ELENA'S CREATIVE UPRISING - 2026 No. 06

In this issue: Transitions Are Coming

CREATIVE CORNER
- New Newsletter Logo
- Community Name Change
- Substack Made Easy

WELLNESS
- Life in Balance - are you a beta reader?

ACTIVISM
- Real-Life Activism
- Help if You’re Stopped by ICE

NEW YORK CITY
- Life in the City of Dreams

QUOTE
Ray Bradbury

Photo above by Chen on Unsplash

June 27, 2026

Well, I did it! I migrated my website to Hostinger. The migration was automatic, totally seamless, no glitches, nothing dropped out, great support, very professional. And their prices can’t be beat. I recommend Hostinger!

And after migrating my site I tackled something I’ve been putting off for ages because it involved having to learn to use something new (to me): blocks! Yes, I’m just now getting with the block game, which has been around for seven or eight years now. They used to be called Gutenberg blocks in the WordPress environment, after Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the movable-type printing press. According to WP, they used the name because “the new editing system was designed to revolutionize publishing and typography in the digital era just as the printing press did for the printed word.” But now they’re just called blocks.

Why was I resistant to using blocks to design and edit my website? Because I’m somewhat of an expert at coding with HTML and CSS and I love coding! HTML and CSS is what we used for years to create and maintain websites, and I have decades of experience invested in doing just that.

Using blocks, the newer way to create, design, and edit websites, makes creating the segments of a website instant and easy. Just click, choose, adjust your options, and you’re done. No coding! This meant that everyone could create a lovely website without knowing a single thing about coding—fabulous!

That made me sad. I liked doing the thing that was now almost obsolete. So I had to give up my reluctance to stop doing the thing I enjoyed that I spent years learning to do and make an effort to learn something completely different but ultimately easier and really necessary if I want to live in this decade.

I also didn’t relish the idea of the learning experience I would likely have to have in learning to accomplish in blocks the fine adjustments that I used to make easily in HTML/CSS. Using blocks is a totally different way of thinking and doing, and each setting for making adjustments is nestled within other settings, so I knew it would not be an instant transition, but one which involved a lot of trial and error and searching for what I needed.

But I also knew that if anyone asked me to edit or create a website for them going forward, I would need to be proficient with blocks. And that my own site was starting to look dated because I wasn’t using this newer technology. So I decided that this was the time for me to catch up with the present.

I’m happy to say that I’ve now converted my entire website from code to blocks, and learned a lot in the process. I’ve even begun to enjoy using blocks—every time I discover something I can do now with a click of the mouse that used to take strings of code I get excited! And this way of working opens new possibilities to design that have me looking forward to the future rather than dreading it.

In addition, it used to be typical, even expected, that a site would have multiple subpages (child pages) of each menu tab or category, but that just doesn’t work on phones, so the trend now is to have a lot of information laid out vertically and cleanly on each main page and not use subpages, which makes the site function well on any device (this is known as being responsive). So I completely reorganized the site, tossing out many pages and paring it down from more than thirty-five pages to about seven (plus a few subpages in Music). There’s less for you to read and less work for me!

I also edited or rewrote most of the copy. There are a few items still to be done—upgrade some of the images, finish the Resources page—but my website is now ready for the future instead of hanging on to the past. Although it’s still a work in progress, the heavy lifting has been done, so you can take a peek at the website now. It should be easier to use.

While I was enduring this 40+-hour(!) “learning experience,” I recalled a time when analog photography was shifting to digital, I believe sometime in the 1990s. I knew a certain headshot photographer who was quite famous for her beautiful, dramatic, black-and-white headshots, developed in her darkroom, painstakingly retouched with a brush in her experienced hand to become works of art. She spent years perfecting her art and her craft.

Then, overnight, everyone who had previously clamored for her services wanted and needed digital headshots and had little use for analog ones (everyone had a website now!). And headshots were expected to be in color and not black and white. She had to become a beginner again. I remember thinking how incredibly difficult that must have been for her. I learned later that she gave up doing the opera headshots she had been famous for and became a children’s photographer. I imagine she found it impossible to get the dramatic, lyrical effects she got shooting and retouching in analog in the completely different and colder medium of pixels that were then edited on a computer. Digital photography will never have the sheer beauty that analog photography did. But along with that loss, we gained so much! Think of all the things we do with digital images now that were not only impossible but unimaginable not long ago.

As technology advances with increasing speed and we incorporate AI into our lives, most of us are going to have to learn and transition to new ways of doing the things that were formerly routine in our profession, sometimes pivoting to new skills and requirements that make our jobs almost unrecognizable. Change in the work world has never happened this quickly before. I do feel for everyone who has to endure this. But it might be that while we lose parts of our jobs that we used to enjoy, we might gain the ability to do things we could not have conceived of even ten years ago. It’s human and necessary to grieve what’s lost, but it’s possible that we also have a lot to look forward to. Here’s to moving forward!

I’ve studied nutrition, healing, and holistic medicine for 50 years. It’s a passion of mine. I integrate the best of all worlds in the strategy for health I’ve developed in all those years. And I’ve written a book, LIFE IN BALANCE-Exploring Health: What it really is, how to get it, and how to maintain it. It will help you create your own wellness plan.
I expect it to be out by September (possibly sooner).

I’m looking for a couple of beta readers to read this short book on wellness (~40K words) and comment briefly with any thoughts or questions. Let me know if that’s you! I expect it to be ready to read by July 20. Payment will be a free copy of the book to use in your own life and free entry into my next workshop in September—which I believe will be a powerful event you won’t want to miss!