I hate politics as much as the next person, but I made sure to vote tonight anyway.
Go Greens!
Okay, so it’s highly unlikely Cynthia McKinney will pull in and take the win for president, but it felt good to vote how I felt and I support what the party stands for.
It doesn’t matter to me who you support, as long as you’ve put in your own 2 cents into the political toilet bowl. 
If anything, I hope you hit up Starbucks for your free coffee!
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I am so glad Halloween has come and gone. That penguin is my little girl this year. Unfortunately I couldn’t seem to keep her attention on me while I tried to take pictures. Either they came out blurry or she wasn’t looking.
However, she had way too much fun going door to door. We drove down to a local area which tends to have a lot of trick or treating options. Where I am, no one seems to hand out candy. Everyone either goes to town or down to the area with all the rich people.
Monkey could not stop talking as we walked, but the instant we were at someones door she would freeze up and stand there with her elmo bucket out. I had to remind her at every house to say “Trick or Treat” and “Thank You”. However, the instant we walked away from one house, she’d ask if we were going to another.
For the rest of the world, I am pretty sure trick or treating is over. For us, I have been asked every day if we can go trick or treating tomorrow. I keep telling her next year, and of course she doesn’t know what that quite means so I can get away with it.
I hope everyone remembered to fall back on their clocks today!
For one last note, I found a website which offers free printable calendars. It is web based. You can print off whole years, month by month or a whole year on one page. I suppose it would depend on your needs. I had been using the school calendars they send home with Monkey, but decided to make my own this month. The website let me upload a photo to accompany my calendar and it’s pretty neat. It’s simple, but it’s exactly what I was looking for. If you need something that shows one month on a time that you can hang up near your computer, I recommend it. 
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Some days I think my brain deserves an upgrade. Much like a computer that, although 2001 wasn’t all that long ago, it is now considered in need of replacement.
So my brain is running, and the available RAM is dwindling. Suddenly it is overloaded with open tasks and freezes up. I find myself sitting here, staring at my own computer screen waiting for it to decide whether it’ll shut down or simply crash completely.
Reboot is administered.
Upon reloading, I must decide which programs are necessary to keep going and which items can safely shut down until a later time.
I have my work program. If I turn that off, I will not be able to accomplish 80% of the things I need to fill before the day is through. That is a must have and will not be closed down.
How about that muse icon which runs in the task bar? It always seems to be on when I’m not using it, yet I can’t find the program in my start menu when I actually have to load it.
Running in the background, almost unnoticed, would be Procrastination. A useless program, really. Maybe I’ll uninstall it later.
Thankfully I have Jarte to write down ideas I have, as they happen. If it wasn’t for the autosave feature, I’d probably lose them after each blue screen of death and restart that my system is forced into. There is no way I can close out this word program.
After long deliberation, and many ctrl+alt+del* moments, I’ve decided to shut down the whole system and go watch Alf instead. Nothing is more brain-numbing than TV!
* To give credit where it is due, Amy Derby is the one who first mentioned rebooting a bad day. So thank you Amy for being my muse for this post.
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After getting sick a few weeks ago I had just started to get everything back on track that had once been derailed. Then I got hit with a whopper of a cold. Derailed all over again.
So here I am, lagging behind on posts again and feeling much too groggy for anything to get accomplished.
I am in desperate need of a good, long, stress free week. One that includes a lot of sleeping. I would also enjoy some ‘for fun’ tasks. Writing for fun. Reading for fun. Knitting for fun. It has been a while since I’ve known what a hobby felt like.
Instead I can’t afford a vacation. No fun for me.
So instead I’ve been grabbing breaks when I can get them at the price of not being able to post.
I had some good topics I wanted to blog about too. 
They will have to wait until the weekend.
Until then, chew on this thought:
You might be a redneck if: you have to glue your rearview mirror back on your junky pickup truck.
That’s what I’ll be doing this weekend.
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What can I say, some moments are good and some are bad. It’s a big part of life. Right now I seem to be somewhere in the middle.
Like any normal human, some moments are bad. I get stressed out much too easily, my eyes hurt from straining too much and can’t forget that neck kink that won’t go away.
Then the upside comes around and the world is good again. Looking at bringing in new potential clients interested in a press release, applying for a potential blogging position, and I finally accomplished my goal of writing my first article to submit to AmChron.
The problem is, no matter how positive things get it only takes one little negative to reduce it all to ashes.
I noticed I’ve been focusing a lot on the negative lately. A little too tired, feeling a little over worked, and all around grumpy. Yet I haven’t felt much like talking about the good things going on, so I will do that today. I will rebuild my crumbling world, one positive at a time.
Lets start with that article. I was working on something completely different when the idea hit me. No, I will not be sharing my inspiration yet, but when it hit I decided it would be a good time to drop everything and start writing it out. I did so, and almost 700 words later I am happy to say I just need to do one more review before I submit it for consideration. Hopefully it goes over well, won’t need much editing, and gets posted as quickly as possible. I look forward to showing the world what I can do.
Then something amazing happened, Write To Press went up in page rank for Google. It was a 0, now it is sitting happily at a 2. That is a pretty big surprise. I didn’t imagine I’d go up in PR since I don’t really promote myself. I just network and gain clients that way.
I am relearning how much I enjoy my craft again as I break way from stressing about the time to work ratio. Especially as things get better at Ask Angel. I’ve gained new readers as I’ve switched up how I post on there. I’ve been receiving comments and messages from people who like the new style, and it’s the best thing to have ever happened to my website.
So things are much better than I can make them seem at times. It just means looking past the stuff that stresses me out and thinking positive.
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An interview I still need to put together recently reminded me of a hairy experience I had some time back. Thought I’d share the thought.
I had walked into some hair styling franchise whose name I will not repeat and asked about getting a cut and dye. I think I just wanted streaks in my hair at the time. They told me that it’d be impossible and to make an appointment, so I made the appointment and went on my way. It was when I came back for my appointment that I found out how stupid they really are.
I let them know I was there, and the lady informs me, “Oh, but we can’t dye your hair! Our person who does that is not in.” Oh great, so the appointment I made was for nothing because that is the main reason why I made it and why they told me I had to make an appointment. I told her as much and she explained there was nothing she could do about it; would I like to make an appointment for another day?
Heck no!
I told the woman where to shove her frickin’ appointment book and walked out. One of those temper flair-ups because I am sick and tired of being jerked around by an airheaded brunette. I am a brunette with much more going for me than that woman had.
That same day I walked into another business, this time a mom-and-pop style business and they not only got me in at that moment but did everything as I needed.
The best part of this adventure is this: The small beauty shop is still alive and well. That big ol’ franchise which couldn’t organize their stuff? They’re gone like the wind.
Much like the title of this post, and like the story of the tortoise and a hare, the little guy keeps going because they are nice and they serve their customers with care. That darn hare of a franchise crashed because they couldn’t be bothered with how their potential customers felt.
Of course not all franchises are bad, it is how they are handled. This big box was not handled well.
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You have no idea how busy I’ve been these last 2 days. Yesterday it was 60% work and 40% life tasks.
Actually, yesterday I had to run to town, get money, pay more against what I owe for my truck, then came home to finish working.
Granted, today is much busier than it was yesterday. I don’t think I’ve really sat here and not been working in some way or another.
There is one trend I seem to notice when I clock how long I’ve worked in one day. I work approximately 6 to 6 1/2 hours a day. That isn’t an 8 hour job, but it is a lot of time spent sitting. Then if you enter in the fact that I only go distraction-free for 6 or so of those hours (4 while Monkey is at school, 2 after she’s asleep), then maybe you’ll see why I feel like I work full days.
Nothing will ever compare to working with Aubree home. A 6 hour job suddenly takes me 8 or more. Monkey is only on her 3rd week in school, yet I am starting to wonder what I’m going to do when she’s out for vacations and such.
I recently guest posted for Amy Derby with tips on how to keep a child occupied while writing. The tips are completely true, and very useful but anyone can tell you nothing works as you want it to all of the time.
Yes, I love fooling Monkey into behaving with crayons and a coloring book. No, it doesn’t always work. Some days she is a bit more, “Hay mommy…” than others. That’s life with a child.
Oh, and if you think someone is less passionate about freelance writing because they have children - NEVER. They may freelance to be home with their kids, but how much do you want to bet they love what they do?
I do.
Working regularly, day after day, on the same tasks does get tiring but I’ll be darned - I love every minute of it.
If I was given the option to quit and still be set for life, I would say yes and work anyway. :-p What? I love what I do, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have enough money to live on forever, either.
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No one really knows how busy I was over the last week. Well, it’s between busy and just outright sick. Today is the first day I’ve felt 98% back to normal. Even the sore throat has faded to almost nothing.
The excitement started at the beginning of this week when I got my American Chronicle author account. I spent that evening telling everyone I could think of about it. Then I set up my profile information.
On Tuesday I wrote up my bio for my AmChron account. I’m very picky, and I wanted it to be perfect. No one knows how many times I switched it up before I settled on what I did end up saving. Remind me to pay someone to write a bio about me in the future. It’s nearly impossible to do it on my own! I’m too darn picky!
Then Wednesday came and got a terrible migraine. The first part of the work day I was able to survive, but when I woke up from my nap it was like a ton of bricks. Sitting at the computer I couldn’t stop crying because everything made it worse.
Thursday and Friday were only minor improvements on that problem. Thankfully I have finally kicked the sore throat down a few notches, my headache is gone and I can enjoy Saturday. Although R and R is not on my list this weekend, I have a new client and I need to get some work done for them. Should be fun!
Of course, when you throw in tons of interview questions, a parent meetting and other need-more-than-usual-concentration tasks, life seems to move much slower than the clock.
One bonus out of this week is this: I now have a public phone number. If you find yourself needing a contact number where people can leave a voice mail, I recommend checking out RingCentral. It works, and free is always cool when you’re just starting out and need a service asap! In my case, I decided it’s time that I went that route. Some people do prefer work through a phone conversation, and I don’t want to lose work because I hate phones.
It shouldn’t take another week before I post again, but if it does please feel free to draft a petition against life and tell it to give me more hours in a day or else it will have to teach me how to live without sleeping.
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Haywire isn’t a strange word, but it sure as heck fits as the word to describe my ‘net at the moment. It has gone down multiple times today because we’re experiencing a very heavy rain right now.
All the while, I am trying to update my wordpress for all of my blogs. I’m sure it’ll be a slow process.
While I am kvetching, I might as well chat about the mailman. He can’t seem to close the door on the mailbox completely… and so it leaves a gap in the top where it rains in. We’ve got a nice and wet electric bill because of it.
The last of my complaining goes out to the owner of a ‘Smelly’ business for wasting my time. “Yeah, I’m definitely interested” turned into never being contacted when he changed his mind and didn’t want to be interviewed any longer. Of course I’d already taken the time to write up the questions and send them to him.
Big Fat Waste Of My Time
He might also be a waste of oxygen when it comes to his existence, but that isn’t my decision to make. He did waste my time, he was rude enough to “forget to mention” he wasn’t interested anymore after having me email the questions to him. I wonder if that made me a waste of his time?
I’m pretty sure his time is no more important than mine.
Smelly _____ is a shit-list business. 
Just think, he bases the quality of his business on word-of-mouth advertising as well. Wouldn’t that make his inconsiderate move a stupid one to take?
yes.
As much as I love meeting new people and interviewing them it is the people like him that really ruin the experience. Some people are excited to get the word out about their product. I’ve interviewed bigger businesses than that ‘Smelly’ Start-up. They appreciate getting the word out about what they have to offer and I’m always more than happy to recommend them to friends, write about them on my blogs, and give them the spotlight they deserve. Sure some say negative press is still good press, but if it’s based on the owner being an inconsiderate twit… can it really turn positive? I’m not even giving the benefit of a link. Unless you are good at guessing or read my tweets on Twitter, you don’t even know the name of the business.
I recommend a good kvetching at least once a week. It really relieves all that stress right off your shoulders! I feel better, and I’ll update later with less whining.
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Back when I first really started coming online, there were e-cards everywhere. Zillions upon zillions of free e-cards that people would send to each other.
Then one day people simply stopped sending them out.
Of course, they’re not extinct. Many of those services stopped letting their cards be used for free, others just dropped out of the e-card world, then there are some that are still free. Yahoo is a good example of that with their website at American Greetings.
Is the e-card business coming back anytime soon? Maybe it will, but I highly doubt it’d be anything like it was back when I first popped up on the internet. Only time could tell. It does offer an opportunity for someone with graphic design abilities to create a little business of their own, but I doubt it’d ever beat out the printed card business.
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