: The truth needs to be told. If I can do it in a way that facilitates resolution, superb. If not, confrontation it is!

If you haven’t yet joined Twitter, what are you waiting for? This is one place that combines my interests, people and blogging…. and brevity. It is an experience in freedom to not worry about what to write about.. what to say…. having enough content?

Its simple. What are you doing? An absolutely fabulous way to find out what people are doing too! What’s more, there are widgets that make it so easy…… like your chat box, only that it tells you what people are doing, and allows you to tell them what you are doing. You have widgets for firefox, oper, for your desktop….. just see all their widgets to see what I mean.

So, what are you doing?

follow me on twitter.

There are many articles I have been reading all over the place that have contributed to this “changed me” as a blogger. I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for all the helpful flood of words that finally helped me to get into gear.

• Don’t Let Emotion Be MIA In Your Content by Darren Rowse. This blog of his is an unending source of ideas, motivation, inspiration… you name it. I go there everyday.
• WordPress Plugins for Multiple Blogger Blogs This post gave me great insights for applying on the other site I administrate - the ISABS Mumbai Chapter weblog, put shortly, this is ISABS T-group training in India, and a very small group of people. Promoting ht eblog, as well giving access to other bloggers is a pain. This page worked better than prescription medicine. Lorelle puts in a lot of effort into creating very resourceful posts.
• 31 Days to Building a Better Blog uh… again from problogger.com This time its an entire category of posts that help you do this…… Haven’t gone through the whole thing, but I will. What’s more, I will APPLY my learnings. What do I do… I’m hooked. I’m stuck on this site till I manage to Read through most of the posts……
• Useit.com has a very useful series of articles on understanding reader behaviour. And NO, I have not read it yet, its on my to-do list. If I had, don’t you think I’d be in a happier situation?