I haven’t felt this great in a long time although I could use a few more hours of sleep! Every moment of sickness throughout the pregnancy was worth it now that I can hold my new baby in my arms. My health issues that I was struggling with prior to the pregnancy have virtually disappeared so we’ve decided our William is a healer baby!

His daddy is a healer too. He took care of me so well and never complained once even though he had to do a lot of disgusting things like empty my “puke bowl” every day. I was too sick to even make it to the bathroom. He rubbed my feet, brought me meals in bed, made me laugh and told me I was beautiful every day even though I felt like death. I’ve never felt so blessed.

Now that I’m feeling better I’m gradually getting back into a routine and doing more things that I haven’t been able to do in almost a year. I thought posting to this blog could be one of those things. I’ve missed it terribly and I have so many things I’d like to write about.

It will be slow going because I rarely have two free hands to type with but I’ll do my best. In the meantime, I’ll be spending most of my time holding my new little one and enjoying every single nanosecond of it!

I love blogging and I love working for my amazing clients but right now my health comes first. I’ll try to post on Twitter now and again so feel free to follow me if you’d like to catch up.

Until then, take care!

I’m notorious for being way behind the times. I think I was the second last person in town to own a cell phone. I was definitely the last person in town to figure out how to text properly. This brings me to my question – how do you blog when you’re not at home? Do you use your cell phone? Do you drink gallons of coffee while you blog at a cafe? Do you talk into a voice recorder and type it out when you get home?

Or do you write on scraps of paper or napkins with an old linty pen like me?

I’d like to find a more efficient way of doing it, so please tell me how you do it!

As the new year approaches, I’ve been obsessing more and more about what 2010 is going to bring me – or rather, what I’m going to achieve in 2010. I’ve got some pretty hefty goals set and one of those goals is to get so organized, it will make me want to puke. To say that I like to have my ducks in a row is an understatement. I need my ducks perfectly aligned and if one feather is out of place, I don’t run at optimal speed.

My passions and interests have changed drastically over the last decade but one thing that always stays the same is the fact that I’m an organizing freakshow. I love to be organized and I love finding new ways to become even more sickenly organized.

Motivation and inspiration are two big things for me. I need one to jump start the other, but I need to be organized before I can even begin to be either. I continuously make more money each month and I can thank my insane organizing skills for the majority of it.

Working online involves a lot of juggling, no matter what, and it’s not a skill that everybody has. Some people actually work better when their desks are piled miles high with random papers, dirty dishes, nail clippings and remnants of snacks from weeks before. If that’s you, no need to read further.

On the other hand, if you’re like me, here are some handy resources to check out so you can get your organizing skills in shape for the new year:

Organizing Your Home Office – Links

A designer’s tips for organizing the home office with some style – 5 tips for organizing a home office.

Nicole Balch is the Queen of making organization pretty. Check out her studio to see what I mean.

There’s nothing like some pleasantly eye-catching file folders to encourage you to get organized and stay organized.

Clutter is evil. At least for me it is. That’s what the unclutterer blog rocks, and in particular, the office organization archive.

Lifehacker has some worthy home office hacks to think about while you’re in organizing-mode.

If nothing else in your house is organized, at least your computer should be. Read How to Create a Minimalist Computer Experience.

20 Time-Saving Tips to Improve Designer’s Workflow – Even if you’re not a web designer, there are tips in this post that can not only help you organize your Mac or PC, but they can save you loads of time especially if you deal with a lot of images while blogging.

Organize your browser. Organize your desktop. Organize your folders. If you’re bold enough, branch out from your office area and organize other areas of your house too. It’s much easier to keep each room clean and in order when the rest of the house is too. Otherwise, the clutter creep will rear it’s ugly head in no time flat.

If staying organized isn’t your strong suit, keep these resources handy and plug away at them as you have time. You’ll find that the more organized you get, the more time you have to get more organized! Or spend time with family and other important things like that…

So what are your favorite organizing tips or resources?

Check out this Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers.

Google Chrome killed it!

In summary:

Up yours Internet Explorer. And you know what? Up yours too Firefox!

I’ve been having so many issues with Firefox lately that I had to completely give up on it and use Chrome as my default browser. Many of my Firefox add-ons weren’t compatible with the latest version and the ones that were compatible were slowing it down. I’m careful with my add-ons and I didn’t have too many to begin with so this was unacceptable for me.

I’m really loving Chrome. It’s fast and it looks pretty damn cool. I have mine set up with the chrome finish so my browser looks all slick-like.

I’m not even that disappointed that I can’t use the add-ons I was so dependent on with Firefox. I don’t even miss them.

You can’t right click on an image in Chrome and set it as your desktop wallpaper which is sad, but you can right click on anything you want to and “inspect element”. This is a super handy tool for web developers, designers, internet marketers, etc. If you use Firebug for Firefox, this tool is very similar.

It’s definitely worth trying Chrome out if you haven’t already.

Glary Utilities is a light-weight application that does a bunch of things.

It cleans your registry entries, recovers lost disk space, and removes spyware and adware to name a few features. It’s like giving your coffee pot a good cleaning and having a nice, fresh, tasty cup of coffee after.

What I love most about this tool is it loads quickly and scans/fixes quickly. This is a bonus for me since I have zero patience. Oh yeah, and it’s free.

Give it a try and see how much junk it will fix on your computer.

And that’s it for today.

Google and their Sidewiki can go to hell.

If you don’t know what Sidewiki is, don’t worry. I didn’t either until recently. It’s a new “feature” that Google came out with that allows users to make comments about other websites. It’s a toolbar that you have to install on your browser so you can see the comments displayed next to the web site. Not only that, but you can share spread those comments through Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles.

But I have a question…

What right does Google have to allow and encourage comments on MY web site?

Do they pay for my hosting? NO!

Do they pay for my domain name? NO!

Did they work hard to produce the content on my site? NO!

Have they spent hours and hours every week for years maintaining my site? NO!

So get the fuck off my site!! At the very least, give me the ability to turn your shitty sidewiki off.

Way to open even more doors for spammers and assholes Google! Good job!! You think people need a valid reason to be jerks? Think again. STOP MESSING WITH THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T MESS WITH!

I have enough things to occupy my day without adding “monitor sidewiki comments” to my already huge daily to-do list.

I’ll refrain from writing anything further at the moment since I’m a little irritable, but I implore you to read this in case you’re unsure of why I’m so upset about this.

If you think I’m overreacting, wait until you receive one of the comments mentioned in this post on your own website.

What about you? What do you think about Sidewiki?

Update: Apparently I’m not the only one who is fuming mad about SideWiki. Here are two more good reads. The first one is great if you don’t mind a bit of strong language.

The Sidewiki Abomination (I couldn’t have said it better myself!)

The Google Sidewiki Controversy (Sylvie Fortin – very smart lady and much more eloquent than I am.)

What pro-Sidewiki people have to remember is that there are insane amounts of scum-sucking wastes of flesh in this world who don’t give two shits about anyone but themselves and they will do what it takes to make you look bad. They don’t need a valid reason. Sidewiki just gives them an easy way to hurt other people who don’t deserve it. That sounds pretty evil to me.

Information overload is quite common in the online world. It’s also very common to get overwhelmed with all the tasks that come with working online. There are so many options! Which ones do you choose?

Time is money, right folks? No matter how good you are, Santa isn’t going to bring you more hours in the day for Christmas.

If this is you, here’s a little exercise you can try to help you determine which things you should focus on and which things you should drop.

You’ll need to think about everything you do that you consider part of your business building methods and compile them all into a list.

The items that may be on your list could include but are not limited to:

• buying advertising
• article marketing
• social media marketing
• affiliate marketing
• selling your own products or services
• blogging
• posting in forums
• recording podcasts, interviews, etc.
• offline marketing
• email marketing
• building membership sites
• setting up squeeze pages
• cost per click advertising like Adsense, Chitika, etc.

For this to work, you’ll need to know how much money each task brings in. This may be hard to monitor in some cases so just do your best and “guestimate”.

Now, take everything that currently makes you money or will be bringing money in soon. Write each thing down on a piece of paper with plenty of space between each item. (Some things may overlap a bit since certain tasks will directly and indirectly affect other tasks, but that’s OK for now.)

Beside each one, write down how much money it makes per day, per month, per year. Then write down how much you think it can potentially make you per day/month/year.

Once that part is done, go back through each item and list how much time and effort each thing needs to keep bringing in that money. For example, blogging may take you 1 hour a day whereas buying advertising may only take a few hours a month.

Now rate each item on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 is “I’d rather stick a needle in my eye than do this.” and 10 is “This is so freaking fun!”

After you have everything written down, take some time to decide what your top 5 items are. If you didn’t have many to begin with, choose the top 3. Those are the money-making methods you should be focusing on.

That doesn’t mean you need to stop doing the other ones, just don’t spend a lot of time or effort on them right now. You can outsource those tasks to someone else, or wait until your top items are on auto-pilot and you have more time to spend on them.

If they really don’t help your business at all, cut ‘em loose.

Ultimately, you want to be focusing on things that not only help improve your business but are also things you can see yourself continuing to do without them becoming chores you despise doing.

The whole point of working at home is to have freedom. You want the freedom to be able to spend time with your family, and also financial freedom so you’re not always tied to your desk.

To get to that point, you need to periodically analyze your business plan as well as your daily routine and update it accordingly. This exercise will help you do that.

Every time I read one, I’m inspired and end up thinking about things in a completely different way which helps me continue to grow – both personally and in my business.

A few newsletters back, when talking about Internet Marketing “Gurus”, he said this:

These folks are not smarter than you, they’re not better than you, and they don’t have mystic Kung Fu powers. At most, they’re a few blocks further down the sidewalk.

So jog a little.

Think about that. Doesn’t that give you a surge of motivation and make you want to work hard? That’s one of the main reasons why I enjoy Paul’s newsletters so much.

You want to join the big leagues? Pick up the pace a little. Work a few extra hours. Go above and beyond. Kick some ass!

If you need a nudge in the right direction, read his report “Why Johnny Can’t Sell”. I read it as soon as he emailed his list about it and I’ve read it a few times since. It’s that good.

If you can read at least 10 pages of it and put any of the ideas you get from it into action today, you’re leaps and bounds ahead of the masses.

If you sign up for the free newsletter, you’ll also get “Need to Know” which is another great report I’ve read more than once. That puppy is stuffed to the nines with useful nuggets that any Internet Marketer can use.