September 26th, 2008

It Think It’s Time For A Friend Purge

I’m stressed. I’m stressed and feel­ing rather down and under-appreciated and def­i­nitely not respected. See, I don’t have a lot of friends. I have kept my cir­cle small because there has always been drama when I was sur­rounded by too many. How­ever, the ones that I have are drop­ping the ball lately. They are treat­ing me like crap and it is finally start­ing to take its toll.

I am design­ing a web page for a , um, friend– have been for almost 6 months now. I’m not kid­ding. Com­pleted sites nor­mally take me about 2–4 weeks, but this one has been in progress for 6 months now. It’s not that I have been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. I have been work­ing pretty much every day for more the 5 hours a day. Well, that is until recently. See, the friend is not pay­ing me. The friend is not pay­ing me at all. And despite my Virgo ten­den­cies to want every­thing to be per­fect, some­where in mid August I real­ized that this per­son is a taker. I real­ized that this per­son is not worth the stress. And while I am not going to stop (I’ve put too much work in this), I just don’t care any­more. The site will not func­tion well because this per­son does not respect my exper­tise in a field that I have been learn­ing for the last 10 years. This per­son does not want to com­pro­mise and, so, I will do what is wanted despite what I know is best. In addi­tion, this site is for a busi­ness and while I am bust­ing my ass to get this site up and run­ning, I know that the owner is not will­ing to do what it takes to get the busi­ness going. I know that it will never be suc­cess­ful. And so be it.

But what both­ers me the most is that the per­son I am VOLUNTEERING my ser­vices to, has no regard for my per­sonal time or space. The late night phone calls, the annoyed tone when I don’t jump when asked, lack of con­cern for what is going on in my life has made me pon­der if it is in my best inter­est to con­tinue the friend­ship at all.

And then, there are my other so-called friend (my in-real-life-friends). It seems that since every one knows that I am no longer teach­ing and am doing web and print design for a liv­ing, I am expected to do things for free. I  get emails like the ones below. They are actual emails that I have received in the last week.

Kristina,
My daugh­ter is hav­ing a birth­day party next month. I want you to make her invi­ta­tion. You don’t have to get a gift, just design the invi­ta­tion. Thanks! I need it by next Monday.

K–
I want to do a blog. Can you set it up for me. I know you must be bored being home. Just loook for some images for me and let me know what I owe you for them.

Hey girl! What’s up? I miss you. Sorry I haven’t called or emailed before today. I need new busi­ness cards. You do that right? I was going to go to a ser­vice, but real­ized that I had an in with you.

I don’t mind help­ing peo­ple out, but it should not be expected. In fact, know­ing that I am no longer receiv­ing a steady pay­check should be rea­son enough for them NOT to ask me to pro­vide ser­vices for free. I swear I’m at the point where I DREAD check­ing my email. I mean I really dread it.

Of course, when I say “no” these poor excuses for friends are sud­denly too busy to talk. And when they do call, it is only to ask me for some­thing or to vent to me about their lives. God for­bid I need to vent– sud­denly the kids are call­ing, or the dog needs to be walked, or it’s too late.

The fact of the mat­ter is that the peo­ple who I call friends now are only con­cerned with one thing: them­selves. They don’t care what is going on in my life.

And that hurts.

I do, how­ever, have to say that I love my inter­net friends. Renee, who has never met me in real life, took time to send me a free­lance writ­ing job post­ing for edu­ca­tors sim­ply because she knew I needed money. She is will­ing to hold my hand on our flight to Dis­ney. Mommy at Mom­my­Daddy Blog offered to help me learn to make money off of my blog although we have never met. When I was preg­nant and on bed rest for 5 months and com­pletely stressed it was not my so-called friends who soothed my fears. Kris­ten, Mom-101, and Ninja Poo­dles took me under their wings. They talked me through some tough times.

I guess there are still nice peo­ple in the world. I just wish they lived closer. LOL.

September 13th, 2008

One Word and Only One Word

This post is being brought to you by  “If it Isn’t One Thing, It’s Another”

I have to answer all of the fol­low­ing using no more than one word. This should be inter­est­ing. 

1. Where is your cell phone? some­where
2. Where is your sig­nif­i­cant other? work
3. Your hair color? black
4. Your mother? Insane
5. Your father? Dead
6. Your favorite thing? Music
7. Your dream last night? Mil­lions
8. Your dream/goal? Skin­nier
9. The room you’re in? Liv­in­groom
10. Your hobby? Blog­ging
11. Your fear? Planes
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Ari­zona
13. Where were you last night? Bed
14. What you’re not? Pretty
15. One of your wish-list items? Cam­era
16. Where you grew up? Bronx
17. The last thing you did? Pee
18. What are you wear­ing? Jam­mies
19. Your TV? Old
20. Your pet? none
21. Your com­puter? Mac
22. Your mood? Annoyed
23. Miss­ing some­one? Always
24. Your car? Altima
25. Some­thing you’re not wear­ing? Bra
26. Favorite store? Apple
27. Your sum­mer? Quick
28. Love some­one? Madly
29. Your favorite color? Blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? Before
31. Last time you cried? Wednesday

Now for pass­ing on the award!
The rules of this award are:
1. The win­ner can put the logo on his/her blog.
2. Link the per­son you received your award from.
3. Nom­i­nate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a mes­sage on the blogs of the peo­ple you’ve nominated

Now…for the nominations…drum roll please…

1. The Wise Young Mommy
2. Vivid Descrip­tion: Father­hood defined!
3. Always, Alli
4. Con­fes­sions of a Diet Coke Addict
5. Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook
6. Erica B’s DIY Style
7. Don’t Eat My Buchela!

 

August 26th, 2008

When Bartering Pisses on You

I have been try­ing to get my busi­ness of the ground for a while now. Back in Feb­ru­ary, when I first real­ized that I could actu­ally make money design­ing web sites, I offered my ser­vices to any­one who even appeared to need one. An acquain­tance is also self-employed and in a field that was very use­ful to me. He needed a web­site; I needed his ser­vices (and get your mind out of the gut­ter– I’m a mar­ried woman). We decided to exchange ser­vices. How­ever, I seemed to have got­ten the short end of the stick.

His ser­vices are only nec­es­sary every six months and do not cost nearly as much as I would charge for a web design. Once he com­pletes his ser­vices, I can­not go back and request changes. It is a done deal. And it only takes on day. Web Design, on the other hand, can be a very long and tedious process. And it’s hard to set lim­its when most peo­ple don’t under­stand the process.

So, the first site that I did was good. Despite the fact that I did not agree with some of the choices he made for the site, I com­plied because the cus­tomer is always right. There were some other minor issues in that he did not get infor­ma­tion to me in the alloted time­frame (very bad) and he is some­what of a know-it-all. But, alas we got things done and I was more than happy to add this job to my portfolio.

Over the course of this time I used his ser­vices twice. The first time I was very sat­is­fied. The sec­ond time, he kind of pushed me into a direc­tion that I was not 100% com­fort­able with, but I went with it and was sat­is­fied. The the third time never hap­pened for some rea­son. When I sug­gested that we give his site a makeover, he was all too excited to offer his ser­vices to me again. That was the first sign of trouble.

Over the next two months and a count­less exchange of emails, I real­ized that this per­son did not have any real respect for what web design entails. In fact, he was/is very self­ish and does not care that I am try­ing to build a busi­ness. I have to mar­ket and build some free tem­plates.  Did I men­tion that I have not used his ser­vices again because he keeps flak­ing out on me? In fact, he has told me that he was going to meet me and has not shown.

Well Mon­day was the final straw. I received an email ask­ing me to change and already approved site that has been coded, uploaded, and except for a few minor changes, com­pleted. I decided to let him know that I would not be mak­ing the changes he requested because he is tak­ing advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion. What he is ask­ing me to do would be a com­plete makeover when, after ask­ing 10 times if he liked it, I was told 10 times that it was perfect.

I told him in not-so-nice terms what was on my mind.

Was i wrong?