By

S.J Asher

Daily writing prompt

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

View all responses

The kitchen clock read 6 AM. I hunched over my laptop at the dining table, WordPress dashboard mocking me from behind a wall of open tabs.

“How to customize a WordPress theme without breaking everything,” I typed, fighting the urge to bang my head against the keyboard.

Absurd. I wrangle complex data sets for a living. Yet here I was, hesitating over a simple blog update.

It wasn’t that WordPress was difficult. It was the lack of a proper testing environment that irked me. No easy way to preview changes, no simple method to roll back if something went wrong. Just apply and pray.

$59.40 a year for backups. $89 for a “premium” theme. $19 a month for a staging site. All for a blog maybe ten people read.

My work computer hummed to life. First email of the day: “Need your input on the latest data set.”

I snorted softly. At work, I had version control, staging environments, and rigorous testing protocols. But for my personal blog? It was like coding blindfolded on a tightrope.

The sun peeked through the blinds. Here I was, still in pajamas, longing for a simple ‘git push’ to update my WordPress site.

I closed the laptop. For now, my blog would stay as is – functional, if not perfect. Like most things in life.

Here…WordPress, happy? I was googling how to do stuff in WordPress without stress. Maybe next time, ask us about the last thing we avoided searching for online. It might be more revealing – and a lot less frustrating.