Welcome! “Where Bloggers Live” started out kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…with bloggers! We all like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes, interests, and lives, so every month this wonderful  family of amazing women shares their work-spaces, homes, towns, and thoughts, with posts based on specific prompts. It’s been so interesting over the years to see the different ways each of us interpret the topics.

This month’s Where Blogger’s Live prompt is The Tabs That Never Close: My Essential Websites

I have a friend back home who like never closes tabs…and she always has zillions of tabs open on her laptop. It gives me So Much Anxiety to have so many things open at once…let alone that it seems to (even if just in my mind) slow down my computer.

BUT, that said, there are certain sites I almost always have open…and keep them to the left side of my tab screen.

Notepad

Notepad is LIFE. I love the speed of working in a non-formatted word processor (is that what they’re called still?). I have many specific custom lists, but my air is my ongoing “Daily Notes.” I have two open at all times – the one that dates back to 2006…and the “this month” one. At the end of a month, I copy the month’s worth of notes and past them into the big one. A few years ago I was having trouble typing into the big one and I decided it was just too big, so now I never work in that one, I just paste into it. It’s open if I need to reference things from past months/years. But all the new activity goes into the “this month” one.

And what goes into it? EVERYTHING. To Do lists, any sort of contact information, lists of shows to watch, books to read, authors to read, places to go, quotes, anything I just want to remember or be able to reference in the future. It’s just a digital journal.

I tried replacing it with…

Notion

…but I just couldn’t quite get on a comfort level with it. But I keep trying, so I usually have it open. I used it the most/best when I was living in Korea…which was the last time I had a good desk and desk chair. Now I mostly do what I have to do and get out of the uncomfortable chair du jour as quickly as possible. I’m actually writing this today from a co-working space in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, with mercifully comfortable office chairs and strong, steady wifi – unlike in my airbnb, which has been problematic the whole time I’ve been here.

Yahoo Email

Even though I rarely get anything personal anymore, and it irks me to have to wade through so many spam, or mystery subscriptions, just to get to the 1% that might actually be for me. I live in a constant state of email optimism.

ChatGPT

Most of my prompts follow the general pattern of “how do I do this thing that I can’t figure out how to do.” And usually it’s a help. If I have a simple “general” question, I will ask Google. But if I need custom instructions or follow-ups, ChatGPT is my guy.

AirBnB

I spend a LOT of time scouring Airbnb for upcoming accomodations in different  It’s like trying to find your next apartment or house, but I have to do it every 2-3 months. I have wishlists for the upcoming year…and a few outliers, places I may go to someday and I just want to get a sense of what’s available in my price range (spoiler alert: less and less every month). But it’s fun to look through the listings – like a hobby.

Google Flights

Like Airbnb, I’m always comparing times and prices on upcoming flights to new locations. I’ve tried subscribing to email alerts but they’re just not reliable, I feel l need to go in and search manually every couple of days.

Google Calendar

I have yet to find the perfect calendar, but this is as close as I’ve come and at least it synchs to my phone.

MyDramaList

This is where I keep track of all the Asian dramas/movies/tv series I want to watch or have watched (660 since September 2020). It’s sort of like high octane IMDB. It gives synopses (synopsi?) of shows, reviews, airing dates, where you can watch it, cast/directors, and you can create all your own custom lists: plan to watch, have watched, dropped, actors/actresses to watch for, etc. And then you can rate shows out of 10, so if you want to see what your all time favorite shows were, you sort the columns by rating (yours), or you can sort for “Top Ten Shows 2025,” etc. I’m a little compulsive about this. It also has like a news page where it has articles about upcoming shows, press about actors, etc.

I think that’s it. Those are my old reliables. What tabs do you rely on on a daily basis??

Please visit my friends’ blogs to see what tabs run their lives…

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair <– tending to life
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style <– on a well-deserved vacation!
Leslie Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After 
Sally at Within a World of My Own

PS – IMPORTANT

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