Bother this blinking blogging

Do you know? It all went so well last week. I couldn't believe how easy it all was. Found a blogging thing, signed up, chose a design, wrote some words, pressed 'publish'. Wey-hey! Bob's your Uncle; I was a blogger.
Of course I made some mistakes. I typed the whole thing straight into the 'compose' box without running it past my trusty spell-checker and thesaurus in Word (which accounts for that annoying typo - did you spot it?). And I thought I was entitling just that installment Entering the 21st Century (11 years late) not the whole blog. Certainly my intention is not to witter unvaryingly on topics technical; oh no. I am planning a wide range of wittering. Perhaps a better title would have been One Woman's Witterings.
And perhaps I was a tad cavalier about how easy it would be for you, dear reader, to sign up as a follower. I didn't realise you'd have to have a google, yahoo or twitter account to do it. However, exhaustive researches this week have revealed that signing up, for a google account at least, is easy as pie. It doesn't mean having a new email address or having to check anywhere other than your in-box. Literally you hit that wibbly wobbly googly-woogly thing, that one up there top right - see it? Where it says 'follow'. Put in your usual email address and google does the rest; it will automatically send you a friendly notification every time I publish a new installment.
The reason it was so easy for me (it transpires) is because I already have a google account. I use their on-line calendar to synchronise my Outlook diary between my two laptops; the one I use in the US and the one I use at home. I put in birthdays and appointments and the diary sends me a reminder a few days beforehand. Periodically google lifts the information from one and plonks it onto the other, and vice versa, to make sure I have no excuse for forgetting your birthday even though I am half a world away.
Theoretically, using this tool, it would be possible to synchronise your calendar with your beloved’s (that way he would KNOW when you’d been to the hairdressers without having to resort to any of those tricky visual clues like a completely different hairstyle!). Let me say at once, for my male readers, it could be a handy way of letting her know you’d booked a weekend of golf without having to be brave enough to actually TELL her! You could set a reminder a couple of days before (especially handy if your golf gear needs laundering, although risky.....) or perhaps an hour or two after you’d set off..........?
So, all in all, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself and decided to explore the possibilities of blogging a little further. Big mistake. Delving just a little under the skin of the thing reveals a whole morass of jargon and gobbledegook designed to keep amateurs like me OUT.
Take the 'monetize' option (only an American could have come up with a word like that - of which more, much more, in future installments). Good idea, I thought to myself. Monetize a little - why not? There's no law against it. I signed on as an Amazon Associate, since I do shop there and I do intend to talk about books; what a good idea, I thought, I'll tell you about books and point you towards the right page in Amazon so that you can buy them for yourself. You wouldn't begrudge me 25p commission, would you? No, I thought not.
They made it sound so easy. Click on the thing. Copy and paste the html (hyper-technical-malarkey-language) into your blog, the html (horribly-tortured-mumbojumbo-lingo) becomes a neatly underlined, ready-made link for you to press saying something benign like 'pretty please click here if you'd like to see it for yourself''.
But could I get it to work? Hours of potentially productive time went by while I wrestled with it. All I could get was an interminable sequence of the really off-putting squiggles and ticks and blobs which are html (highly-tense-making-looniness) which I know you would have found too intimidating to use.
So I wrote to Amazon, in words of one syllable, explaining my plight. What did I get back? Reams and reams of such jargon-laden, impenetrable twaddle that reading it was like trying to decifer a foreign language. 'Add context links beta javascript to your blogger blog', they suggest. Excuse me? 'Remove comments tag from your context links javascript'. Sorry? 'Blogger sometimes strips off the javascript...'
Oh forget it!
Do you know what I think? I think it's a conspiracy. I think they make these things more complicated than they need to be to maintain the need for an elite, closed order of techno-geeks who are conspiring to take over the world. As more and more of our lives become digitised we become more and more reliant on technology, to such an extent that many of us cannot now write legible long-hand, use a map, look up a word in a dictionary or remember a telephone number. We'd rather leave a message for a friend on Facebook than give them a call and talk to them. But we're more likely to call them than walk down the road and knock on their door.
There's no doubt that 'they' are watching us. The other day I realised that all the adverts down the side of my Facebook page are targetted at me. Anti-wrinkle cream, belly-fat busting miracle pills and mugs which say 'go away, I'm reading' (actually, I'd quite like one of those!). There was also an 'earn £45ph from home' advert which I idly clicked on the other day, from my seat here in the lounge of this Doylestown home. Spookily, yesterday, on another site altogether, there was this: Doylestown woman investigates 'work from home' scam and finds it's the genuine article. It took me to exactly the same site. Now you tell me that's a coincidence.
So, all in all, my desire to embrace all things etherial has met a considerable set-back. What seemed, last week, to be an opportunity bright and shiny with possibilities now seems shady and a little dangerous.
It's a shame. There is so much here which is potentially good, especially for people like me who have geographical challenges to overcome. This week I have used internet banking to pay a bill; I used Skype to talk to my lovely family; I ordered flowers for a certain somebody's birthday; I downloaded a free knitting pattern and I investigated a dozen prospective honeymoon destinations, all from the comfort of home.
My quest to enter the 21st century continues. But I am proceeding with caution.