A Self-Imposed Vacation Week

I wish I could say that taking a vacation would be hell, that I’d miss all of that writing and work like crazy… but the truth is I won’t.

I haven’t had a hobby since I started working full-time days. Technically if you go by the hours I work for one person, it’s usually around an hour or two less than what would be called full-time. It’s when you throw in the 3 year old and all of my blogs that you have me planted to this computer chair. The problem is skimming. Most things don’t take very long, the most mundane of all my tasks I get paid to do.

I’ve been working too much. Overworking myself has been causing me to burn out and when I did the math I realized I could take a week off without it affecting my bills too much. Sure, I did need that money but I need to keep my sanity as well.

I haven’t had a hobby which takes me off the computer in a long time. That is something I must change, even if it is just for a week. I am thinking about knitting something. I haven’t taken out my needles and yarn in a while.

So I do have one more week until my vacation, but I think visions of a week off will help me make it through.

Photo Credit: Aine D

Posted in Personal Posts, Work, Writing

Stress Kills, Take A Break Already!

That unfortunate thing that happens to everyone: stress. How long does it take to work day after day before you finally feel the effects of stress?

There is, “Oh I’m stressed out and need a break.” Then there is total break down where you worked in overdrive for far too long and you go through complete burn out.

Thankfully I’m just the first one. I’ve been feeling the effects of stress and recognize that I could use a break. Unfortunately breaks aren’t so easy to come by. I have work that needs my attention, my websites need my attention, I have things I need to write and most of all; there is just not enough time in my day for all of that plus free time and time with my daughter.

Unfortunately there is no vacation in my future, but I did get to enjoy a slight break yesterday and although the person who had the loud music and louder bass drove me up the wall last night - I am feeling much better.

When I am feeling stressed out I like to sit and watch a good movie. Especially one I hadn’t seen in a while. I did that yesterday, and although I can’t relax today because I have too much to do, hopefully my little break will pull me through until next weekend.

I posted this question at the Mom’s United in Business community, but I’d like to ask it here:

What do you do when you feel like stress has grabbed a hold of you?

Posted in Personal Posts, Topic-Specific, Work, Writing

Organizing My Life

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.

Posted in Personal Posts, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Work, Writing

Bestow

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.

Posted in Pictures, Random Thoughts, Topic-Specific, Words, Writing

Petard

Okay, so you may have noticed I am still altering my posting style a little but that is not the point of today’s post. The point today is… finding a great working, low MB, word processor.

I had written out a business opportunity profile and when it came time to save it Microsoft Works Word Processor failed me. It kept telling me it couldn’t save the file, yet my flash drive wasn’t full. When I gave up trying to save onto that, it wouldn’t even save it to my computer.

I’ll be darned, I have no clue why it has failed me now.

I’d never had a problem with it before, so it’s absolutely beyond me why it had decided to kick the bucket on me. Plenty of memory left on my computer. One drive isn’t even near half full, the other is only 10% full out of 160gb. We’re good.

After I got tired of fighting with it and finally just switched it over to Wordpad so I could save it, I went hunting for free word processors.

Yes, I already know about OpenOffice.org and what they have to offer. I also know that the file size to download is beyond huge and it would knock out my net if I tried. The MB size of the file is 3/4ths of my daily allowance.

Thankfully I spelled processor wrong in my search, I spelled it processer - haha, because it lead me to AbiWord 2.6. It was just over 5mbs to download and the tools/plugins took less than a second to download.

I used AbiWord to write another profile and set up the interview that I had to post today. It worked just as I needed it to. There was only one little annoyance I noticed. Although the program checks your grammar, it doesn’t set up correction ideas for the areas they underline with that annoying green line. As much as I love to write, it is nice to know why they feel a sentence isn’t grammatically correct. Especially considering grammar is my personal Kryptonite.

Posted in Personal Posts, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Words, Work, Writing

Acouasm

Word Of The Day

a·cou·asm - Dictionary.com

• a nonverbal auditory hallucination, as a ringing or hissing.

Photo Of The Day

I made pancakes for breakfast a few days ago and this is what it looked like after being cut then having syrup added. The picture makes it look burnt and it actually wasn’t. They came out yummy ‘n fluffy. I’ll have to make some for breakfast this weekend.

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Posted in Other Sites, Personal Posts, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Words, Work, Writing

Acetarious

Today’s Word

Ac`e*ta”ri*ous

Used in salads; as, acetarious plants.

Dictionary.com

Today’s Photo

I took Aubree outside to play today and we came across this frog. Isn’t he cute? I could hardly believe that he sat there and let me put my phone so close to him so I could get this picture.

Mod Note

As a work at home mom there is so much that I do, and so many things that I think others would relate to if I chatted about it. Normally if I decide to take on a new personal writing task I do it here but this time I decided to go a different route. I have created an account at Xomba called mompreneur and from there I hope to write about my adventures as a mompreneur, gain some new interest in all of my websites (as well as my writing services) and just all around try a new route in my work at home quest.

If you’re an aspiring work at home anyone, or just interested in my adventures as one, please stop by my Xomba account and check out what I have to say. I hope to update it as regularly as possible. It will always be topic specific to me as a mompreneur and other work at home issues I feel like chatting about.

Of course this does not mean I won’t mention anything work related here, I still will. Think of mompreneur at Xomba as wahm related articles. Demandez L’Ange will always be my personal blog where I can chat about my feelings on everything in between Ask Angel and life.

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Posted in Blog Updates, Personal Posts, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Words, Writing, mompreneur on Xomba

Abraid

This is the download button on the Wordpress download page. If you were wondering why we were down for a little bit earlier today, it’s because we were updating our website to the new Wordpress platform. If you have not done so yet, it can be downloaded from here. It’s not a huge difference from 2.5, but I do enjoy the changes. The word count has to be my favorite new feature.

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Word Nerd:

“to abraid is to awake, arouse, or startle”

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As you can see from today’s photo I upgraded Wordpress for all of my blogs today. You have no idea how long that process is. I never thought it would end. It took most of the day. It’s done now, at least. Now I can work on the other things I need to write for the night.

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I’m guessing you noticed that I didn’t get a post up on Thursday. I was hoping I would be able to, but I really didn’t get a chance. I had to go to town that morning and when I got home, I went straight to work. Once I was done it was late and I has a vicious headache that made it really hard to concentrate on anything. I still have a bit of it now, but thankfully it has faded enough to not affect me too badly. I try hard not to miss posts, but unfortunately I can’t always avoid it.

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Today I wanted to make use of my time so I decided to start on an article idea that I had. Once it’s done I intend to pass it around to different free article directories with resource links back to my websites as a kind of promotion. I think it has a lot of potential and should help bring in more people to Write To Press as well as Ask Angel and here. Without giving it completely away the article is based around a work-at-home styled topic. Something I would hope I know something about considering I do work from home.

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I bought a new bathing suit. It had been so hot, I have needed a new one desperately, and most of all I wanted to take Aubree outside to play in the sprinkler. None of which has happened yet. Today was the first day I was going to get a chance, and it rained. Tomorrow has a potential for rain also. Lets not forget Monday too!

Where has all this rain come from?

On top of that our lawn needs mowed pretty badly. Unfortunately with all that heat we’ve had lately, it’s something I have actively avoided. It’s hot enough sitting. Why do I want to move around more than I have to under the steaming sun? Either this rain will flash burn the grass under the sun or make it grow, a lot. I am hoping for it to kill the grass off.

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Holy crap were the two words that came to mind when I read this article about a man being charged over $11k for 2 months of internet from Verizon. The average person knows 50mbs are not that much, but obviously this poor man was duped by the sales man. I am glad the news reporter was able to do something for this man, getting his bill waived.

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Then there was this other thing I read during the week that even made me second guess my typing skills. What if there were no letters on the keys? Would you be able to still type out everything correctly?

I vote, no. Even though I don’t look at the keys while I type, I do look at them when placing my fingers. I have also had moments where I put my fingers on the wrong keys to start and would type something along the lines of, “98hrewkjnfdoy” before catching myself. At the asking price of $129, I will pass.

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Today is Product Review Saturday, and I have a new product I am really looking forward to reviewing today: my printer. I’ve had it for a little while now, I think it’s pretty handy and I look forward to letting all of you know what I think of it. Otherwise, I am going to go ahead and end this post now. Have a good weekend. Tomorrow will be Inspiring Business Sunday.

Posted in Blog Updates, News, Personal Posts, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Shopping, Words, Work, Writing

Absquatulate

If you’re wondering why I would use a bad photo of myself for the photo on this post, please know there is a reason. I cut my bangs this morning, and that’s my attempt to show it off. They’d gotten long enough to tuck behind my ear. When they reach that length it doesn’t look right, so I had to do what I had to do.

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Today’s Word Nerd Quote:

“absquatulate is a blend of abscond, squattle (’depart’), and perambulate”

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Posted in News, Parenthood, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Words, Writing

Abearance

I am not a morning person at all, if you couldn’t tell from this picture, lol. I basically rolled out of bed, got dressed, took this photo for a friend of mine and decided to use it. It really kind of displays my displeasure with mornings in general. I was so ready to go back to sleep this morning then I looked at my watch and realized it was 8am and I had to get up soon anyway. I still have yet to make my cup of coffee.

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Today’s Word Nerd quote:

“one’s abearance is his/her behavior”

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Posted in Parenthood, Personal Posts, Pictures, Random Thoughts, Words, Work, Writing