Jealousy

Jealousy is an ugly thing. It can also be a crushing thing. It crushes your spirit. It elicits fear. It can make you think ugly thoughts about people.

There is no one particular person that I am jealous of at the moment, but my husband keeps coming to mind. His professional career is really starting to take off. I am so unbelievably proud of him and I will continue to support him every step of the way, but I have to wonder. Why can't that be me?

I want my name to be out there. I want to be known for what I do. I want people to come to me for advice and direction.

I am a mom. I am very proud to be a mom and I love my children dearly. If someone has a parenting question, I will do my best to answer them. But there is more to me than just a mom.

Part of my feelings stem from blogging. You get what you give and while I am making an effort to give, I do have a life outside the computer. Those who are well known around the blogosphere and other social network sites have put a lot of time into getting their name out there. I respect that and they should be proud. I am trying to follow suit, but it is not easy. And I am not a patient person. Patience is a virtue I have yet to learn.

Blogging is not the only aspect of my life that brings out the jealous side of me. I am a crafter. Mostly crochet. I put a lot of work into what I create. A Lot! Someday I would love to be successful at selling what I create. I could go the Etsy route, but that can be a pain in the ass. I make things, I pay to post pictures of my creations, I promote, and wait. If nothing happens, I pay and promote again. I know it's not expensive, but how many time do I have to post before to really starts to feel like I'm losing money and it's no longer worth the effort?


When people ask what I do, I want to say something other than a SAHM. I am very thankful that I am able to be a SAHM, but I also want something that is just me. Something that I can showcase to the world and hope to get more than a "Good job" before they walk away.


I realize this sounds like just another woe is me post, and I suppose that it is. But I do have a plan. I am going to carve out some time for just me.

My midgets start back at school next week (thank god!). I have some major work to do on organizing this house (help!). Some of my time will also be spent volunteering at the school (wine, please?). In between that, I am going to get crafty and find a way to promote myself. I know it will take time, and I need to constantly remind myself of that, but I am going to find a way to make a go of this crafting thing that I am so passionate about.

How to mobilize your blog

The number of people with Smart phones is on the rise. I am one of those people. I still primarily use my computer for internet browsing, but it's nice to have the ability to also use it on my phone.

This especially came in handy last week. Our internet has been, to put it nicely, shitty.

Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter are fun, but not necessities. I love you all, but like you, I do have a life in the real world. I admit it was nice to be unplugged, but I typed out a post Tuesday night that needed linked Wednesday morning. Wednesday is when our internet went out. It took some time to figure out from my phone, but I finally got my Pour Your Heart post linked on Shell's blog.

While I was on Shell's blog from my phone, I realized her blog has a mobile view. I have been trying to figure this out forever, so I finally asked Shell how she did. She sent me a link, but I still couldn't figure it out. I found a similar post on Blogger in Draft, and after reading through the comments, I figured it out.


How to Mobilize Your Blog

These instructions are for Blogger users.

First you should know there are 2 websites you can access your blog from. I didn't realize this and that's why I had problems.


http://www.blogger.com and http://draft.blogger.com


You want to go to http://draft.blogger.com and log-in from there. You have the option to use this as your default dashboard, but it's not necessary.


In order to activate mobile templates, simply go to Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab, enable the mobile template option and then save settings.

Here is a preview of what your mobile template will look like.

You will see snippets of your most recent posts. Tapping the arrow next to the post will redirect you to the entire post, where you can finish reading and comment. Really puts the pressure on to make sure your first few sentences really draw your readers in, doesn't it?

Gratitude. Or not

I was all prepared to write a gratitude post. But I'm not really sure I'm in the mood for it now.


If there's one thing I've learned it's that people, myself included, love to talk about the weather. This especially holds true when snow is involved. When it is snowing somewhere, I see all kinds of tweets and Facebook statuses about it. I am very thankful that my Facebook/Twitter friends talk about the snow. Why, you ask? Most of you live to the west of me. Your updates give me a heads up as to what's to come my way. I like being prepared.

Monday night I noticed a few updates about snow starting to fall or parents getting phone calls that school has already been cancelled. This led me to check out the forecast for me. Once my computer decides to cooperate and the Weather Channel's page loads, I see a bright orange message plastered on the top of the page.

That right there does not make me happy!

I clicked and it turns out that this possible storm could hit Tuesday, going into Wednesday and give us up to 6 inches of snow. Now compared to Snowmageddon of last February, 6 inches is nothing. It's when it could hit that could screw me. And probably will.

I do NOT want a repeat of this

So to all my Facebook and Twitter friends out there, thanks for the heads up. To Mother Nature, screw you! Just because I finally have snow boots does not mean I actually want to use them in the snow.

What list are you on?

Twitter is an interesting thing. I'm addicted and I know that I'm not the only one. Most people know that Twitter has this thing called "Lists". I personally don't do lists. My reasoning? I'm lazy. Perhaps if I started listing people from the beginning it wouldn't be a big deal. To be honest, I don't feel like taking the time to go through all of my followers and figuring out which list to put them in. I have a hard enough time figuring out screen names and passwords for myself. List titles is just another thing I don't want to get involved with. But I have noticed that people who do use lists have some pretty interesting ones.




Last night as I was getting ready for bed my phone buzzed and beeped. I knew no one would text me that time of night so I assumed it was an email. My assumption was correct. I was pleasantly surprised to see a new Twitter follower. A follower that is not a company that has nothing to do with what I tweet about. Not to stray too far off track, but some recent followers include someone who wants to help me raise business savvy kids. My midgets are 5 and 9. The only business they care about is negotiating to get their own way. Another interesting one is for a Somali discussion forum. Um... what the fuck is that about?!

Getting back to my newest follower... We have 1 follower in common and that would be my husband. Maybe it was a mutual friend from our past or something so I did what I always do. Snoop. Her most recent tweets involved apologizing for not listing my husband and no offense to me (her words) but she would list me if she knew my twitter account. Of course he tells her which leads to the follow. According to their conversation, I'm hot. Um, thanks?

So if I'm hot and she wants to list us both, exactly what kind of list are we on? I haven't figured out if or where I'm listed for this chick, but the husband is in her PILFS list. Maybe I'm naive and that acronym has a different meaning in the technology world, but I know what it means to me. Going that naive route, I Googled pilfs and the "P" could mean a few things-

• People - that makes sense
• Presidents - they're usually old, but if that's your cup o' tea, whatever
• Professors - I've had some I would put on that list!
  
• Pie - um, I think you've seen American Pie 1 too many times!
• Puppets - I don't want to know!

But for each of those results, the word behind the "F" remained the same. Fuck. Whoever she wants to put on that list is her business. I personally find it rather amusing! Wonder if the husband realizes this?