Sometimes it would be nice if the force were not with you

If limbering up is the warm-up for running, I’m still riffling through my wardrobe for a track suit to wear for my writing project. I realise now that I should have lined up some writing prompts and ideas over the last couple of weeks. Forward planning is not my strong point although rising to a challenge with a seemingly impossible deadline has become a forte of mine, if a little stress inducing.

So here I am for day 2 of wordsmithing and I’m at a loss for words. My inner coach said to me to “be optimistic, starting is often the hardest thing”. My immediate thought was at least there are only 30 days in June.

This could be a long month blogging if this weekend’s experience is to go by. My website has been under a “brute force attack” and although its firewall defences have put up a good fight too many attempts to login to the site means my website host blocks access. It’s then a tedious process of live chatting with an IT geek half way around the world.

Thankfully my website hosting company has a support service that suits me perfectly.  I pick the option they describe as “talk to me as if I am a complete idiot”. That helps but they are IT folks and before long slip into all sorts of jargon and complicated IT manoeuvres that leave me pleading apologetically,  “Can you say that again in shorter simpler sentences using real words”. In these exchanges I’ve learned about clearing cache and DNS.  What’s more I’ve learned that with the flick of a switch they can unlock my website after they’ve confirmed I’m not a cyber criminal. I think the basset hound photographs were a bit of a giveaway.

Only time will tell whether the internet nasties have gone away. I feel nothing but contempt for them. Like other forms of terrorism, Internet warfare hurts the uninitiated and innocent. If only such people put their destructive energies into something more meaningful and stopped wasting other people’s time and money on dealing with their evil deeds.

My website was hacked once before. I felt completely held to ransom without the knowledge nor skills to extricate the digital worm growing inside my blog’s internal organs.  Just at both I and my website were at melting point I called up the online equivalent of roadside rescue service. I was as helpless as I am when it comes to changing a punctured tyre but my knight with a shining keyboard tapped momentarily and declared it all clean again. All this was of course after I had signed up for their website security service. Just as well really as this week has tested the defences of my website once again.

Given the shenanigans this weekend, I’m rather inclined to think that wordsmithing would be so much simpler with just a notebook and pen.