Your Season Newsletter 15

Hi there!

What a week this has been! There has been a lot of frustration with the website's certification, but taking a step back and realising there are plenty of other things I can work on in the meantime was very important for my sanity!

CHALLENGE FOR THE WEEK: WEBSITE CERTIFICATION ISSUES

This week, the website's ssl certificate unexpectedly expired. I have just changed web development teams, so it's something that fell through the cracks.

An ssl certificate is what adds the "https" at the start of a website address. It lets viewers know that the website is "safe". If you have gone to look at the website over the last week, you probably saw this:

So, I tried to renew the certificate on Wix, where the domain is hosted. They were unable to help me, and pointed me to AWS, where the website is being hosted.

If names like 'DNS Record', 'ssl certificate', 'CNAME', 'pointing', 'pem file', 'ec2' mean absolutely nothing to you, same. I have spent the better part of last week trying to learn a lot of terms.

I have asked for help from several developers, including personal friends, my previous team, my new team, and AWS support. NOBODY has been able to work out exactly why the website is down.

This is what it currently looks like:

This has been frustrating, stressful and illuminating. I keep joking that I will be really good at the technical stuff by the time I don't need to do it anymore....

In the meantime, pray for me!

UPDATE: In the time I've been writing this, THE WEBSITE IS UP AND RUNNING AGAIN! I've never been so happy to see a website load!

WIN FOR THE WEEK: FOCUS AND RESILLIENCE

This situation has really dragged on much longer than I would have liked it to. Much longer than it really should have, I’m sure.

Now, it was very tempting to let this overrun my entire week and destroy any progress or sense of accomplishment. I did create this TikTok in commiseration.

Luckily for the business, I am an extremely resilient person. For those of you who don't know, my trained profession is as a singer and composer. I spent a decade after Uni working towards being a professional musician. The amount of hard work I had to put into my progress vs results have put me in excellent stead as an entrepreneur.

Musician skills I actively use include;

• being detail-oriented without losing sight of the big picture,

• if I am stuck on a task, I go away and come back later. If I force myself to keep working on something that is going badly, it will probably get worse, which will make me feel worse,

• taking time to understand WHY something isn't working, rather than just pushing ahead,

• the ability to absorb and use large amounts of new information,

• pivoting. Sometimes plans change. Having a list of 'other jobs' you can rotate through is important,

• resting. There is only one of me, and my likelihood of being efficient is lower when I overdo it.

So, instead of crumbling into a heap, I focused on things that I COULD control. I am continuing to have ongoing discussions around getting the website up and running, but focused on things like;

• organising my finances,

• working on social media,

• reaching out to people,

• submitting applications, and

• researching.

Maintaining my regular eating, sleeping and exercise schedules have also been very important for my wellbeing this week. It's tempting to throw everything out the window when things aren't going well, but I've learnt that I am most productive when my routine is in place.

Look after yourselves!

I have received some absolutely incredible feedback about Your Season recently. Here is one tile Tanja has done up for social media. I can’t even.

If you can think of anyone who would be interested in joining me on this journey, please invite them to subscribe to the newsletter here.

Talk soon!

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