Busy Web Work... Despite the Stress

I've had a busy week... lots of work, and the community activities. My work is website development. Right now I've got lots of sites to work on. I don't do rush orders but rotate my web maintenance duties... with an intention of doing updates on every site every month. To do that, I need to work on three sites each day.

Really, it isn't hard... but it is constant.

Every weekend I have community activities. On Saturdays I go to the community drum circle at the local dreamcatcher. Our dreamcatcher is thirty feet across... very impressive. We sit under it to drum.

My life has been extremely stressful this month. I've noticed that too much stress takes the joy out of living. It caught up with me at the drum circle on Saturday. For a change, I didn't want to stay. Usually I want to stay beyond the time when everyone else wants to leave. This time I wanted to leave first. I was thinking, "Gaaa... where has my enthusiasm gone?"

Today at the writer's club meeting I did better. I managed to forget my troubles and write two short stories. One was about aliens - one of my favorite flash fiction topics.

The other story was shorter - about a woman falsely accused of drug smuggling, inspired by my current obsession with watching old episodes of "Locked Up Abroad" (a National Geographic Channel show.)

This evening after the meeting I worked on three more sites. One of them was a forum. I upgraded to the most recent version of phpBB, installed a new theme, which is white (I love)... also checked stats and was thrilled with lots of search engine traffic, installed advertising, and made a new header graphic for the site. I also interfaced it with my new Prayer Power website.

Earlier today I was meditating about my work, and got an inspiration that one of my websites would become an important site, somehow. Honestly, at this time I can't see it. I can only go ahead and develop it and see what happens. I'm looking for all sorts of ways to create new income streams... I so want to close some of my other sites. I'm looking for change.

On second thought...

Right after I wrote about my frustration with not getting the sheriff's office reports, I started getting them. Yay! Now I feel my news site is a better service to my community.

Today I'm buying a few new domain names from GoDaddy - and downloading the first program - now in the archives at GoDaddy Radio. Seems like everyone wants to get into internet radio these days. I want to do a show on family rights... but don't have the right equipment yet. My computer is so old I'm using Win98SE - it's a Pentium III and I want to upgrade to something more capable of handling internet radio production.

My new domain names are all about bigfoot. Why? Because I live in a place where bigfoot is a big issue because there's so many sightings around here. I am the new owner of BigfootSightings.Org, BigfootHunt.Com, and BigfootJamboree.Com. The last one is a local celebration held every Labor Day weekend... sort of a local faire where there's lots of events and vendors.

This year my daughter signed up to sell Bigfoot Jamboree Raffle Tickets. I'm planning to put a paypal link up somewhere for her to sell them online.

Yesterday she and I went to Yreka for a doctor appointment (hers) and then we went to Medford so she could spend her birthday money at the mall there. Her birthday isn't until April 20 (she'll be 16) but she couldn't wait and I caved in and gave her what she wanted early. It seems I'm the only one in my household that sees value in waiting for the official birthday. Anyhow, we had a great day in Oregon and were very happy to get home just before midnight. The only animal I saw on our way home through the forest was a small rabbit. Seems strange there's so few deer the last year or two.

Starting LindaJoMartin.Com

I finally got my own server space and moved onto http://lindajomartin.com - I'll be putting most of my weblogs here (at least, that's the plan). This one is more private than the others - it is now protected from spidering so future posts won't be in the search engines. Much better!

Anyhow - I've been way too busy since February and haven't been able to reach all my goals. That's a disappointment... but I've developed my web design business more. That's the good and the bad of it.

Now I have to get back to work.

Birthday, Brookings, Bikes, and the River Run Website

On July 13 I had my 51st birthday. I don't really feel that old, but I'm sure by the end of the year I'll get used to it. I've been dieting since June 2 and have lost 14 lbs. plus have been walking almost every evening lately, up to three miles at a time.

On July 4 I went to the coast (Brookings, Oregon) with my children. They have a wonderful pyrotechnics display and the kids enjoyed playing in the ocean. My daughter wanted to find a boy to flirt with and was very pleased that instead a boy from Grants Pass found her while she was standing out there in the ocean. She's 14.

I'm concerned about bike theft in this small town we live in. This last winter my son rebuilt a number of bikes. He got old bikes and parts from the dump and had quite a few ready to sell this year but a thief took most of them! Others in town have been stolen from as well. Its very frustrating and I can only say I'm so proud of my son that he's not the one doing the stealing. He's a great kid. He still has the Mongoose mountain bike I bought him last year and we've found a place to buy him a new derailleur. He broke his during a bike crash a while back.

I offered to create a website for the River Run (motorcycle run) our community sponsors every July fourth weekend. I'll probably have to wait a few weeks to see what they decide about that.

Webdesign and Homeschooling

I finally came up with a design I really like for my new webdesign website. It is complex to build but when done will be simple to view. I'll let you know when its ready! (This is my third attempt to get something on the web for Klamath Design.)

Homeschooling is going great this year. It is just Aaron and me (my daughter is at the local school) so we have lots of time to work one-on-one with just Aaron's interests in mind. It is lots of fun.

Flash! Mom!

I learned to do flash today! I'm so thrilled! I put it on the Chamber of Commerce website.

My mom is here visiting me from Texas... it is really nice to have her around. She's actually staying in the campground on the other side of the river.

Fiction, Websites, and Trying to Stay Cool

I've been writing on a fiction project every night.

Also I've made progress on a few webdesign projects.

I'm nearly done with the Chamber of Commerce website... or I should say I'm nearly done with the second phase of the project... there's a lot more I can do for it. Eventually I will turn that front page into ... a flash or javascript slideshow. I'm also building an interactive street map for that site that will be lots of fun to play with... hehehe in case you don't have anything better to do with your time.

For the Fight CPS And Win site I made a mock up for a redesign. The links at the top don't work yet.

This week I started another new project associated with that, for a national class action lawsuit.

This website will be for the purpose of collecting evidence from people who want to support the class action. We don't have a lawyer to handle it yet but... a well-known family rights lawyer in Massachusetts offered to give us some pointers next week on what we can and can't do with class actions. A secondary mission for the website is to locate a lawyer to handle the case. The website isn't quite ready to go public yet - which is why I don't link to it.

I finally figured out how to keep my house cool for the summer by letting the swamp-cooler air flow out a window in the back of the house only. I used to do that when I lived in the San Joaquin Valley - but forgot the process until today. It is so much cooler in here now!

Oh - one more thing I'm kind of happy about this week - I have been appointed to be a board member for our local Chamber of Commerce this coming year. Since I like attending the meetings, at least I'll be one more person there who can help make a quorum.