When Blog Plans Go Awry: Rebuilding a Series and Tackling the Selfie Struggle

I had planned to share a light, spring-inspired post today—something fresh, pretty, and easy to DIY with a little visual inspiration mixed in. That was the idea. Then everything changed late last night.

Earlier yesterday I announced a new mini-series that’s due to start on Monday. I’ve been working on this project for weeks and was really excited to share it. I wanted to do a thorough job and make sure every post was polished, so I wrote and prepared all seven entries in advance.

I admit I was a little nervous while putting it together—this was my first time doing a multi-day series like this—but I enjoyed the process. After several late nights and about eight hours of focused work, all seven posts were written and ready to go. I waited to make the public announcement until every post was finished and scheduled so the rollout would be seamless.

After I announced the series, I checked my email one more time before bed because a guest blogger had a question. I went to the scheduled post for Monday to double-check something—and what I saw made my stomach drop.

Of the seven posts I had prepared, only one remained. The other six were gone.

I was devastated. I wanted to bury my head and cry, but I’d just gotten a new pair of reading glasses—my so-called “old lady glasses”—and I wasn’t about to risk scratching them with a dramatic forehead-on-desk move. Instead I forced myself to go to sleep and lay awake replaying what I might have done wrong.

The error turned out to be painfully simple and avoidable: I was using LiveWriter and didn’t open a new post for each entry. I kept modifying, saving, and publishing from the same draft, and LiveWriter only retained the last version I worked on. In my case that meant “Day 7” overwrote everything else. A classic case of a workflow misstep.

This morning I spent hours rebuilding the six lost posts while wearing my new glasses. It wasn’t fun, but I took it as an opportunity to improve and refine the content. I’m relieved to report that everything is now recreated and scheduled correctly—fingers crossed that it stays that way.

Now for a lighter question I’ve been dying to ask: how do people take good photos of themselves? Bloggers make self-portraits look so effortless—shoulder-height camera, a casual glance into the mirror, and voilà—stylish and polished. My attempts were anything but. I tried to photograph my new glasses and ended up with awkward angles and mirror reflections I didn’t mean to capture.

There are a few accidental details in my shots that make me laugh—like the tile in the background and the realization that our bathroom could use another renovation. I captured the old mirror, the toothbrush cord, and a series of half-framed selfies that are more humorous than glamorous.

Eventually I managed to get partially into the frame—peek-a-boo, at least—and snapped a few shots that show the glasses well enough. They aren’t magazine-perfect, but they’re real, and that’s what I’m sharing.

If you have tips on taking flattering self-portraits—especially tricks to minimize a double chin or to make glasses look stylish—I’d love to hear them. After today’s lesson in blog management and mirror photography, I’d welcome any practical blogging tips: how you schedule multi-post series, avoid overwriting drafts, and capture better self-portraits quickly and easily.

It’s been a long day of lessons learned: back up drafts carefully, check your publishing workflow, and practice a few selfie techniques before you decide to share your new look with the world. I’m grateful the series has been restored, amused by my awkward photos, and excited to continue sharing the content I worked so hard to create.