What To Do While Your Domain is Stuck in Transfer

I am a control freak in so many ways. Not knowing things drives me insane like nothing else quite can. This past month I've been putting a lot of prep work into transferring my website from Blogger to Wordpress on BlueHost. I'd done so much research into everything I thought I needed to know. I was actually pretty impressed with myself. I felt totally in control and like I could tackle anything.

The time was finally right and I signed up for BlueHost. I had already owned my domain name for quite a while, so I selected the option to transfer my domain name to BlueHost. All was going well. I hadn't researched quite deep enough into the huge ordeal transferring a domain name would be, however. BlueHost made this treacherous journey fairly straightforward, and with as little pain as possible, for which I've grateful. But once all was said and done, instead of being able to go ahead and set up my new website on my old domain, everything was frozen in time. It would take between 3 and 10 days for the transfer to take place! AND I wouldn't be able to actually put together my website until the transfer was over because I naively bypassed the option of setting it up on a temporary address.

And so here I am -- 4 days in and already dying. It's not like it's a brand new site with only a handful of pages and posts to set up. I have 4 1/2 years worth of content that I have to sort through, with thousands of files, not to mention a brand new e-commerce store to get up and running (though that won't be happening until after the main site is fully-functional).

Since nobody asked: what have I done in those 4 days to tide over the anxiety and suffering inflicted upon my every moment by my domain name? Well, I've...

Memorized the books of the Old Testament

I have one week left to Seminary, and being the know-it-all that I've become known as, I had a reputation to uphold!

Found a vintage "The Black Cauldron" plush fair folk

I've found some weird things at Goodwill, but this may be the weirdest. Nobody's even heard of the movie, and it's just a nameless character. Why would they make a plush of it?

Created a cute flyer for a hike I'm not attending

Meaning actually cute. I'm usually a really harsh critic of myself, but it's seriously super fun and professional and almost makes me wish I didn't hate hiking.

Listened to all the 2015 Tony Nominated Musical Albums

The revivals of On the Town and The King and I are great, and Fun Home was so innovative and emotional, but Something Rotten! makes the theater nerd in me so happy!

Compulsively purchased 2 Barbie movies

I've been on a dangerous Barbie kick this past month. I think it's rooted in the denial that I'm going to college in 3 months. But it's hard not to love the shallow, sparkly girl power Barbie movies.

Made a Super Mario Bros. 8-bit Birthday Cake

It was not impressive, but it was amusing constructing an 8-bit Mario out of M&M's.

Logged onto BlueHost 2,000 times

I don't know if they'll notify me or not, so better safe than sorry!

Responded to 20+ emails from people who followed a link on Pinterest and were greeted by a sad, broken Google 404 Error

I guess it's a good thing to have a lot of traffic, but not if your site is offline and there are only so many ways you can satisfy the needs of strangers who are depending on you.

Had a minor freak out because what if nothing has happened and it's been more than 10 days and I actually have to call them on the phone and talk to a real person! 

In my world, there would be no phone calls with strangers. Only intelligently phrased emails. But I guess some people don't work that way.

Deep down inside I have a good feeling about all of this. Hopefully once the domain is transferred, I'll be perfectly back on track to executing everything according to schedule. If not, I suppose I can wing it!

Fresh Spring Color Palettes

I'm sort of a color snob--in the nicest way possible! I'm not a nature person at all, but I love the vibrant color combinations found in nature. I was away in Utah this past week and got to enjoy some spectacular mountain sunsets, but I found myself missing the green of Washington. Upon arriving home, I was greeted by spring flowers in just about every color I could imagine.

These beautiful color combinations are all pretty different, but they all scream spring to me. Some are bright, and some are pastel, but all are simple and unique.

Adobe Illustrator Alphabet for Designers

I still consider myself a relative newbie to being a "designer." And by "designer," I consider that to mean someone who is creating designs to serve a purpose that have some level of professionalism to them. I've been using Adobe Illustrator for less than a year, and I don't see myself going back now. I used to use paint.net, which was the best free tool I could find for what I wanted to do, but my design skills have grown exponentially since switching to Illustrator. I've been able to spend more time as a designer and less time on the trivial details.

But the trivial details still get in the way sometimes. Sometime after I started using it, I learned about the keyboard shortcuts. There is a myriad of shortcuts that speed things up immensely. I began keeping a little cheat sheet with all the keyboard shortcuts, in case I forgot any of them. I now consider myself pretty fluent in Illustrator shortcuts, but a cheat sheet for reference still doesn't hurt.

And thus was born the Adobe Illustrator Alphabet. If you're going to learn any shortcuts, it would be these. In some big projects with a ton of back and forth, these have literally cut my time in half. This quick infographic is super helpful to have on hand for projects.

Waiting...

I am a compulsive email checker. I've never understood those who go for weeks on end without checking their email. I get anxious if I haven't checked my email in 24 hours. Of course, I have enough important emails that I need to check it daily, but I take it to the far extreme sometimes.

After getting rejected from BYU last week, I've been extra diligent in making sure I don't miss anything from BYU-Idaho, but I'm surprisingly not the slightest bit anxious about things. I'm not worried about getting in, but I don't like the unknown. I want to know the end from the beginning, and that's not the way life works, and my subconscious has come to terms with that.

My mom, however, has been asking me 20 times a day if I've been accepted. She'll ask "have you heard?" and I won't even process the question, because it isn't on my mind at all. But evidently it's on hers.

It is getting pretty late to be hearing from them, so I should hear on Monday, but in the meantime, I'll have to find something exciting to keep myself busy with!