Woe is me (whiny and self-indulgent)
Jul 16, 2008 The Story of My Life
- I opened the refrigerator, reached for the milk and did something to my back or my shoulders or my neck or something. This is what comes of being on the computer all of the time. I worked really really late on Monday and I haven’t taken the time to stop and stretch since then. Plus I’m still not sleeping well so I’m not really relaxing at night. Result: Sore, aching shoulders/neck and wrenching something merely by reaching for milk. I feel like I’m 80-thousand years old. Argh.
- We can’t get any channels on our television. Well, we can get very fuzzy channels but not ones you can, you know, watch. And Tivo doesn’t recognize them so we can’t use Tivo. I’m sure we’ll figure out a fix but we’re grouchy about it. Apparently we were worse cable addicts than we knew.
- I’m really busy and it’s not all happy-busy. A lot of it is just busy. I’m tired. My neck hurts. Too much busyness and not enough happy-busy!
- What is with gorgeous, smart, funny women who are living with/dating/married to rotten men? What is up with that? How can we put a stop to low self-esteem and low standards? People! How can we save our sisters??? <— said like Cree Summer playing Freddy on A Different World (I miss cable)
- I have another complaint that I’m not blogging (yet) but we could use a medium-sized miracle in the next few weeks and I’m tired of looking for one. Reality bites. I’m worn out from spinning my wheels and forcing myself to be cheerful about it.
- You people with your adorable free kittens! Stop flaunting the cuteness! We officially have decided NO KITTENS. Sad but true. Reasons are as follows: My sister and nephew are very allergic and having a kitten here will be a hardship to family visits; Peanut may not like kittens; kitten vet visits aren’t in our budget at the moment; litterboxes; kitty footprints on our kitchen counter skeeve me out. I like kittens so even though I believe this is a smart decision, I’m bummed out about it. Particularly the not-in-the-budget thing. I want to have enough money to be mildly irresponsible without feeling so dang guilty about it. Like, “Pizza tonight? Sure! Order two — they’re small!”
- It’s hot. And humid. Dang Ohio. Why’d we ever leave the Pacific Northwest? (grumble)
That’s enough. Whining didn’t seem to make me feel better so I’m going to try OD’ing on caffeine next. A temporary fix is better than no fix at all, right? Grouch.
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Tags: a different world, budget, cable, complaining, cree summer, humidity, my sister, pacific northwest, Peanut, sister
New wordpress seems pretty stable
Jul 15, 2008 Blogging, The Story of My Life
I updated this site to 2.6 along with the Open Book Strategies site (and blog) and then three more blogs. All looks pretty darn good! But it didn’t fix this problem where I have to save a post before I can click “allow comments” and only THEN can I hit publish. Frustrating.
In other family tech news: Cable is officially gone and I’m mourning the loss of Mad Men. It’s really the only show I’ll miss. And I now have a cell phone, which I’m afraid of using. I did spend way too much time creating my own ringtone (because I didn’t like the ones it came with and I sure wasn’t paying for a new one) because even if I’m afraid of technology, I’m all about customizing it.
In other family non-tech news: The neighbors across the way were tossing a perfectly fine and super-comfortable couch so it’s now in our basement. We need to get tested for radon so that we can move the television down here. (I’m already working here — sure hope that radon test turns out ok. Our last house had no radon issues so there’s hope.) I hate having a television in the main living area and I think getting it out of the family room would go a long, long way to making me feel like this house is home. I’ve lived here for going on three years and still feel like we’re waiting to move someplace else.
In other family not-to-share news: We’re looking at some big structural changes around here in our continued effort to become if not independently wealthy at least independently solvent. I’m trying to wrap my head around them but am having trouble doing so ‘cuz I’m operating with a sleep deficit brought on by worrying insomnia.
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Tags: cable, cell phones, mad men, Open Book Strategies, wordpress, wordpress 2.6, working
Launching a new business
Jul 14, 2008 Blogging, work work work
This is what I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks: Open Book Strategies
You can see I’m changing out my links to Smart Cookie Communications because we’re really going to focus on marketing this other business instead. Here’s how it came about:
- There are a lot of marketing communication professionals here in Central Ohio and I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to market myself so I’d stand out.
- Even though I was reluctant to see this, what differentiates me from my marketing communications competition is my web 2.0 experience: I’ve managed email lists, enormous forums, and of course all the blogging I do. I understand virtual relationships and I know that web 2.0 content isn’t just regular old content with hyperlinks thrown in; I know it’s about relationships. So that’s what I ended up talking about with folks.
- Every time I said the word “blog” ears pricked up and that’s where people had questions. I did a lot of consulting on the side but kept brushing off requests to do more of it thinking I needed to focus on the writing.
- And yet the blog jobs kept coming.
- Finally one of my mentors said, “Take the leap!” She advised me to come up with blog service packages to make it easier for people to understand my services.
- So here we are.
My ideal client is a small to medium local business owner who’s a little nervous about web 2.0 and blogs. I like to work closely with people and I don’t mind doing a lot of hand holding. I’m pretty darn patient with people who have a lot of questions. (Ask Kristen!) And I understand narrative so I can help people find their most compelling bloggable stories. (This was my favorite part about this project — listening to them talk, asking lots of questions, and identifying blog entries in what they shared.)
Anyway! That’s what we’re doing and now the writing is on the side instead of the blog consulting.
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Tags: blog, Central Ohio, consulting, Kristen, marketing, narrative, Open Book Strategies
Meme below the cut
Jul 12, 2008 The Story of My Life
I’m trying to stay out of Brett’s way while he moves the furniture (the steam cleaner people are coming in an hour) and I’m bored. So a meme.
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Blogging denial
Jul 10, 2008 Blogging, Friends
I reread Edith’s Diary last week. It always makes me think of blogs. In case you haven’t read it, it’s a novel about a woman’s who life is truly wretched but the worse it gets, the happier her diary reads. Her son is an alcoholic, lazy misanthrope but in her diary he’s married and has lovely children. She is living two lives and as the false one becomes more real, the more stuck she is in the wretchedness. It’s a frustrating book; you want to shake her loose of her fantasies so she’ll face up to how bad it all is and do something.
I remember watching this friendship implode from the sidelines once. There were two bloggers who were best friends in a larger circle of bloggers (I knew them from an online forum where I was a lurker so it may be that some of you know them but I doubt it). I don’t know what happened but there was a huge falling out. I got a heads up from someone else on that forum (my connection there who inspired my lurkdom) and I — like everyone else — watched the whole thing fall apart. It was big. It was bad. It was ugly. There were secrets shared, confidences exposed for the world to mock, some ugly language thrown around.
It was one of those trainwrecks that ripples across blogs because people take sides. I pieced it together backwards, hunting down archived entries and skipping around links to figure out how it started.
Anyway. The most interesting part to me is that one of the people just went nuts. She used to write like a regular person — you know, life’s ups and downs — and then suddenly everything was peachy keen and the sun shone all the time and every morning they all woke up and danced around the maypole together.
Now my connection had some inside scoop on this person’s real life and of course it wasn’t like that (because whose real life is?) but the picture got brighter and brighter. She was losing weight! And running marathons! And her children were cleaner and smarter and better behaved than anyone’s!
Of course she was writing it for her ex-friend (whose own blog stayed noncommittal and everyday) to let her know that her life was awesome and she didn’t even care that they weren’t friends anymore. Take that!
I think I would have been a blog denial writer myself if I’d been blogging in my teens. I’d likely have created an alter ego and made a virtual life that was nicer and more manageable than my real one. Actually (thinking more on it) I betcha I would have blogged as one of the characters in the stories I was always scrawling. You know, to make ‘em more real.
Because that’s what Edith was doing and what this other blogger was doing — making a better life real by writing it down.
I guess I do a certain amount of this, too. I write an argument with Brett only make it funny and by the end of the entry I’m not as angry with him anymore. (That’s a tip for you — you can now read the subtext of any entries about that adorable Brett and his quirky way of doing things. You now know that I start those entries with gritted teeth, glaring at the monitor.) See, that’s a way of rewriting a narrative to bring yourself to a happier conclusion but it’s not lies. Because truthfully my conflicts with Brett are minor and sometimes I need reminding about that.
With Edith’ blogging counterpart, her denial was so damaging. She couldn’t make it so just by writing it. A sham doesn’t become more solid just because she’s shouting that it’s true. Instead she just pushed people away because a) they figured she didn’t need them anyway since life was so dandy; b) and they knew she was lying and it was kinda creepy.
But the thing is with blogging is that eventually that blogger got her some new readers who didn’t have backstory so they took her at her word and so it was like her imaginary life was true, at least for them and she could take comfort in their comments that affirmed it.
This is why I’m glad there was no interwebz when I was a disgruntled teenager. I think the nature of having so much control over a virtual life would have messed me up for a little while longer than I was messed up all on my own. Truly.
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Tags: Blogging, blogs, conflict, denial, edith's diary, lying, patricia highsmith, truth
