Join us this Friday night on Twitter as Amy – ResourcefulMommy hosts  the Sibu Beauty Site Warming Party.  Be prepared to be pampered with products made from the powerful Himalayan fruit, Seabuckthorn, the basis of all Sibu Beauty products.

When: Friday, August 14th from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. eastern time.
Where: Join us on Twitter, Tweetchat, or TweetGrid with the hashtag #sibubeauty

Panelists:

@butterflydiary, Charu Suri – Charu is the founder and editor-in-chief of Butterfly Diary, a site that tells you which beauty products work and which don’t – with a social butterfly twist!

@Sibu_Beauty, Pete McMullin – As one of the founding members of Sibu Beauty, Pete will be on hand to answer any product questions guests may have.

Please go to ResourcefulMommy to see the fabulous prizes and RSVP.

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I thought of writing this post yesterday, but I decided not to because I thought maybe some would take it the wrong way, like I am judging the character of those faced with this past Monday’s tragedy, and that is not it at all, just to clarify if anything below contradicts this, I am not judging anyone’s actions. I am just left thinking what would I have done?

As most of you may know this past Monday there was a tragic accident, DC Metro Train 112 slammed into Train 214 this week, taking nine lives and injuring 80 people. This is shortly after I returned from a conference where I took my first plane ride. I remember thinking about the possibility of taking a train to Florida if I could not get past my fear enough to fly. I remember in my mind there was no question, a train/the metro things of this sort are just safer than a plane, I guess that is the place where you are faced with the facts – No matter how much you prepare there are no guarantees.

I knew that this accident happen, but I was trying not to search for anything related to the accident, I get so engrossed in others tragedies, in the what if’s, and how is their family dealing, etc.  So I usually try with not too much success to not search the articles out. Well as I am tweeting away I see a tweet from @technosailor that talks about how this article on the crash compelled him to buy the newspaper, so that was it, I had to click on it. I make a point to have tweeps that are local to me in one group so I can always see what is going on, as far as tweet-ups, or local news, etc. I can’t tell you how many sad things I have seen locally, but still have not gone to one meet up, well I am lying, that is how I found out about Blogpotomac.

Anyway…off track. Here is the article that was tweeted . So I read and cried, and read and cried some more, thought about the what if’s and what the family is thinking, the ones that lost a mother, that lost a daughter or their son, then I thought what would I have done?

Knowing that another human being was trapped as LaVonda was, would I have left with the majority, would I have stayed with her but not moved the pile of debris for fear that something would go wrong, or would I have tried to pick up the pieces of debris to get to her. I would like to think I would have done the latter, but I don’t know because I was not there, I don’t know if the debris was too heavy, would I have been too scared. I don’t know what I would have done.

I am not trying to say anything negative about those in the accident, because again I can only speculate on what I would do, but I think moments like these show our character, who we really are, or maybe I am mistaken, maybe our character is defined by moments like these.  I assume fear was the driving force leading them to walk outside the train while someone was still inside struggling to live, fear that another train would crash, that something would shift, blow up, anything and they would not be able to escape alive.

Would it have been foolish of me to stay for someone else, what if I died trying to save someone else, would that make a difference to my kids living without their mom.  There are so many what if’s, and maybe I am a bit of a masochist to put myself through the what if’s on an emotional level, I think at times I am, but at times I cannot seem to stop myself from obsessing over others tragedies.

What do you think you would have done, I do not think there is any right or wrong answer; I don’t think any of us really know what we would do in a situation like this till we were in it.  Even after I thought everything through, I still would hope that I would be one of the ones to stay, that I would hopefully be trying to figure out by myself or with someone else how to get the debris off of her, or when something like this happens is there even time for that?

What would you have done?

On my new blog I wrote about a maid service I just used through a online market place by the name of bidmycleaning.com

I invite you into mydirty home and you get to see now how clean it is after the maids clean it, I know we could all apreciate a maid coming to our house to clean it so we do not have to worry about it, and if not, then you are just weird

Check out my full post here: Do you Clean? I Don’t

This weekend I have started the process of overcoming two of my fears.  I am not over either one of them yet, as the above quote references I have to continue to do these things until the fear no longer exists, but I have made the first and biggest step to overcoming two of my fears.  Below is a picture of me outside the JAX airport, I flew there for a conference from BWI, this is the first time I have ever flown which is needless to say a fear of mine.  There are so many fears wrapped up into this one fear. There is the fear of death, there is the fear of feeling like I have no control, because at the end of the day you really never had control anyway, but at least I have my false sense of control which has always worked pretty well for me.  It is a good thing there are so many fears wrapped up into one though, because flying on a plane has now put me steps closer to getting over all of my above fears.

My face looks kind of stretched, doesn’t it?  Anyway, what have I learned – Southwest Airlines Rock, I love window seats, and you have to check your luggage in a hour before departure, because if you don’t those big scary words will come up – “Your Luggage is Late, and it may not be on the plane” Not those exact words, but something like that.  That just added to how stressted I was, not to mention there was bad weather and our flight was delayed by 30 minutes.  Thankfully my bags were with me the whole time in the plane and I was really focusing on every noise, tilt and bump so I did not think about them too much on the way there.  So what do I now think of flying….?

Well it is still scary , let’s face it – the lack of control thing is still very much there and that still scares me, we are thousand upon thousands of feet in the air and something going wrong, well I rather not think about it.  Now the being above the clouds was really cool, that was such a neat experience for me, really, I was in amazement for the first 20 minutes; I even tried to take a picture of them with my web cam…

Although I think all I got was the sun glaring in the window, not sure.  Takeoff was a lot better than I expected, you can tell we are going fast, but it does not feel as fast as what we actually must be going to be able to ascend into the sky.  I felt a little push back and thought maybe we lifted a bit, I looked out the window and we were already really high, my ears popped a little but not much.  A scary part for me was the plan tilting from side to side, I guess it has to do that to make turns, huh?  But I do not like the feeling.  Descending was fine, it seemed that the bumpiest part on the way there and back was when we were descending and this is also when my ears where screaming in pain despite chewing gum.  All in all it was a mix of scary and exciting and I would do it again, in fact I want to keep doing it till I get to the point where it is no longer a fear.  The fact is, is that I could walk outside, be driving to the store or anything else and have a chance of something horrible happening, so while it makes sense to take precaution in all that you do, I do not want to live my life being scared of everything, because for one that would just suck, and for another this simply is not a trait that I care to instill in my children.  If I am scared they could very well grow up to be the same, and someone one wise once told me “What you will show to your kids by them seeing you face your fears reaps far greater rewards than the small, small percentage that exists that something will happen to you.” And this leads to the ‘Thank you’ I want to give to those that have helped me, this could be as small as  a tip, or really reaching out to me to help me deal with my fear.  To some it may have looked like me overreacting, but to me this fear was very real.  Sorry if I leave anyone out.

First I want to thank SouthWest Airlines for being so friendly and for embracing social media so I could stalk their Facebook page often and see all the great things that people continue to say about them. Also, me flying for my first time on their birthday and because of this them giving out free drinks really worked for the fears of a ‘first time flyer’ even at 8:30 in the morning

Wanted to thank my Aunt who just flew for her first time a few months earlier, she gave me a fresh perspective on what the feelings and thoughts are for a first time flyer.  Aunt Renee sorry this is the only picture I could find She also is the one that told me that I would have to take my shoes off, so with that heads up I wore sandals.

One of my best lifetime long friends – Ky who talked me through my fears more then once, and she checked in after the flight to make sure I was okay.

Farashta who is another one of my lifetime long friends, when I say lifetime, I mean 13 years to this point. She was actually going to fly down with me, she winded up having to go to a wedding which in retrospect was a good thing.  I had to face this fear all by myself and that is the way it should have been.  Just in the fact that she was going to go with me knowing that I was going to be in seminars all day long speaks volumes to me, the fact that I was asking her to do that probably does not speak to highly of me, but nonetheless she was planning on being by my side.

Danielle AKA Extraordinary Mommy is awesome and I really could not expect anything less from her, she talked to me before hand about my fear of flying and my nervousness about going to a conference by myself and really made me feel a lot better and she was the first one to DM me asking me how it went.

Sarah Gilbert Fox AKA @styleave, we have tweeted online before, but besides that we have never talked before. She reached out to me and called me and talked to me about the fear of flying that she use to have and what helped her deal with her fear, we talked for a bit, and I felt a lot better after talking with her. These are the type of people that make a difference, there are the people that ‘talk a lot’ and then there are the people that ‘do’ and her reaching out to me really meant a lot and I felt better after speaking with her.

There quite a few others that gave me flying tips such as Lynn Miller AKA @4GreenPs, @CouponPrincess, Holly Fulger AKA @holmolpip, Aaron Brazell AKA @technosailor, and Betty AKA @its_me_betty

Everyone’s tips whether they were: stay distracted, drink a lot, take some drugs, or you are going to be okay, they all made a difference. Oh and I should thank HARO by Peter Shankman (@skydiver) as well, not only because his daily HARO is where I saw the info about Prville but  if you read his free media queries that come through then you would know that he seems to live on a plane, which as odd as it sounds helped me put the odds in perspective, hey if this guy lives on a plane and he is still kicking then the odds of anything going wrong on one round trip are minuscule at best.

My other fear was just going to a bigger PR conference by myself which I will talk a little bit more on in my post talking about PRville which will be at my other site PR-Mom.com (I will put the exact link once I am done the post.) The fear was pretty unnecessary, everyone was great.

Even though I did not stick to working out everyday, I have been drinking water and lemons like it is going out of style and I have been trying to eat healthier, I am curious if the Wii will tell me I lost weight just from that. Cross your fingers for me.

Although I did not work out, I did get my nails done, and a hair cut, does that make up for not working out? Probably not, but I was going to a conference, I had to make sure I felt good about myself, plus I needed to cut my hair, right?  Anyway check it out, I have not had bangs since I was 10, what do you think, it feels weird with my hair being this short, but it only takes about 5 minutes to do!

AND here are my pretty nails:

When I first started this blog I did it partly because I had wanted to start a blog for a while and partly for a business opportunity.  Well the business opportunity is on the back burner, although I still think it was a good opportunity, it is just not where my passion lies.

So in turn this became a personal blog, a family blog, a place to share my interests, and that is how I want this blog to remain. I will maybe at some point be transferring this over to a hosted site, but it will still be my personal blog.

The site I am starting is www.pr-mom.com.  I have thought about starting a PR/Social Media/Productivity site for a while now, but I wanted to learn more so I had more to offer.  Although I plan to still keep learning everyday, I am ready to now make the move and to start sharing what I have learned for the past few years.

I am super excited and nervous about my move, as it feels different writing about PR/Social Media vs. my own personal life, so it is a big move for me.

I hope to see everyone over at PR-Mom

PS. This is my first career/professional blog and I know there are plenty of you out there that have more experience in this area than I do, if anything about my new home looks not right, or if there is any feedback you have I would be very appreciative.

I have a few posts on the site already, but tomorrow a post will go out and from then on I am going to try to post every day.

I like Outspoken Media, I really do.  Lisa’s posts entertain me, they make me think, she is controversial and evokes emotion whether it is positive or negative. She has had some awful things said about her, but yet she still writes what she feels and I respect that.

With that said…

Now this is strictly my personal opinion, I am going to include my professional thoughts on my other site on a similar topic.

The post that was written is titled: “Why I Hate Bloggers”

And here are some of the statements in the post:

“Every few months we see these articles posted in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or some other Prestigious IRL News Outlet about the thousands of abandoned blogs scattered all over the Web created by boring people who weren’t loved enough as children. People who jumped on the blogging bandwagon in the mid ‘90s thinking it was their ticket to widespread validation, head pats and where they could unload their drama about how traumatic high school was. But (SHOCKINGLY!) no one cared. No one commented. No one offered them a book deal. And they weren’t even cast in a movie with Brad Pitt. So they abandoned their blog, all whiny and disillusioned. Cry me a river.”

“The problem with blogging is also what originally made it great. It’s that anyone can do it. Unfortunately, most people shouldn’t. Because they’re boring. And they have nothing to say. So instead of using the Web to be interesting, they just start talking about their day as if people care. And they do that until they realize that no one does cares and then they blame blogging for their failure.”

“I hate bloggers because their “hobby” gives my profession a bad name. We’re not doing the same thing. The thousands of words I write for different blogs on the Web each week is not the same as Molly writing about her day, attracting comments from her sister and her two best friends. But we’re lumped into the same category. And that’s why blogging is a joke. Because 95 percent of the people who blog treat it that way.”

“Here’s the simple truth: A blog won’t make you less boring, it will just emphasize the fact that you are. That’s why most blogs fail. Not because blogging is overhyped or because people “lose interest”. It’s because you treated your blog like your family newsletter and no one cared. If you’re going to start a blog in 2009, for God’s sake, be interesting. Find a niche that you can stand out in and where you can offer something valuable. Otherwise, do all of us a favor and create a Twitter account instead.”

Content Creator (Blogger) vs. Story teller (Journalist) vs. Diary (Blogger) I think the difference between bloggers and publishers is that bloggers can make their entries more personal, they speak the truth as they see it, not that their truth is factual to the whole.  Therefore in my eyes Outspoken Media’s blog is indeed just that, ‘a blog’,  and it is not Journalism, is it a different level of blogging? Yes, I believe it is, there is content blogging where you bring value to a specific niche, and then there are personal blogs where you bring value to your family and friends, and maybe others that take something away from your personal experiences.

I think I understand her point, her point is that there are a lot of people that are hoping to make money and receive some type of notoriety off of their blog and they are not providing interesting enough information, or interesting enough information to a specific niche.  However I have a hard time figuring out why it was necessary to put down people that just blog for the sake of blogging in the process, maybe that is not what I was suppose to take away from this, but it was.  To insinuate that people should not have a blog to write their feelings even if it is not interesting to a specific group is crazy.  This is my personal blog, I write about whatever I deem worthy, because I can do so, because this is my personal space and even though I am totally aware that not everyone thinks my kids are as cute as I do or that most of my content is only interesting to me, or to my family – I still get comments, I still have an average of 30 visitors a day, so even if those 900 people did not come each month, I would still write!

Another thing that really bothered me about this post is the “boring people that were not loved enough as children” comment. I know as a writer you cannot please everyone, there are going to be people that have problems with you and I imagine you have to develop a thick skin, but on another note I also think that no matter how much you teeter on the edge of inappropriate that you should think how what you say might effect someone else. I am sure not much thought went into typing out that phrase, but to a kid that was not loved enough as a child that maybe wanted to write a blog about their personal triumphs, well this might discourage them if they came across this post because they do think badly of themselves, because they were not loved enough as a child.  I was a foster child for many years, and I know plenty of them, and it is a real issue, not one to be casually placed in a post about how she hates bloggers because they give her excellent work a bad name.  I think if people want to write about their own stories then they should have a right to do so!  If you are such great writer and you have so much interesting things to say then your work will not get lost amongst all of the ‘inferior’ blogs out there. I do agree there is a difference in diary vs. content blogs and that a professional blog should be in a different category and should focus on content, but that does not mean that people should not write about their personal stories.

I am sure there are tons of blogs out there that speak to someone’s personal experience, call it whining if you will but I am sure there have been others that have taken something away that has helped them. To say someone’s writing is not interesting is really just a matter of opinion, and I believe if someone is passionate and genuine and they want to write on a personal level that there will be a group of people even if they are small that are interested in their story.

Last but not least, I am not sure how this post is productive, yes it evoked emotion – people strongly agree or do not which of course leads to conversation and that is always good, but I still did not see any good/helpful content in this post, where are the takeaways, what can you learn…that you were not loved as a child, that you are boring and as a client you are going to be insulted and not helped, I am just not finding where this post is productive for others. If you want to share your opinion so be it, but my personal one is, is that when you are blogging under a brand name one of the goals is to provide good-helpful content to your readers, and in this post I find no takeaways.

So here is a post that I just read the other day that has some excellent tips:

23 Essential Elements of Sharable Blog Posts by Chris Brogan

Just felt compelled to say my piece on this.