You will find future blog posts here: http://discoveringranchlife.com!

Discovering Ranch Life is the second blog I've been writing on blogger. I've been using blogger mostly to make it easy for myself. I think blogger is very easy to work with. It's also free. I am aware of the question of ownership of the content. It does bug me. I even tried to recreate my blog on Wordpress a few months ago. I thought I’ll give it a try. I kind of like the design of my blog on Blogspot. I custom made it the way I wanted it to be. When I started to do the same thing on Wordpress I got a little frustrated, they wanted money for every little thing I choose to add. When it become around $150 and I still was in the starting process I gave up.

However, now when I'm getting more serious with my photography I don’t feel comfortable having so little control over my content, on Blogspot. Therefor I decided to give Wordpress another try. 

http://discoveringranchlife.com

While you're there you should visit my brand new "about page",

http://discoveringranchlife.com/about/. 

This is a working progress and the site is far from finished…I guess a blog is never finished..really. One different is that I don't have all the pictures in the sidebars anymore. Instead I'm making a separate gallery with my best pictures. The gallery is coming soon.

If you want to read more about Blogger v/s Wordpress this is a brilliant post http://www.aroyaldaughter.com/2013/01/04/blogger-vs-wordpress-content-ownership/. 

Ps. You can read all my old posts on my new blog http://discoveringranchlife.com.   See you soon!

Spring is here!

Computer Breakdown and Photography

I've had some difficulties with my computer lately. I bravely worked around them for almost half a year. Lately they've gotten more and more difficult to manage. Yesterday when I just finished writing on my blog and was about to upload pictures to the post, it completely crashed (that's why yesterday's post only had a link to the pictures. Because I uploaded them to a photo site before writing on my blog..) I'm amazed the computer lasted me that long. I've had it for three years and used it A LOT. 

Since it had a head of it's own lately, I've been prepared for the final breakdown. I did "lose" around 20 000 pictures, but I have most of them on other places. I guess I could have a professional try to save them. However I think I'll choose to "have a fresh start" with only new, better pictures instead. I really want to improve my photography, that's why I've been taken so many pictures lately. I'm also going to take an online photo course, starting tomorrow. I am very excited about that! The name of the course is "Everyday Magic". What an inspiring name! I'm looking forward to a lot of inspiration and networking with other photographers.

So what am I typing on right now? My extremely supportive husband surprised me with a new computer today - a MacBook Pro. I'm looking forward to create some "Everyday Magic" inside of it. Should I use the photo program that comes with the computer? Or find out where my PhotoShop CD is and install PhotoShop?

The art of writing

Yesterday I stumbled upon this awesome website http://goinswriter.com/ by the Author Jeff Goins. I found his tips for social networking and writing extremely relevant and useful, therefor I´m sharing it with you. I know that many of YOU my dear readers have blogs of your own. I bet that you could use a portion of Jeff´s wisdom and experience too.

After I subscribed to his newsletter he sent an email with even more useful tips. In the end Jeff asked me, his new follower, to reply to the email and tell him a little bit about myself. So I did. Since I wrote my reply after following all the links in his email my mind were on my own writing skills, or luck of skills. Here´s a copy of my letter = my thoughts of my blog writing challenges right now. I would love for you to think about what you would do if you were in my shoes. Leave a comment and tell me after you finished reading my letter to Jeff.

Hi Jeff!

 

I found your awesome blog yesterday when I googled different ways to improve my blog. I´m a Swedish girl that decided to say yes to my childhood dreams of having a ranch. Infact my husband and I have several ranches now. I always loved writing and therefor writing a blog about things I´m passionate about seem like a brilliant idea. I´m relatively new to blogging and I´m eager to learn from more experienced networkers and writers like yourself. I love challenges, I´m smart and I am the living proof of that everything is possible. Right now my two biggest challenges are:

 

GRAMMAR (as you probably already noticed!) English is my second language. I live in California and I choose to write in English to read the audience I want to connect with (and all my Swedish readers speak English as well.) I sometimes have access to editors, but not to every post I write. I´m trying to solve that problem by reading as much high quality material as I possibly can every day. I also write every day.

 

TIME: I have a family - a husband, two adorable kids (one of them 4months old and still breastfeeding), 15 horses, alpacas,dogs, sheep and goats. I also have a time consuming hobby/work(sometimes) as a photographer.

 

I followed many of the links you shared and I found several of them very useful. Especially the one about asking the people you want to interact with. I discovered the same thing three years ago, that good leaders want to have interaction with us "deadly people".

Thank you for great inspiration, I´m really looking forward to getting to know you better.

 

Maria Northcutt

 

 

What kind of challenges do you have as a writer? In your daily life? How are you dealing with them?
What´s your thought about the challenges I mentioned? Let me know!