Warning: Over-the-Road Vlog – Day 1

Yep. That’s right. I did it. I did something that I’ve never done in my entire life.I gave in to peer pressure. 🙂

Here’s why.

Tiffany Dow has been guiding me and motivating me for a few years now. She  shares a ton of valuable information, useful insights, and motivational challenges. I’ve participated in most of her challenges and, while I haven’t completed all of them (and a couple are still works in progress), I have found all of them to be useful.

However, her most recent challenge is 30 days of Vlogging. This particular challenge posed some unique issues that I wasn’t sure were going to make it easily doable for me.

First and foremost, since I’m over the road the majority of my week, I tether in order to get online (the equivalent of a phone modem). Second, I’m in and out of hills which means that my service comes and goes (If I don’t have phone service, I don’t have Internet service).

The slower speed makes it difficult to watch videos and nearly impossible to record. Intermittent service, when I’m willing to fight the speed (or tolerate it as the case may be), causes me to constantly have to start over (reload the page).

Now, having said that, Tiffany has had a lot of her followers participating in this challenge. This includes people who have an extreme fear of putting themselves out there. So, while I’m home one day a week and have proper Internet service, I watch as many of them as I possibly can so that I can get to know the people that are part of my online community of friends and do what I can to support and encourage them.

Well yesterday (or maybe the day before) Ruth Pound, who also has Internet issues because she travels, posted her first vlog. I happened to be in a place where I could get consistent service when I got the e-mail, so I went out and watched. And I commented on it because I thought it was really good. In fact, as has been the case throughout this challenge, several of our group commented on it, including Tiffany..

But then, in true Tiffany fashion, she made a comment about my not having participated yet. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, she got backup-involved (thanks Bonnie). 🙂

And she did it in a way that made me laugh so hard that I was determined to get a vlog done. 🙂

• Bonnie Gean says:

  Here here… I second (err, third that request).

   

I started with my phone, but it kept sliding down on the dash. So, when I stopped at the truck stop I grabbed my Flip and recorded with that. Then I found out that uploading it when you have intermittent service is impossible.

By that time, my 11 hours of driving time was up so I handed the keys over to my other half and decided to give my WebCam a shot. That’s the one that you get to see here.

So why the warning? The lighting is bad, the sound is fairly low, my voice is scratchy because I was driving all night long, the video is shaking, and the phone modem slowness causes it to stop and start… it actually freezes up at one point! I did end up using my headset though in order to get better sound. Big rigs have a lot of background noise. 🙂

But you know what? I got it done… Yay me! 🙂

Conclusion: Watch at your own risk! 🙂