I Won't Give Up

 I  hope it was a glitch, but I'm not so sure.

The date of my post was November 19, 2014.  Don't go looking for it, because you won't find it.  It was disappeared (not a typo) on July 4, 2022, the day we celebrate here in the United States as Independence Day.

How ironic.  

I need to explain what happened, and I'll tip toe around some facts so nothing similar happens to this post.

On July 4th I was prewriting my Tuesday, July 5 post, "Finally Time for A New Phone?".

But when I tried to publish it, the blogging platform I use immediately tagged it as not meeting their standards for acceptable material.  It was put back into draft, and I was instructed, by a label they placed on the post, that I needed to review their standards and rewrite the post.  No explanation of what was wrong (from their point of view).  There was a link for me to read such standards.

I didn't see anything wrong with it.

I shortened it a little, and made a slight change to the title, and it published. 

I was sitting outside in the back yard when this happened, and when I came back into the house, my spouse said "What happened? You look like you just ate a cockroach."  I told him what happened.

Later that evening, when I checked my email, I saw a message that a different post had been pulled from my published posts and put back into draft.  No explanation, once again.  If I want to republish it, the post has to undergo a review. I'm noting this post was published in 2014.

The pulled post, in case you are wondering is about how certain technology that we think is relatively new actually isn't.  For example, did you know that the first electric car was made in 1890?  It was a post full of trivia.  That's all.

So, is said mega corporation crawling through all our posts, those of us who use that platform, looking for certain keywords?  Or was it some kind of glitch?  I somehow doubt it was a real person, looking for posts he or she could mark with a scarlet "C".

The post remains in my drafts with a big red symbol on it.

You who have self hosted blogs will probably tell me that since I don't have a self hosted blog, this could happen again.  I don't doubt it.  But it's not going to make me give up blogging.  Several times recently, though, hair has stood up on my neck when I'm ready to publish.  Maybe the cause of this incident was innocuous but it's necessary to summon the feelings of "something more".  It's the times we live in.

Right now, I need to remember how I felt the evening of July 4. I was blogging on my laptop in the backyard, and when I came in, my spouse remarked "you look like you just swallowed a cockroach.  What happened?"

Initially, I wondered  (because I linked to several sites where I obtained information about the age of the technology I was blogging about in that post) if one of those sites had been since taken over by a site which was now - ahem - not reputable.  That's one explanation.

Now, I'm not so sure.

I have prided myself in publishing one post (sometimes more) daily since I finished a blogging challenge in May of 2011.  Now, like a mouth missing a tooth in the front, I know there is something missing.  My writing tongue probes for the wound. 

This blog (I started it in 2009) has years of memories.  Years of information meaningful to me that I refer to from time to time.

Right now, I have to decide if it's worth the trouble to rewrite the post and try to republish it. I feel I am honor bound to do something.  I don't just want to ignore it and go on my not so merry blogging way.  The fact that it happened on July 4 is not lost on me. 

I should thank this blogging platform for doing this to me, because now I have a taste of what it feels like.  It's something brave writers have dealt with for years in other countries.

So my immediate question is one for those who use or have used this blogging platform.  Has this happened to you?

And if it did, what did you do?