Mom~E~Centric

I hope this isn’t a long post. I know what I want to say, but for some reason, if I just blurt it out, it comes out sounding really rude. Possibly that’s the problem in the first place. I have no ability what-so-ever to handle confrontations and moreover, as my mother would say, what comes in my brain comes out my mouth, no filter included.

With that, you’ve been warned, this is not directed at any one person. I don’t think I know one person in particular would fit all the characteristics of the general person I am describing here, so just don’t get personal.

That said, I was asked by someone (on my side by the way) to produce a one line bio. That’s like asking a gorilla to only eat one banana. I don’t do one sentences well. But, I tried, I worked hard and I did it.  Want to see what it says ?

Jerri Ann Reason from Mom~E~Centric is more than just a Blogger (Nutrition, Childhood Obesity & Celebrities), but also an Educator, Sports Columnist and Social Media Consultant who drags her husband and two boys along as they attempt to Constantly Re-Invent Normalcy.

Now, let me say this, that sounds pretty easy to do if you……aren’t the person doing it. However, please note, I work hard. No, I’m not outside where it’s 100 degrees and no I’m not lifting or doing manual labor, but I use my brain (ok, some will argue that one) and I work hard.

Now comes the bad part, while I’ve been busy for the last 11 years, yes, you read that right, eleven years, working my behind off, it seems that others are going places by hanging onto the coattails of someone with a bigger or broader knowledge base. Does that make sense at all?

Let me put it this way, I watch Survivor, I”m a complete crazy woman over that show. Even though it’s only been on the air for 16 or 17  seasons, only then did I understand what it means for someone to “ride the coattails” of another. If you watch the show, you know that many winners of that show have sit back and let someone else do the dirty work and then they walk away with the money.

I’m tired of folks riding coattails. Don’t get me wrong, no one is riding my coattails, the only place my coattails will take you is straight up my  …never mind .  I’m talking about people who day in and day out do exactly what I do but while I’m busy working my little nubbers to the bone, wracking my brain for how to do more, get more, be more, I look around and see folks who are clueless moving into positions that I honestly feel should have been mine.

I was given a piece of advice a couple of weeks ago by a pretty prominent person in the blog world. Her advice to me was “quit doing consulting for free”.  I looked at her strangely and then became entranced at what the words actually meant.

Quit giving advice or consulting for free.

Anyone have a clue exactly what that means?  I mean, I’m no idiot I get the bottom line and have a dictionary if I didn’t get it, I”m talking about deep down in there, what does that mean?

With that,  here’s what my bio originally read,

Jerri Ann Reason from Mom~E~Centric is more than just a Blogger (Nutrition, Childhood Obesity & Celebrities), but also an Educator, Sports Columnist and Social Media Advocate who drags her husband and two boys along as they attempt to Constantly Re-Invent Normalcy.

The letters in bold were what I changes. I changed that sentence to include the world Social Media Consultant, What difference does it make or will it make, none probably, but I wonder, just sit back and think for a minute, how many coattails have your hung  on to in your life to get you where you are. Was it working hard or riding coattails? 

If you can’t say you worked hard, and remember I’ve been right here pecking away in various forms for 11 years, but if you think you have worked hard and haven’t received your due, then possibly someone is riding your coattails and it’s time to cut them loose.

Moreover, if you look back over the course of the last few years and say “Wow, I got lucky!”, chances are someone somewhere was carrying the weight for you.

What do you want to be, the coattails or the hanger?

Those of you who know me that I have no reservations about telling you how I spend way too much time online blogging and reading blogs.  Barbara is my kind of lady!  Check her out!

Barbara has a great book trailer out for The Unfaithful Widow.

Addicted To Blogs

Blog crazy. My friends laugh at my love of blogs.

“Started a new blog last night.” I called my best friend first thing in the morning to share the excitement.

“Another one?” She was clearly not as impressed as I was.

“Yeah, wait until you see it.”

“That makes three now since December if I remember correctly.”

I hear it in her voice. She thinks I’m crazy.

She’s right. My interest in blogs peaked at the end of the year. I haven’t been the same since December.

My first blog was to promote my book, my memoir on becoming a widow. I have to laugh. It is really my dog blog. I talk about the six rescue dogs that rescued me. My sister read it and wrote me back. No wonder you can’t get a date. All those dogs. I do go overboard. No kids, so the pups are my babies.

I am an antique dealer, love all things garden related and make botanical themed jewelry. Why not have a blog and talk about those things? Good idea and a way to reconnect with my antique buddies. So Barb’s Botanical Garden got started the following month.

My latest blog is about my sixth rescue dog, April In Paris. She has a story to tell. A hunting dog in a vintage hat with a huge pink rose has a lot on her mind. April dreams of visiting Paris and this is her diary.

I can hardly wait to write at night and my lonely evenings are lit up with my joy of blogging. I write and feel connected.

My love of blogs comes from my old passion for journals. Reading a blog is like opening a journal. I love the intimacy created by the writer and the implied friendship with the sharing of thoughts. I am amazed at the wealth of talent by unknown authors, crafters, decorators, and life commentators. I adore the spunky gals who tell it like it is. I laugh out loud as they comment on the craziness of the day. The humor right to the core of life and its problems. Something I can read and identify with.

I learned a new word through blogging. Giveaways. A great read and a chance to win something. Hey, it doesn’t get any better than that.

I will always buy books because I love the feel of a book in my hand. I love to enter small cozy independent shops. But I find discovering a new blog that enchants me as thrilling as finding a new book at my favorite bookshop.

I am excited to have found this great blog, Mom~E~Centric. Just having read the latest entry on cat fights and the nasty business of women in business hit a nerve with me. Been there, done that. Glad to hear it wasn’t just me.

Blogs give more information and fun than most anything I can find to read. So I will continue to be addicted to blogging. Just how many more blogs I feel the need to create is yet to be seen.

I have my book in hand for your giveaway. My book is now available at Amazon online and Kindle in addition to my web. I have a book launch here in Atlanta for June 26th. It will be a book signing and silent auction for Animal Action Rescue event. I will be cause marketing with different dog rescue groups. I adopted five in the last year and still have my old girl Foxy. If you want to mention the adopting dogs from local shelters that would be wonderful.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am always focused on good safety habits.  When we owned the daycare, we put one of the indoor exit only locks on the door so people couldn’t not come inside unattended.  I mean business when I say, it’s important stuff to keep under contrl.

For those of you who were at Disney with me, you probably saw me handing out arm bands to put your information on and then put it on your child “Just in case”.  Luckily that trip, none of the people in my group had a “just in case”.

If you’ve known me longer than that, you know I was kidnapped when I was four.  Yea, now I have your attention uh?

I was given the opportunity to try out a website that’s making huge strides to provide our children with a safe environment.  And, to provide our kids the freedom that we were afforded as children.  Surely you remember playing outside with buddies til talk and then being called home for dinner.  Those days are gone.  Safety has to be your number one concern.

So, I checked out Our Child Safe thanks to the folks that help get the sited off the ground.  As you can see, there’s loads of information.  And, once I Registered, I was able to put in as much or as little as I wanted about my children, myself and an other adults besides their father that might be with them on a regular basis.  Hair color, eye color, allergies, behavioral disorders, birth marks, nicknames that only your kid would know as a safety net and more.

I was able to put in an up close facial, a profile and a full length photo of the kids.  Their friends, phone numbers of everyone you can think of, you can get it there.  The final deal is this, look at that ticker at the top, kids headed to the Emergency Room?  Look how many Amber Alerts have been issued in the last 24 hours?  That could be you out there looking, do what you can to make sure it’s not you and what you can do to help those less fortunate.

Details in a couple of places.  Start here and then if that helps, read the rest here.

You know, in the real world, nothing is free.  And, I just want to clarify a few things here and there.  For those of you who have seen that I am going to Orlando to the Social Media Moms Celebrate Disney Conference not to mention my desire to go to Blissdom and/or Mom 2.0 Summit and that I did go to Nashville last weekend to Social Fresh are probably wondering if I have a sugar daddy or just a cash cow somewhere.

The fact is, I kill myself here and even still, these trips aren’t full funded by anyone.  Most trips are full funded by my husband.  Some trips, like Social Fresh was a mish mash of the two in that Collective Bias was the reason I was able to attend.  And, yes, I did get a great opportunity in the Disney trip but because of that, I probably won’t get to do any others in the near future. 

I want to go to SXSW simply because I’ve never been and it appears to have some of the best learning experiences out there.  Problem there is I need someone to sponsor me to do this and thus far, no sugar daddy’s or cash cow’s have been born.

So, if you are out there lurking just looking for a blogger with much invested in the good ol’ blogosphere…….I’m just an email away…..

I haven’t worked in several days.  I did finally buckle down yesterday and start writing some stuff to get paid for but from Christmas til then, I had basically done nothing that was going to earn me any money.  Even writing here was slim because I was enjoying reading other blogs, tweeting and I even spent an enormous amount of time unfollowing people on twitter and unsubscribing from sites whee I generally just delete the emails anyway. 

Today, today I give you perception.  It is what it is, right?  Buck and I have talked at length about how bloggers are instinctively egocentric.  I say you can blog and still put others first.  He says that if you blog, you are to some extent an egomaniac (my word, not his, don’t want to put words in the man’s mouth).  I’m going to give you today’s thoughts and all of them basically boil down to perception…..how the other guys sees it, not necessarily how you (generally you) see it. 

1.  I made a general statement about the firecracker airline passenger before knowing that he was possibly a double agent.  That statement went something like this (please keep your humor in tact)….”if I get on an airplane, bound for another country, with a one-way ticket and no luggage?  I need to be investigated.  Period.  Chances are, even if I am not a threat, I need my head examined by men in white suits and it won’t be a waste of anyone’s time”  I mean really, I understand that there are reasons why someone would do this.  But those reasons are few and far between in my mind and few and far between is just enough to warrant a strip search.  Sorry if I offend but geeez already.

2.  Only where I live can you hear more shots fired at one time than in the Las Vegas Courthouse today where a U.S. Marshal died.  I was listening to someone shoot Bucks (and not the one above by the way, like deer) while watching the news and listening to a cell phone report of over 2 dozen shots being fired.  Why?  Why I ask you does it take more than 2 dozen shots to render one shooter in one courthouse injured and a U.S. Marshall dead? 

3.  I went PR searching today.  I have a higher PR on many of my blogs than some of the people I look up to in this ol’ blogging world.  How can that be?  Ego…read number 1.

4.  And along with number 3 and the ego in number 1, my husband calmly informed me last night that “you never get comments on your blog, is that not the point of blogging?  to get comments?”  Thanks dude, you ruined my higher than so and so PR day.

5.  The Tooth Fairy managed to get her tiny butt frozen somewhere in the tundra last night and didn’t make it to retrieve the tooth from under my son’s pillow and leave money.  The kid actually asked me if I was the tooth fairy.  Why no kid, I’m not.  He immediately asked if he could leave the Tooth Fairy a note tonight so she wouldn’t forget him.  I said yes, just tell her “don’t forget me”.  That’s kind of ironic if you know me because  I am never that short with my letters.  And leave it to my son to explain to me that his note was going to say “Don’t forget me!  I have a package for you.”.  To which he also questioned whether the Tooth Fairy would know what the contraction “don’t” means.  The kid……*shakes head violently*  And since the Tooth Fairy really could be me, should I be offended that he thinks so little of my knowledge of the English language.

6.  I offended someone today.  I rarely confront anyone and by rarely?  I mean like never. And now I remember why.  I can’t do it without being a pain in the royal butt.  I honestly confronted someone today and I am assuming from their response that I made them angry.  That was not my intention. I truly wasn’t being nasty, it’s just…the written word……it’s so hard to interpret.  If you are reading and you know who you are, I really didn’t mean any harm and I am sorry it came off that way.

7.  I commented on a forum today about why women should not be president.  I was the lone dissenting voice as usual…but I really do believe what I wrote.  And, if you see the ego in number 1 and 3, you can read that comment on TwitterMoms.

8.  I wrote 6 paid posts and 200 tweets for someone else today.  I assume that the posts contained a substantial amount of bullsh!t because someone actually comment that “your paid posts crack me up”.  I had to explain that I paid a lot of money for my degree….all bullsh!t learned and accounted for with a piece of paper.

9.  When my son questioned my dinner preparation, I explained to him that I was heating up chili from the store, not making homemade chili.  (What’s with that kid?)  He then proceeded to ask me what it is called when you buy food from the store.  Hummm, what is he talking about?  He explained  by saying if homemade means you cook it at home then what is this because you are cooking this at home?  Yea, that’s right kid more power to you…I made homemade chili tonight.  It has a distinctive taste…Hormel-kind-of.

10.  The kid mentioned above has remained persistent that we should not leave the water in our sinks leaking because it is wasteful.  Try to explain the concept to freezing pipes meaning exploding pipes means use of much more water.  Actually, no don’t do that, he’ll be explaining it to me soon.

11.  Last year when I knew practically no one as far as sponsors for blogging conference, I asked for help from anyone with two ears and an email account.  This year, I “think” I know more people than I did last year but for some reason, I just can’t seem to get that letter of begging out there.  Surely number 1 above isn’t in danger of getting trampled on?

12.  Finally, the last of today’s perceived notions….as if today were anywhere over?  The PTO president called me today.  After a brief chat I mentioned my disdain for cold weather and early mornings.  I may or may not have mentioned that my son often has to get me up to take him to school.  She squealed like a pig.  No really she did.  And then she said it, the words that I would love to be defined by but I lack so greatly….”you always seem to be ready-to-go and on top of things, I would never have guessed you didn’t do mornings”.  Me? Haha! This woman has never seen my house.  And for those of you who have witnessed the horror that is my house, I entered another contest today that is technically about how cluttered my living space is.   And trust me, if I don’t win this one, it’s because there is someone out there living in extreme conditions, because really…it is that bad.

And there you have it perception…or more like musings of a country girl bored to tears.