As I wrote about yesterday^[1], I am having a spot of trouble with finances, my web host, and reality.

The reality issues are routine but the other two are news.

So I am anticipating a big change soon. I may decide to hang it all and just be a Tumblr blogger from now on. It is not like I am making a fortune off of ad revenue, and Tumblr is free and seems to have a large userbase and a certain amount of cachet.

Or I may go find me a brand new and far more reasonable web host. Only being able to buy web hosting a year at a time is just plain madness. I can’t think of another service that would make you do that. I have already looked up a few other web hosts that not only let you buy by the month or quarter, but they charge less per month as well.

So my current web host people, FatCow, might just lose my business. I have not made up my mind.

Now you might be wondering, “but yesterday’s blog entry made it sound like you would never be able to post to your usual blog again! How is it you are back? Did you pay up?”

Nope. I just sent a very nice email to FatCow‘s billing department apologizing for the delay in payment, and they were nice enough to give me my website back for a few days so I can get my finances in order.

So of course, the first thing I did was download a backup of all my web entries here. I am not stupid. I want all my options open, and if I decide to leave FatCow, I want to have my backup export file in hand so in theory at least, I can get another host, import the file, and carry on like nothing happened.

And I may do that. I like Tumblr, and there would not be a huge problem if I decided to just blog there from now on. It is certainly the cheaper option. But I have grown used to WordPress, and having my very own domain name, and at least the theoretical possibility that I can make money via Google Ads, and so forth and so on.

In fact, honestly, I wonder how Tumblr’s business model works. There does not appear to be any way for them to get revenue. There is no ads on my blogs as far as I can tell. Could they really make enough on the for-pay blog themes to pay the bills?

I guess they must!

Speaking of business models (one of my fave subjects), I may have figured out what the deal with this FatCow only letting you buy your web hosting a year at a time is. ^[2]

I figure some bean counters at FatCow realized that the single and multi year contracts were the ones that were the most immediately profitable, so they had a Genius Moment and said “I know, let’s just do those ones! Screw attracting new customers, we will just assume that all our existing customers will have no choice but to keep paying us years at a time forever!”

And who knows, maybe that is working for them. I don’t know. But it does not work for me, at least, not at this time in my life.

If I was even a little more financially solid, maybe I could just go with the flow. After all, it was not a huge problem before now. The bill would be due right about when I would be getting a GST cheque and a yearly tax return, and I would just use some of that and not think about it much.

But with my rent going up by $80/month this year, things are considerably different. Some of that tax money is already spoken for, and the rest is needed just to see me through the month, more or less. I was kind of hoping that I would have enough left over to treat myself to a new kitchen gadget, namely a bread machine, but that is looking unlikely right about now. How depressing.

What I really need to do is get started trying to get on full disability. That would solve a lot of problems. It might even let me go back to school and complete my education, which would be huge. ^[3]

But it involves making a phone call and asking for things, both of which are not easy for me with my mental illness hanging around my neck, so that explains why it is taking me a long time to “remember”
(that is, “work up the nerve”) to do it. I will get there eventually. Maybe tomorrow, who knows.

But regardless of what happens, I will continue to write things and post them online. Maybe it will only be at free blogging places, but it will go on. Writing every day is far too much of a habit for me to stop now, and part of that is posting it online.

If it was just a file on my hard drive, I would not be motivated enough to do it. I have to fill my little balloons with the hot breath of my words and then let them loose into the big blue sky of the Internet in order for the whole thing to work.

Sure, maybe only three to six people read said words at all. But it is still better than nothing, and maybe some day, I will figure out how to draw attention to myself and attract a larger following.

And then, well, just watch these words of mine grow wings and soar to new horizons.

[[3]] Or as Donald Trump would say, “yooj”.