After nearly a year of doing nothing with the website, Leanne and I are finally getting ourselves together and are working to get it workable. Yesterday we put in a new page, uploaded pictures and fixed links and old pages. We have a long ways to go but at least we are making an effort.
The shame of it is, that due to some of the optimization we did last year, we've been getting a ton of traffic. Amazing considering we've done no advertising and have really had no way to sell any of our jewelry. Also leaves us feeling really REALLY dumb for not having done anything earlier.
So this week it's web work, lots and lots of web work. I'm hoping that Leanne finds that she loves the work and figures out how to make web expressions SING. It frustrates ME because there are things I'd love to do but can't figure out how to do it. ARGH. Guess it's time to go back to the manual.
Do follow along with what's happening there ( http://wwww.coloruspurple.com ) and if you have suggestions to make, we would welcome them.
K
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Introspective Claptrap
Something has changed. I went to PA for two weeks and left my family behind. This was a vacation to meet two "almost" strangers who quickly became very good friends and during the visit, something changed in me, for me, and since coming home, I've been worrying at it like a dog with a bone.
While I was gone, those two weeks without the responsibilities, joys, duties of being a wife and mother (except for the phone calls) I was completely free to be me. I could be happy, sad, depressed, joyful, sarcastic, introspective, extroverted, funny, grumpy, whatever I wanted. I had the freedom to read, to play, to bead, to do anything I wanted or just to be.
After 17 years of being a wife and a mother just being me was bewildering to say the least. And still is.
Laurie, one of my new dear friends, made the comment "Midlife crisis" during my moment of just letting go of everything and being totally wild, happy and manic. If that was a crisis, bring it on, let's have more of it.
However, coming home again, assuming the "role" of being mother and wife and conforming to the rules of both have left a certain disquietude within me. Who WAS that person, was that REALLY me and if so, who am I now? Do I even like who I have become? What do I do with what I found?
I love my children and being their mother, I wouldn't trade it for anything. However, I think I have found that there is much more to me than that. The question is, what do I do with it? Do I quietly put it away and save it for when the last one leaves home (at least 10 years until college), am I able to even DO that?
There is an old saying, " A little Knowledge is a Dangerous thing". Take the word "knowledge" out and substitute "freedom" and that's where I am. Having tasted it, I'm greedy for more. And yet... I am still a wife and mother. I still have responsibilities, duties, a role to perform. It will be interesting to say the least to see if some of what I have discovered bubbles out in weird and wonderful ways or if I quietly fall into line and do /be what I have always done/been.
While I was gone, those two weeks without the responsibilities, joys, duties of being a wife and mother (except for the phone calls) I was completely free to be me. I could be happy, sad, depressed, joyful, sarcastic, introspective, extroverted, funny, grumpy, whatever I wanted. I had the freedom to read, to play, to bead, to do anything I wanted or just to be.
After 17 years of being a wife and a mother just being me was bewildering to say the least. And still is.
Laurie, one of my new dear friends, made the comment "Midlife crisis" during my moment of just letting go of everything and being totally wild, happy and manic. If that was a crisis, bring it on, let's have more of it.
However, coming home again, assuming the "role" of being mother and wife and conforming to the rules of both have left a certain disquietude within me. Who WAS that person, was that REALLY me and if so, who am I now? Do I even like who I have become? What do I do with what I found?
I love my children and being their mother, I wouldn't trade it for anything. However, I think I have found that there is much more to me than that. The question is, what do I do with it? Do I quietly put it away and save it for when the last one leaves home (at least 10 years until college), am I able to even DO that?
There is an old saying, " A little Knowledge is a Dangerous thing". Take the word "knowledge" out and substitute "freedom" and that's where I am. Having tasted it, I'm greedy for more. And yet... I am still a wife and mother. I still have responsibilities, duties, a role to perform. It will be interesting to say the least to see if some of what I have discovered bubbles out in weird and wonderful ways or if I quietly fall into line and do /be what I have always done/been.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Being unemployed
This is such a weird place to be at this point in my life. I'm 54 years old and have been unemployed for a little over two years. My unemployment will be exhaused in six weeks and we are teetering on the edge of losing everything. I've got to check this week to see how much I will lose on the two 401Ks I have if I cash them out. I have to deal with the reality that if I don't cash them out we will have no place to live.
I'm battling depression and living up to Jeannes Dixon's description of me: "you start a lot of things that you don't finish." (As Activities Vice President I hired her to speak at a community college years ago. She held my ring finger and made that statement.) Can't tell you how many times that has haunted me.
This has been such a roller coaster ride but I'm tired of going down. Every time we think we have come up with an alternative to our living situation, something goes awry and we have to try something else. I've got religious folk offering their prayers and other offering ideas that have already been tried on and tossed. I have my husband trying to reassure me that it's not my fault that we're in this mess; but we would'nt BE in this mess if I was working. Heavy sigh....
I don't know when or how this ride will end, but I know it will eventually. Just afraid of the additional cost. All this for standing up for something I believed in at work. Will I ever be able to understand why I was the only one who stood up? At the same time I wish I was one of the former co-workers who held on until they found another job or quit without a job to go to. Even though I am proud I held onto my integrity and know I am a better person for it, I foolishly thought that good karma was going to kick in and end this drought.
I'm battling depression and living up to Jeannes Dixon's description of me: "you start a lot of things that you don't finish." (As Activities Vice President I hired her to speak at a community college years ago. She held my ring finger and made that statement.) Can't tell you how many times that has haunted me.
This has been such a roller coaster ride but I'm tired of going down. Every time we think we have come up with an alternative to our living situation, something goes awry and we have to try something else. I've got religious folk offering their prayers and other offering ideas that have already been tried on and tossed. I have my husband trying to reassure me that it's not my fault that we're in this mess; but we would'nt BE in this mess if I was working. Heavy sigh....
I don't know when or how this ride will end, but I know it will eventually. Just afraid of the additional cost. All this for standing up for something I believed in at work. Will I ever be able to understand why I was the only one who stood up? At the same time I wish I was one of the former co-workers who held on until they found another job or quit without a job to go to. Even though I am proud I held onto my integrity and know I am a better person for it, I foolishly thought that good karma was going to kick in and end this drought.
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