Getting By With My Online Friends

    Online friends make my world go around. Who would have thought??  While I was in school or  working, I had a whole host of acquaintances that put on the mask of friendship while I was in close proximity.  As soon as I moved on, graduated, or quit my job…Boom!  Those so called friends were gone like a fart in the wind.   Some might say hello if they seen you in public, still the rest would most likely cross the street and avoid your existence.    Life is constantly changing and people move through our lives at a steady rate.  Few stick around for very long.  They serve their purpose, and then on they go.

        Over the past two years of active blogging I have come across the nicest people and only a couple honest to goodness nut jobs.  Amazing considering we are advised to warn our kids to be wary about making online acquaintances because they are all disguised as child molesters, rapists, and murderers.  There is a very good reason why sites like Face Book have age limits.  The problem is, most people ignore them and get on Face Book anyways putting in bogus birthdates so they can play the games or mingle.   For some reason parents have a false sense of security about  face book no matter how many law enforcement and school officials warn against it.

        Back in the day it was the in thing to sit on the telephone for hours.  Now it is more acceptable to sit on a computer communicating by instant message or texting from a cell phone.  Does anyone really interact in person anymore??  I don’t,  except for the occasions that my husband is actually home.   I interact with him because he is my best friend and I married him.  Hate to state the obvious but I interact with my kids because they are my kids.    Good moms are supposed to do that.  Beyond that I have a direct connection to the rest of the  world through the world wide web.

       Upon thinking about this week’s topic, I realized something.  I consider some of my best friends to be the people I interact with online and have never officially met.  They come from all corners of the globe and are very much apart of my everyday life.  They read my blogs.  I read theirs.  We chit chat on Face Book.  We are united in our need to share our writing or photography with the world and with each other and in the process become friends.  Oh yeah, and there is always that underlying desire to make a little do-re-me, and some of us share the never ending pursuit for that  and even the almighty illustrious Google page rank.  We help each other, support each other, leave comments, and give advice.  We even learn new skills from some of the more tech savvy folks we find online.

      Most days I rarely leave my home.    Am I lonely?  Not really.  I have still mingled with folks states and continents away.  They are my friends.  True there are some people on my face book that are mere acquaintances.  Like other people, I gather friends on face book like trick-or-treaters gather candy on Halloween. Why?,  so I can promote my blog, plain and simple.  


       Regardless of how friendly people are on Face Book, most still are the next best thing to strangers.  Still, I am happy to have my group of strangers because they have become some of the best friends I have ever had and they help me get through the ups and downs of everyday life.   Until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

The Storms of Life : A New Website!

      Not only have storms been brewing on the coast with Hurricane Irene, they have also been brewing for quite a while with Website Business.com formerly located in Phoenix, AZ.  I should know because they were the hosts for my site The Truckers Wife.  It began this summer when paychecks quit coming regularly for assignments I had written for them.  After a while I quit taking paid assignments.  Who truly wants to work for free??  Not me!!  Then they decided to take the publisher down for weeks on end for an upgrade.  Even when the publisher finally was up and running, there were still features that could not be used and did not work.  Finally they quit answering their phones altogether.

      
   
      As of yesterday the truth finally came to light.  They went out of business leaving many dear people who worked there on the streets and many website owners like myself up in the air as to where to go next and what to do.  Many people have been swindled out of thousands of dollars and I was very fortunate to have suffered minimal loss.  I feel bad for the people I dealt with that worked there.  They taught me a lot and I will be forever grateful for their advice, tutelage, and friendship.  I understand that they were caught up in the whole nasty business of lying to the clients  to keep their positions.  In this economy, jobs are hard to come by and I don’t fault them for doing what they had to do to pay their bills and feed their families.  Unfortunately those who stayed and tried to help to the best of their abilities got caught up in the whole nasty business and are now as unemployed as I am.  


        To me, the only real loss is my website.  Since I have always used their software to update the site, I can not imagine that being available to me much longer.  With the company no longer in business and the owner out to screw over everyone in his path, I am left with no choice but to break away from my dear old site and start fresh.  Many will file grievances and lawsuits.  I fortunately have made back every dime I ever put into the website with my writing so I have little reason to get embroiled into the legal turmoil and last ditch efforts that so many others will no doubt engage in.  


         I have decided to create a new website on my own and continue writing.  Why bother you ask??  After almost 2 years of being online creating the trucker’s wife, I have found that writing  and designing has become apart of my life and I enjoy doing it.  It is a great outlet.  It also fans the creative embers that have always burned so brightly inside me.  So in light of that,  I have come to the decision that they are not going to rain on my parade.  I will continue on as I have been as before here at my new home on the internet.  

        So the storm is raging, but there still is a light at the end of my tunnel.   Through it all, I come away with many online friends from all over the world that I would never have known otherwise.  I have come away with the knowledge of how to write and design a website satisfying a creative hunger that had went unsatisfied for so long.  For those things, I will always be grateful to those in customer service who taught and helped me.  Like the hurricane, Website Business left a path of destruction.  As a phoenix, those affected by the onslaught will rise again from the ashes bigger and better than ever!  Until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.