Recently, I blogged about how time is valuable and how I hate to waste it doing things like yard work or cleaning the house. I couldn't understand why someone wouldn't hire it out if it was at all possible with their financial situation. I also had a very hard time with someone referring to doing it all themselves as "work ethic."
And then I had my moment of comeuppance.
My issue? I'm really good with computers and computer-related stuff. I'm not a professional, I don't have an education in this area, but if I find instructions online, I'll do it myself and I'm almost always successful.
Soooo anyway, I realized (belatedly) that I needed to get an SSL certificate for my website because Google is penalizing sites without this in their search results (or so I was told). Someone on a writers' loop even referenced a site that does free SSL certificates. Of course, my webhost isn't one of the sites using them.
I began searching out how to install this free certificate myself. It included getting a dedicated IP address (additional cost) and doing a manual configuration. I literally have 20 tabs open on my laptop trying to get all the information together I need to do this.
And then I thought, WTH are you doing? Do you have time to muck around with this? The answer is no. I have a full-time job, an elderly father who lives with me, and I'd also like to write and sleep. I literally could click to add the certificate and pay the price the webhost charges and it would be done for me. Um, yeah.
I still don't call this work ethic, but I do understand where that other author was coming from a little better right now. I hate to pay someone to do computer things that I know I could figure out on my own and manage to do successfully. If I had the time.
Reluctantly, I decided it would be smarter to pay and not deal with it all. Which ended up not being as easy as I'd hoped because my name servers weren't pointed to my webhost and I had to update that. Now I have to wait for that information to propagate over before I can spend money on the SSL certificate. I also need to wait for my dedicated IP to kick in, but I think that's on their end rather than mine. In any case, once I pay, they can deal with it all and I don't have to worry about it.
