eHow, Helium, and Squidoo all shut down. It's time to move all the articles on HubPages to the blogosphere.

I can string words together and have fairly good grammar. I have ideas and information to share. I started with eHow and learned a lot there but they shut us down. So, I moved some of my articles to Helium.

I liked Helium and had a very good time with new writing friends. I practiced my craft at article writing and actually made some money but they also shut down. I moved some of those articles to my computer and the rest found their way to Squidoo. I have enough articles on camping to write my own book which I may do someday.

I had a great time on Squidoo but we were told that they were closing their doors too. It was discouraging but Squidoo had made arrangements with HubPages to take all our lenses and make them hubs. Before the transfer, I deleted more than 50 articles because I knew they weren't going to make it on HubPages. That left about 150 which I edited to conform with their rules. I was enjoying my time until yesterday when all of a sudden some of my hubs became "unfeatured" for quality. I took a hard look at the three of them and could see where they needed to be updated.

However, I am tired of trying to fit what I want to say into other people's rules. It appears that the hubs that were former lenses are being dealt a deathblow. We (those from Squidoo) think HubPages is regretting its decision to take our lenses and this is their way of weeding them out. I updated a healthy lens today only to have it drop into unfeatured for quality. It's about baseball with lots of original photos and even more information on how to be a good baseball parent, including what not to buy.

That will be the first one that I post here next week. Our grandson has been playing baseball since he was five and now that he's got one more year in Junior High, we know a great deal about youth baseball. That information is worth sharing for other parents who might be starting out.

I will not spend any more time complaining about eHow, Helium, Squidoo, and HubPages. What I post now is only me sharing what I know and saying what I want to say.

I have a new direction

Yesterday I posted that I didn't know what to do with this blog. I gave some thought to deleting it but now I find myself in need of an all-purpose blog where I can take advantage of different blogging challenges.

Today I will write my reflection post for the A to Z April Challenge. When reading the post explaining the procedure, it mentions a new A to Z Challenge for road trips. I love road trips but if I am not doing California I need a place to play

I am still deciding if I want to change the blog name but for now it will stay the same. I'm much happier with the decision to keep it alive.

What happened to this blog?

This started out as such a promising blog where I listed articles I had done on Helium and Squidoo. Helium was a bust and although I am still writing on Squidoo, I have finally figured out this blogging stuff.

Tomorrow is the last day of the A to Z Blogging Challenge and I have made it an entire month on Completely California. I did the month of February on Rhea/Yeakley Family History of the Family History Writing Challenge. I now understand that blogging is a ritual that must have a writing schedule.

I'm not ready to give up this blog so I will need to decide how I want to use it. I'm not sure yet where it will go but it's time to step it up if I am going to keep it.