
As you can tell from the tumbleweeds around here I’ve been incommunicado for some time now. People usually say "life gets in the way", but that’s not the case for me. It feels like I’ve run out of steam and all my words have just disappeared. Instead of being frustrated it has been a relief because, in all honesty, I haven’t had much to say. With no energy and no words I landed square inside the doldrums.
Resistance reared its ugly head in many forms as well from late night revelry in Ybor City to "just one more episode of this Law & Order: SVU marathon." Coupled with a heavy and ever increasing workload I’ve had plenty of excuses to slack off which is much easier to justify when there’s no fuel for the fire. Consumption didn’t work (turned into distraction), change in focus didn’t work (turned into multi-tasking quicksand) and staring at the blank page didn’t work (turned into frustration). At this point all roads led to the same miserable spot.
Despite this swirling mess of inertia I stuck to the few creative commitments I had. I hammered out a long overdue post for RetroHack. My Monday meetings with my new writing partner Mike Elrod continued as scheduled. I jotted down spurts of words whenever a fleeting moment of inspiration struck. All of these activities, minor in themselves, slowly built back the momentum I had been sorely missing.
Now I have writing goals for September that are ambitious yet feel achievable, new stories to develop both offline and online, websites to build into digital homesteads and even creative partnerships which are already fruitful. I’ve proven to myself that the old adage of "just keep at it" really does work. It may not have been churning out 1000 words a day, but continuing with any creative pursuit has chipped away at the wall like a prisoner with a spoon.
Over at RetroHack, my partner-in-crime Ed is celebrating a great blogging milestone. He has been published and PAID for a guest post. With all the tips you see online about writing guest posts for free to generate traffic, here’s Señor Fisher making money from his blood, sweat and ink. Congratulations buddy, may your words be seen far and wide.
Also, one of Ed’s incredibly useful articles is especially relevant these days. RIM (aka the makers of Blackberry) have continued to screw the pooch with their latest OS update. Still not learning from the first time around they’ve shoved Blackberry Messenger down everyone’s throat yet again. For those on you incensed by this please make your way over to howto://delete BlackBerry Messenger from BlackBerry OS 5.0 for sweet, sweet release.
As always, RetroHack is filled with nerdy goodness and snarky humor. Make sure to follow him on Twitter for bite-sized techie tidbits.

When I come across a sharp new blog I often wonder what kind of plugins they’re running under the hood. I’ve always believed seeing a slick plugin on a live site is a million times better than any review you could read on WordPress. When I first started out, I shared the plugins used in Cuban Nomad and followed it up a couple of months later with more cool plugins I had discovered. This time instead of a bucket list of everything under the sun, I wanted to focus on a specific aspect of my blog and the plugins used to enhance it.
Ease of Use
Commenting isn’t always a straightforward activity. There are forms to fill out or logins to enter and then you have to decide what you’re going to say. For newbies just the thought of trying to format the comment can trigger panic attacks. What if you screw up and your comment is forever engraved with broken code? Are they all gonna laugh at you?
That’s a lot of stress for a newcomer looking to add their two cents. If you want people to participate then you have to make it as easy as possible. For me that meant leaving comments open to just name and email. Yes, anonymous trolls can jump in and cause trouble, but why should I punish my readers for someone else’s anti-social behavior? Here are the some other ways I’ve tried to make it painless to participate.
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