Posts from — September 2014

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I was walking with a woman I barely know when she said, “Did you know that your hair is two colours?”  I nodded.  She continued, “One colour is brown.  And the other is grey.”

“Yes,” I responded.

“Did you know that there is dye that can make all your hair brown?”

“Yes,” I said.  “I know about dye.”

She nodded.  “Some people have two colours in their hair.  Brown and blonde.  But that is not you.  You have brown and grey.”

We don’t really need to debate the rudeness of this exchange.  I’m more commenting on it because I think about the colour of my hair a lot.  There is not one molecule in my body interested in dyeing my hair.  Yet at the same time, every single molecule in my body wants my hair to be back to brown.  My molecules fight a lot.

I would never think like this if it wasn’t conveyed to women my age that we should dye our hair, that is makes us look old or different from our peers if we don’t.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.

This week’s list is closed.  But come back next Monday for a new list:

I’m not going to write a post like this every Sunday, but it seemed fitting while trying to start a routine to post something one day ahead of time.  So this is your reminder.  Tomorrow is another #MicroblogMonday.  At some point between Monday morning and Tuesday morning, post a brief update.  It can be as short as 1 word (“blech!”) or as long as 8 sentences.

Actually don’t get hung up on the length.  Micro just means small.  Anything you’d post on Twitter or Facebook, or an image you’d post on Instagram… that’s all this is.

The post serves as a tiny glimpse into your world as the week starts.  Which is all status updates do: just tell us what is happening in your life or how you see the world or something you found amusing.  Hopefully this tiny post will give you momentum to write again later in the week knowing that you’ve already posted once.  Or maybe not.  Maybe all you need is to do the little check in once per week on your blog.  Whatever you want to do.

And then post a link to your post in the open thread.  Please remember to do that.  I ended up finding a bunch of posts this week that weren’t added just because they were in my rss reader.  But if you’re going to send your thoughts out there, you might as well add yourself to the thread.  Others finding you, and all of that.

So 26 people participated in the first one, which (1) came without warning — I mean, I posted the intro post and the open thread on the same day, and (2) fell on a holiday weekend in the US.  Hopefully even more will show up tomorrow with a post because they have this 24-hour reminder or because they see it on a friend’s blog or because of word-of-mouth or because they made themselves a repeating calender reminder to microblog for five minutes right before they leave for work Monday mornings.

I’ll admit that my idea to do this came from a selfish space.  I miss a lot of bloggers.  I miss the bloggers who still post irregularly but spend a lot of time on other social media sites.  I like Twitter and Facebook, but I don’t connect with people over there as I do on blogs.  As I told Mali recently, it often feels as if I’m shouting out words as I run past whenever I comment on anything over on those social media sites.  The status updates come and go quickly.  I can’t keep up.

Here’s the other thing: I’ll glimpse an update and not really understand the context, so I don’t comment for fear of saying the wrong thing because I don’t know the scope of the person’s words.  For instance, they’ll say, “problems at work.”  Is the proper response, “Again?  I’m so sorry.”  Or is it, “Oh no!  What happened?”  On a blog, I would likely know if the person had been having on-going problems.  On Twitter, not so much unless I caught all their other tweets on the topic.  And I don’t.  I can’t.  But on a blog, I can scroll back for a moment and refresh my brain.  I can jump into a new story and read some background.  I can read the words when I have time to sit down and concentrate.

Plus, I discovered that little posts pack an emotional punch.  I think we’re so accustomed to seeing long posts (like this one!) on a blog, that we forget how much we can do with a few words.  And I like the idea of thoughts that would otherwise be lost because they don’t warrant a long unpacking seeing the light of day because they’re a perfect nugget for a microblog.

So… That’s why I started this.  It was emotional to see some old bloggers peek out of their blogs again.  If this brings a handful of people back to their blogging space once a week, I’ll see it as a huge success.  I’m not asking for anyone to let go of any of those other social media sites.  Just please make a brief status update from your own home on the Web.

Thank you in advance to everyone who participates tomorrow.  And if you didn’t get a chance to see last week’s open thread, peruse the participants below:

Today is the day: Apart at the Seams is the Amazon Kindle Daily Deal.  You don’t need a Kindle to download Kindle books — I personally just use the Kindle app.

As I begged yesterday, please help me spread word today via your blogs and social media.  And a massive thank you to everyone who has already Tweeted, Facebooked, and blogged the news.

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I may be a little in love with Jennifer Aniston at the moment based on thoughts on the Today Show about people pestering her with questions about motherhood.  She expands on the conversation she had about feminism with Gloria Steinem at the Makers Conference.  The discussion starts around 2:30 into the 4:50 minute clip.  She states:

“It’s always such an issue of like ‘are you married yet?’ ‘are you having babies yet?’ It’s just constant.  I don’t know.  I don’t have this sort of checklist of things that have to be done and if they’re not checked then I’ve failed some part of my feminism, or my being a woman, or my worth or my value as a woman. Because I haven’t birthed a child.  I’ve birthed a lot of things, and I feel like I’ve mothered many things. And I don’t think it’s fair to put that pressure on people.”

Good interview, right?

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Yes, this is your weekly reminder to back up your blog, social media accounts, and email.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Richard Dawkins is an Asshole or ’19 Weeks’” (Autism, or Something Like It)
• “The End” (Surviving Recurrent Miscarriage)
• “Is This Thing On?” (Stumbling Gracefully)
• “Baggage” (Here Comes the Sun)
• “Bucket List” (Mrs. Spit)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Adventures of Mona Darling has a post about taking chances and daring to fail.  She begins: “I started this blog with no end goal. A place to vent about IVF, some horrible dental stuff I was going through and my job as a dominatrix. I had no idea what it was bring me other than relief from the writers itch I’ve suffered with my entire life.”  Her blog has now entered part two; that part two she had no clue existed when she started her space.  The one that is going to change the way we think and talk about women.  I love the eight steps of her revolution.  I hope you’ll join her since these things need a ripple effect.

River Runs Dry has a perfect, tiny post for the first day of school.  It is the perfect prayer.

Good things come in small packages.  There were two I wanted to highlight from #MicroblogMondays: “Maybe It’s Time” by More Than a Mom and “If Only” by Life According to Johnny.  Both are about loss, and both highlight the way tiny posts pack a punch.

Lastly, Infertile Girl in a Fertile World has a post about terrible IVF timing.  It’s the familiar story (that the fertile world doesn’t really consider when they think about infertility) of how much the disease impacts your ability to make plans.  Or you can make plans, but you have to understand that you’ll be up against hard choices: lose out on something for infertility, or add another month of infertility to your life to attend the event or trip.  We’ve done it both ways — gave up a cycle to take a trip, and gave up a family Bat Mitzvah for a cycle.  I also love the complexity of her last thought about getting pregnant unassisted at this point: “Plus I would be livid if that happened! Is that weird, that an infertile would be irate at getting pregnant naturally? I have babies, they’re frozen and waiting for me!”  There’s a lot to chew on in this post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Apart at the Seams is the Kindle Daily Deal.  (Please help spread word!)  Great Jennifer Aniston quote.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 29th and September 5th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Apart at the Seams has been chosen for the Amazon Kindle Daily Deal for September 5th.  Which is tomorrow.

I’m telling you this for several reasons.

One, I’m partying — this is great news, and I’m totally honoured that they chose my book for the deal.

Two, if you haven’t gotten a chance to get Apart at the Seams yet and wanted it, here’s a chance to get it while it costs about as much as a cup of coffee.  Buy one for yourself.  Buy a copy for a friend.  Laugh together.  Cry together.  Celebrate friendship and relationships together, culminating in a big, 11 o’clock, emotionally-wrenching number.  Wait… what?

But the big one is three, if you love me — and I think you love me? — please help me spread word tomorrow.  I’ll put a reminder in the Roundup too, but I wanted to set this idea out there before September 5th when the book goes on sale.

You could write a blog post about it (hey, if you’re participating in the tour, you could mention it in your post), or Tweet it, or Facebook it, or send an email to friends, or pin the cover below on Pinterest (linking to the Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Apart-at-Seams-Melissa-Ford-ebook/dp/B00JMQ3N0M/), or… however else you want to spread word.  Me?  I’m going to do an interpretive dance about it in the middle of my street.  But that’s just me.

So pretty please help me spread word.  And a massive thank you in advance to everyone who does.

Additionally, if you head over to Lavender Luz this morning, you will see the first posts from the online book tour.  An even larger thank you to everyone who participated in that.  I can’t wait to read your posts.  And thank you, Lori, for organizing it.  It makes me weepy when I think of everything you’ve done for this book.  And for me.

Right after Josh and I got married, we read a bunch of financial advice books (and then promptly ignored 50% of the advice because… hello… hard to invest when you live hand to mouth…).  The one piece of advice that stuck with me was the concept of paying yourself first.  I didn’t completely get how it would work because if you pay yourself before you pay your bills, you may end up with your utilities cut off.  Additionally, it seemed like poor advice to tell people to take on debt rather than paying off something in full just so you can put something into savings.  But hey, I do like getting paid, so I was all for this idea of paying myself first.  Even if I’ve never done it.

But it’s actually a really good ideology to apply to your writing time, especially if you have a very limited amount of writing time per day.  How do you prioritize so you use your time well?  Do you do all your paid gigs first because they’re paid gigs?  Do you write a blog post which will build your platform so an agent wants to work with you?  Do you put all your writing minutes towards your novel?  What about your overflowing email inbox — should you take care of that if you’re trying to build relationships with people who could help you with your writing?  And if you only have an hour, do you break that hour down and do a little bit of everything, or do you just focus on one task?

Here’s what you do:

You will use your time best if you write what you’re in the mood to write rather than arbitrarily creating a writing task list and checking off boxes.  Is there something weighing on your brain that will keep you from working on your novel?  Write a blog post first and get it off your chest.  Crave the immediacy of a blog post but also dying to spend time with your novel characters?  Work on the manuscript.  Feel as if you can’t concentrate on your novel until you pound out that article you lined up with a paid site?  Then work on the paid gig.

And if you’re never in the mood to work on your paid gigs, that may be a heads up that you shouldn’t take those paid gigs.

The same goes for your blog, novel, or correspondence.

Unless you are in a bizarre hostage situation where you must write in order to gain freedom, writing is a choice.  It may not feel like a choice — and, believe me, I know how it feels to be obsessed with the idea of writing — but it is still a choice.  If writing is bringing more stress than release, it’s also okay to not write… for the time being or ever again.

But if you are going to write, it should be — first and foremost — the piece of writing that will fulfill you the most.  That will fill your emotional wallet.  Think of productive writing days as your writerly self-esteem savings account.  You need to have emotional reserves in there for a rainy, low-self-esteem day.  You will feel better about yourself as a writer and have emotional reserves in there to draw from if you write what fulfills you by writing for yourself first.

You can also use your writing time better if you know what you’re doing BEFORE you sit down at the screen.  Nothing makes you feel as if you made poor use of valuable writing minutes than staring at the screen or wasting the time doing Harry Potter quizzes on Buzzfeed (not that I ever do that).  Carry a piece of notebook paper with you at all times (or I use Charlotte, my bullet journal) to record passing ideas that could be shaped into a blog post.  Notice interesting things around you.  Write down snippets of conversation you want to comment on in a longer piece.  Know your characters’ goals for an upcoming scene.  Anything that can help when you unfold this piece of paper as you sit down and hit the ground running.