Teaching an old dog new tricks: HTML code opens a door, but podcasting still eludes me

 

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

I had submitted the article about a year ago, so didn’t immediately compute the import of the email’s subject line: “Beyond 9 to 5 story submission”. The title rang no bell in my cluttered mind and the sender’s name had me reaching for the delete key, as it was unknown to me.

Thank goodness cautious reason kicked in and I opened the message: It was informing me that my piece on the six lessons I had learned during my first year of retirement would be published. Yay! Which, after some extensive editing by me to make it the appropriate length, it was. This past November. In the subscriber- and print-only magazine More of Our Canada (a Reader’s Digest publication).

The issue landed in my snail-mail mailbox in late October. Holding the issue in my hands was novel, as everything else I’ve had published in the last while has been online only, which is equally lovely but far easier to share. How could I circulate a printed publication that cannot be bought in a store? 

I sat on this question and did nothing more than sigh about the situation. But, as sometimes happens with an idea on which I am stuck, the way forward hit me like a ton of bricks, out of the blue, all of a sudden in the early-morning hours last Saturday:

1. Ask Google if a pdf file can be embedded in a Blogger post: DUH! (It can.)
2. Follow a link to a nifty YouTube tutorial to learn how. (I did.)
3. Do it. (See below.)

YouTube is an amazing online space — and I’m sure that is not news to you. Need to replace the thread in your yard whipper snipper? Need to figure out why the toilet tank is no longer holding water properly? Want to learn how to paint over an old wooden coaster AND be able to put a hot-beverage mug on it without ruining it? I’ve searched for all three of those things and come up successful each time. Why it took me so long to search for my pdf file question is beyond me. I think I thought it wouldn’t be possible, so I just kept not doing it. But putting up our own wall is silly, isn’t it. Especially because, when I was in the plumbing supply shop a few weeks back, the guy behind the counter assured me I would be able to replace the fill valve on my own without issue. After all, he said, he had reroofed his house by himself by following YouTube tutorials. And, by comparison, a toilet’s fill valve is small fry. Ditto for the embedding of a pdf file, it turns out. 

That task required some very rudimentary HTML coding (HyperText Markup Language), which the tutorial walked me through. Though I got an error message the first few times I tried to replicate the steps, I persevered and figured out where I had inserted erroneous coding, deleted it and, VOILÀ, the file appeared in my post: Yay! Fingers crossed it works at your end, too.

Much about the internet is to be deplored, but much about it is magical and constructive. To name just one thing: this blog. For me, it has opened my writing world up to find readers and other writers, all of whom have enlarged my community and inspired my craft. Half the battle is knowing the question to ask — and then to assess the answers that come our way.

Sometimes the fun is in the exploring. Because I am a radiophile and I love being behind a microphone, I have often daydreamed about developing a podcast as a different vehicle through which to share my thoughts and perspectives on writing. I’ve done a fair bit of research into the form (platforms, tools, marketing, etc.), but no ton of bricks labeled PODCAST has yet fallen on my head — at any time of day. So that idea remains just that for now: an idea.

For someone who, many years ago, reformatted her hard drive at work because I understood just enough about HTML to get myself into serious trouble but not enough to get myself out, the technology successes I have experienced in the past few years (including creating this blog and the writingastool.ca website) are serious internet high points.

They say that no one person can break the internet. Some days I’m not so sure about that, but most days my own attempts to conquer yet another new online task results in nothing more than frustration — and frequently in downright euphoria at having succeeded. Small joy that comes with deep satisfaction: not to be underrated these days, in my view. 

[I’ve not yet replaced the toilet's fill valve. I am steeling myself for just the right moment of courage and inspiration...] 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.