February 14th, 2010

Valentine’s Day Purge

Andrew and I don’t cel­e­brate Valentine’s Day. Much like her, we choose to only indulge in dis­counted choco­lates the day after.  For us love is about the every day not about the forced emo­tional dis­plays of affec­tion. Social Media, as much as I love it, is much like Valentine’s Day– forced rela­tion­ship fluff. Lately, I have been feel­ing suf­fo­cated by my online life. So, in keep­ing with my desire to be fluff-free I have been doing a lit­tle purging.

Twit­ter Purge

I have mul­ti­ple Twit­ter accounts but @momontherise is my main account for this blog­ging. Unfor­tu­nately, it is also one of the rea­sons that I haven’t really been into Twit­ter lately. I was fol­low­ing so may peo­ple that I really felt there was not per­sonal involve­ment. When Google intro­duced Buzz I was imme­di­ately drawn to it because of the per­sonal nature of the net­work. You con­nect to peo­ple right away in part because you can fol­low con­ver­sa­tions and such. As I talked about this with a few online friends, one men­tioned how she had unfol­lowed every one in her Twit­ter stream and started adding only those who she wanted to con­nect with. She pointed me to http://​www​.unfol​low​ev​ery​one​.com and I imme­di­ately decided that this was the great­est thing since WiFi. I fol­lowed suit and went from fol­low over 5,0o0 peo­ple to none to 150. I am only adding those who I actu­ally talk to– those who are more inter­ested in sell­ing me their busi­ness or ser­vices with­out con­nect­ing on a per­sonal level will have to go. I find it very dif­fi­cult to func­tion in the noise.

Face­book Purge

Since refo­cus­ing on build­ing my busi­nesses (kristinabrooke​.org and Moms/We of Hue), I decided to extend my purg­ing to face­book too. I started by remov­ing myself from all the games that I played on the site (Cafe World and Mafia Wars are addict­ing), block­ing the appli­ca­tions that were too dis­tract­ing, and then I removed over 100 “friends’ from high school, col­lege, and pre­vi­ous jobs. The fact of the mat­ter is there is no point being con­nected to peo­ple who you never really liked or con­nected with in real life any­way. I hated HS and really have bad mem­o­ries of a lot of my so called friends from those years. Hav­ing them on my FB page made me sec­ond guess what I was post­ing and it was just too sti­fling. So, I broke up with them. The games were eat­ing away at my pro­duc­tiv­ity and I had to remove them too.

Next Steps

Prior to writ­ing this post I opened up my Gmail account and decided to unsub­scribe from all the mail­ing lists, newslet­ters, and other groups that I get email from but never read. I am tired of open­ing my Inbox and find­ing over 1000 mes­sages most of which I delete with­out read­ing any­way. If I don’t care, I am not going to subscribe.

I am also going to clean out my Blog­lines account and remove the blogs that don’t update or the ones that I really don’t read. I just don’t have the energy to deal with the overcrowding.

I’ll be writ­ing about my In-Real-Life friends Purge soon too.

Are you purg­ing?  How?

December 23rd, 2009

Purge and plan

One of my biggest pet peeves is imma­tu­rity. Adults who can­not take crit­i­cism, chalk every neg­a­tive opin­ion up to some trival rea­son, and those who don’t under­stand pro­fes­sion­al­ism fall into this pet peeve cat­e­gory. I have spent much of 2009 giv­ing peo­ple the chance to shine despite being warned that they were bad­seeds. But no more! I’m done.

For the first time in years I’m draw­ing a line. I’m not play­ing nice any­more and I’m going with my gut. In both my pro­fes­sional life and per­sonal I’m draw­ing boundaries.

It won’t be pretty but it has to be done. Be prepared.

September 13th, 2009

Weekly To-Do List: 9/13–9/19

*This post will remain at the top until the end of the week. I will add “DONE” in front of all tasks as I com­plete them.

Sun­day 9/13

Com­plete (3 )blog posts

• DONE What Are You? Changed topic: Men­tal Ill­ness is Cause for Con­cern and Out­rage, Not Laugh­ter
  Mom’s of Hue
• DONE Cheap Week­end Trip to Local Fairs/Events- Changed Topic: Never Over­look Hotel Safety:  Trav­el­ing Mom
• Books My Daugh­ter Loves for Mom on the Rise

Mon­day 9/14-

• DONE Work Out: Walk­ing 2.3 + miles
• DONE Send Blog­ger Out­reach Weekly Task for Trav­el­ing Mom
• DONE First Les­son of Mya’s Preschool (MPS)
• Com­plete Post– Home­school­ing Out­side the Box NY Home­school­ing Exam­iner Blog

Tues­day 9/15

• DONE Work Out: Walk­ing 2.3 + miles
• DONE Les­son Two-MPS
• Com­plete Blog Post for Mom on the Rise
• Send Moms of Hue Blog­ger Out­reach Sheet
• DONE Being Inter­viewed on BLOGTALK RADIO with KIM ORLANDO

Wednes­day 9/16

• DONE Work Out: Walk­ing 2.3 + miles
• DONE Les­son Three– MPS
• DONE Phone Con­fer­ence with Michele– The Inte­grated Mother
• CANCELLEDJump­Start Pet Res­cue Event in NYC
• CANCELLEDBlog Post for Mom on the Rise about the Jump­Start Event

Thurs­day 9/17

• Work Out: Walk­ing 2.3 + miles
• DONE Les­son Four– MPS
• Blog­ger Out­reach for Trav­el­ing Moms
• Plan it Out Thurs­day: New Addition

Fri­day 9/18

• Work Out: Walk­ing 2.3 + miles
• Free Day

Sat­ur­day 9/20

• Work Out: Walk­ing 2.3 + miles
• Fair