Sometimes Someone Else Just says it better than I Ever Could

This is one of those days that I have to keep busy, to think of anything else other than the date or I might just find myself sitting on the sofa watching 12 year old news footage all day. I will never forget, that's a fact and something I've even written about before, but I also try very hard to live in the positive force of now.

And right now?

Life has changed, moved on, moved through, and moved past the events that happened on 9/11/01. At least that's the way it is for me. Friends, family, random acquaintances, jobs, geographic locations, apartments, cars, plates of food, pints of beer – they’ve all come and gone and I just kept moving forward.

So now what?

I opened this post on a somewhat somber note and led everyone to believe I might share some of what happened to me on that day. Or at least how my mind has processed things that have happened since. But honestly I just don’t want to. I don’t want to write it again, I don’t want to re-hash it all and sit around being sad and depressed all day.

Because that’s not the spirit I gleaned from the people of this country after the biggest tragedy in our history took place. I gleaned love and positivity, togetherness and a helpful life-force.

Which basically means I need to find some way to transition from the first few paragraphs of this post - ones that likely brought up all kinds of crazy memories for many of you - to something lighter, brighter and more upbeat.

Because that's where my brain likes to live these days.

Tall order?

In the spirit of that I always think the best way to bridge any gap is through music. So here's a quote to chew on for a few seconds that will hopefully give you some idea of the place I'm forcing my head to live today:

"The struggles I'm facing, the chances I'm taking. Sometimes might knock me down but, no I'm not breaking." **

Actually, now that I mention it, I think sharing a few of my favorite quotes from songs might not be a bad idea. It’s the kind of thing that makes for an interesting enough post, one that people can hopefully connect with in some small way.

And hopefully one that can help alleviate the emotional memories someone might be experiencing today. If only for a few minutes.

The List – Favorite Lines from Songs

I’ve been compiling a list for the past few months in a notepad document on my phone. Well my phone is about to get kicked to the curb for an upgrade soon so I guess there’s no time like the present to share what I’ve already got.

Obviously this list isn’t complete, that list would take decades to compile and probably still wouldn’t be complete. But enjoy these nuggets of brilliance for what they’re worth. Some are single lines, some entire verses. Some I’d have put the entire song as a quote because it just speaks to me so intensely. Those ones are linked back to a YouTube video so you can listen to the whole thing if you like.

And maybe finding out who the artists are behind some of these quotes will surprise you.

♦ I'm just a notch in your bedpost but you're just a line in a song.

– Fall Out Boy

♦ Hold onto 16 as long as you can, changes comin’ round real soon make us women & men.

– John Cougar Mellencamp

♦ Well maybe I'm off, yeah, I'm strangely askew. Maybe I ran away just when you started to get a good view. And maybe who I am turned out to be, nothing like the me that you wanted me to be.

          - Melisa Ferrick (I REALLY tried to find this song sung by Ferrick live somewhere so I could link to it but other than the tiny clip on Amazon’s link to purchase there’s just nothing online. The song isn’t one Ferrick usually performs live. Just go buy Valentine Heartache.)

♦ We're just 2 lost souls swimmin’ in a fishbowl year after year.

          - Pink Floyd

♦ It’s when you cry just a little but you laugh in the middle that you've made it.

          - Jason Mraz

♦ All my life I've been searchin’ for somethin’ somethin’ never comes never leads to nothin’ nothin’ satisfies but I'm getting’ close closer to the prize at the end of the rope.

          - Foo Fighters

♦ There's always gonna be another mountain I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be an uphill battle, sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. Ain't about how fast I get there, ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb.

          - **Miley Cyrus

♦ Some things in this world, man, they don’t make sense. Some things you don’t need until they leave you then they’re things that you miss.

          - Matchbox 20

♦ If I knew all the words I would write myself out of here.

          - Jason Mraz

♦ Now that we're here so far away, all the struggle we fought was in vain. And all the mistakes one life contained, they all finally start to go away. Now that we’re here so far away, and I feel like I can face the day. I can forgive and I’m not ashamed to be the person that I am today.

          - Staind

♦ You only get one shot do not miss your chance & blow ‘cause opportunity comes once in a lifetime.

          - Eminem

♦ And you're measuring your minutes by a clock that's blinking 8's.

          - Dashboard Confessional

♦ Life's like an hourglass glued to the table. No one can find the rewind button now. Sing it if you understand. And breathe. Just breathe.

- Anna Nalick

♦ I mean how can we get lost running in a straight line?

          - Jason Mraz

♦ ‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony this life. Try to make ends meet you're a slave to money then you die.

          - The Verve

♦ I find sometimes it’s easy to be myself, sometimes I find it’s better to be somebody else.

          - Dave Matthews Band

♦ Climb up over the top survey the state of your soul, you've got to find out for yourself whether or not you're truly trying. Why not give it a shot shake it take control & inevitably wind up finding for yourself all the strengths that you have inside of you.

          - Jason Mraz

And that seems like a pretty great way to close this post.

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Content Marketing Strategist and Blogger for hire, Jenn has over 12 years of freelancing experience. Read her blog

Please Consider Making a Donation

There’s no way to sugar coat this. So I kind of figured - why bother trying? Everyone around here knows I’m blunt and speak my mind. Well, the mind is the reason I’m asking everyone to make a donation so let me give you a little info.

First of all, I hope you’ll all stick with me on this because you know I’m not usually like this – directly asking for you to fork over money. It’s not usually my style. With that said, where I’m asking you to donate isn’t some weird unheard of cause or my Kickstarter campaign to sail around the world in a canoe or something.

I’m asking if you will please, please consider scratching together a couple bucks to donate to Alzheimer's research in the form of a donation to my Aunt Sue for her Walk campaign.

You all know Sue, she’s the gal who pretty much inspired my very first fiction novel, Ripple the Twine as I wrote about in this post. She’s one of the most generous and selfless people on this planet and next month she’s lacing up her sneakers to do the 2013 Greater Boston Walk to End Alzheimer’s.

I can’t remember how many years she’s done this so far (leave me a comment & let us know!) but suffice to say it’s a large number. And not only that but she spends countless hours getting people and stuff together for the Walk every year, sits for hours in all kinds of weather at craft fairs and other festival type places at the info booth for the Walk, and she talks about the effects of the disease on the person who has it (and people who love them) with anyone and everyone she can just to help raise awareness.

See? I told you she’s effing awesome.

But with the many worthy causes out there like One Fund, Red Cross Relief for hurricane Sandy, Relief for the Oklahoma tornadoes and many others, raising funds and awareness for Alzheimer’s research has sort of taken a backseat this year.

And that totally sucks because Alzheimer’s is the 6th leading cause of death in the country.

Yeah, you read that right. Sixth.

Because it’s so widespread just about everyone I know has been personally touched by this terrible disease somehow. Hell, 3 out of my 4 grandparents had some form of Alzheimer’s based dementia. Two of those people were Sue’s parents.

So needless to say, yeah, she’s pretty attached to the cause and doing her part to help find a cure. Like, yesterday.

Matt, my mom and I used to walk with her every year but since we all moved out of state that core group broke up. But we all still do the Walk with Sue every year as virtual walkers and this year will be no different! The thing is I’m just not one to get donations. I kind of suck at it because I always forget until the last minute.

So that’s why this year I’m putting the call out there for those of you who want to donate to a worthy cause to please consider giving to Sue for the Walk to End Alzheimer’s.

Write it off on your taxes, feel kick-ass knowing you helped and know that your donation is going to help cure this awful illness before it impacts the life of someone you know.

Thanks for letting me solicit and thanks for helping the cause!

Cluttered House, Cluttered Mind

I’ve opened and closed the ‘New Post’ link so many times now it seems like I should probably just give up trying to write anything. But yet here I am writing some form of drivel anyway. You’re welcome.

It hit me earlier that it’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve even clicked on my own blog page let alone read any of my friend’s posts or considered putting a few letters into words into sentences into paragraphs into my own post. I’ve been so busy trying to do everything that once again it’s feeling like I’m doing nothing.

I started taking this intensive career training and pulling a lot of stuff together to start a Content Marketing and Freelance Blogging business. I’ve been doing it for 6 years already, guess it’s time to start getting paid for all my efforts right?

Yeah well that’s great but now I have to figure out how. And I just keep asking myself, if I hadn’t figured out how to do it in the last 6 years am I really going to now?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is also yes. I’m good at this conversational writing thing and it’s high time someone started paying me to do it for them.

So there’s that.

Then right in the middle of trying to get this business off the ground Matt took 4 days off work last week and the two of us started our renovations. Here’s a before and after for your viewing pleasure:

Most of you are Facebook friends and probably already saw the album so I’m not going to go into too much detail here but suffice to say we tore out a wall and a (3000 pound) rock wall fireplace and now our living room is the size of Jobing.com Arena. We could seriously start charging people to come and use it as a dance floor. So now the next question is what the heck we’re going to do with the massive open space.

The short answer is I have no clue because we’re not millionaires. The long answer is I have no clue because…you get the point.

Anyway, after pulling down and building back up most of the open holes, we went away last weekend so I could attend the bridal shower my sister was throwing for one of her closest friends. It couldn’t have come at a better time. After 4 days of back aching labor work (something I no longer do for a living, and mind you, I’m an old lady now too) I was so ready for a couple days off.

Sleeping on an air mattress (especially one that turns into a hot air balloon overnight) isn’t the most fun when you’ve pulled a muscle near your tailbone but if you ever find yourself in that situation here’s some free advice:

Drink. A lot. Then go dancing. Because all the other muscles you (shockingly) didn’t pull while doing the renovation will be so sore the next day you won’t really notice the one that was causing you to gimp around to begin with.

Sunday was all about chilling out and doing as little as possible. It was so nice in fact that we had a hard time prying ourselves off my sister’s sofa to make the 2 hour drive home. But we did and once we were here it was right back to off-mode as we planted our butts on our own sofa for the rest of the day.

So on Monday I had a ton of email and other stuff to catch up on after taking 6 days off. Catching up took the better part of the day. I was tired and cranky and didn’t really want to work but toughed it out and got through my overflowing inboxes.

Then today I started working on my landing page for my freelancing stuff as mentioned above and realized that my computer is an ancient POS. Luckily I just purchased a new laptop yesterday but it won’t be here for about 3 weeks. So I kept trying to make the site building tools work with my non-compatible machine. Only it was to no avail.

I wasted the whole morning and had nothing to show for it. Instead of getting upset (er) I dialed into a teleconference I’d signed up for through the career training folks. Aptly titled ‘Landing Clients’ it felt like this would be a great way to start figuring out the paycheck part.

Ten minutes into the call it turned into a sales pitch for a big conference/workshop they have coming up this fall. I stayed on the call just to see if there really would be any good tips or advice about how to land clients other than going to the bootcamp.

I wrote down exactly 8 things during the 73 minutes I was on the phone:

• Write about what you’re learning
• Choose a niche right away
• Network with everyone (even the wrong people for your niche)
• Practice talking about your business in person
• Find groups that understand the value a copywriter brings
• Take the action that works for you (calls, blogs, emails, etc.)
• Find opportunities to show yourself as an expert
• Ask friends for referrals

Now I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful person considering the call was free, but other than that last tip, do any of those suggestions tell a person how to land a client?

The short answer is no.

The long answer is that was 73 minutes spent listening to a sales pitch, not a teleconference with any form of benefit like it was originally presented, that I’ll never get back. And I didn’t even get a weekend at a timeshare out of it or anything. All I got was an offer to save money on their very expensive conference.

One I might be able to afford to attend if any of the 7 people on the call actually, you know, gave some information on landing clients.

After the technology and phone call debacles I decided it might be better to spend my time getting my house put back together instead of trying to focus on doing work that was clearly just laid out to frustrate me all day.

So I pulled on my big girl construction pants and finished the second coat of joint compound on the ceiling and wall.

I’m sore again but putting the house back together seemed like the smartest idea for the best way to get my head back together.

I forgot how cranky I get living in a cluttery construction zone.

So for the next couple weeks, until I can finish these home improvement projects I’m taking time away from writing. Well at least away from finding new clients. I’ll still do the work I have for the client that’s already paying me steadily but otherwise no deal.

At least that’s my plan until the laptop shows up. Once my new tech toy arrives all bets on finishing the house are off.

Good thing compound dries pretty quickly in the desert.

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Content Marketing Strategist and Blogger for hire, Jenn has over 12 years of freelancing experience. Follow her antics on twitter @jennshon