My issues with Tumblr:

You can’t like it or share it unless you’re on Tumblr.

I find this totally frustrating. I see something interesting on Tumblr and there is no “Share to Facebook” or “Tweet this” or any other built-in feature like this. If I want to share it with someone else, I seem to be only able to share it with other Tumblr users via my own Tumblr account. I can’t even “like” it.  The only default way to share it is to copy the link and share it that way, which I’ve done, but it seems silly to not have that built-in.

I have seen a few Tumblrs customized to include these features, but few… very few.

Micro-Blogging vagueness

Microblogging makes me crazy. I realize that Twitter is technically microblogging, but at least there’s usually context and the links go to the original source. When I go to someone’s primary website and all I see are vague images with unspecific or no titles, an occasional quote or some out-of-context screenshot, I go away. I click off. I find a happy place somewhere else where people use their words.

Link It, Bitches

No one seems to know how to link to anything on Tumblr. When I go to Pinterest, I see a zillion cool posts, but when I click the photo and can’t find what I’m looking for 99.9% of the time it’s because they found it on Tumblr. Now, I realize some onus is on the Pinterest pinner to link appropriately, but if it’s not obvious how to get a permalink or permalinks aren’t a regular part of the user interface, I can’t blame the pinner entirely.

Hey, That’s My Post!

I know a few quality posters on Tumblr. My friend Will posts really thoughtful full-text posts on Tumblr in A Year of Billy Joel, which is awesome if you’re not reading it.  This I can abide.

However, if it were me, I wouldn’t want someone to be able to simply click “tumble it” or whatever and have my entire, well-thought-out, well-written post suddenly appearing on someone else’s Tumblr account. People don’t always link to the original source, so it’s too easy to claim the work as your own. AND, if anyone is looking for your post or do any Google searches, it’s possible that they’ll end up at Joe Schmo’s Tumblr where once upon a time they tumbled one of your blog posts and now they’re there instead of at your post, where they should be. It just seems to dilute your content and spread it a little thin, in my opinion.

I’ve heard arguments that you can do the same thing with Facebook, with Twitter and you can, to an extent. But when I share a post on Twitter, it goes to the original link. When I share a post on Facebook, the links go to the original article. They don’t go to Joe Bob’s Tumblr where I see that he shared it from Tim Bob who shared it from Bob Bob and maybe someday, I’ll find the original article.

Spreading Yourself Too Thin

If you use Tumblr as your primary blog, your domain, your one-stop shop to find all things you, fine. Go to town. But most people don’t. They have a website which may or may not have a blog (but usually does), they’ll have Twitter and Facebook and then also a Tumblr.  I have good friends who do this, so I’m not bashing them, I just don’t get it.   Why do I want to read your Tumblr when I could just read your blog? Why not just pull your Tumblr into your blog? Or just skip the Tumblr entirely and post it on your blog. Isn’t that what it’s for?

But hey, maybe I’m just an old school blogger fart who doesn’t get it. Maybe I’m unaware of Tumblr features that allow/prevent the things I’m bitching about. I’ll be happy to claim ignorance and am totally open to being educated otherwise. But for now, I just don’t get it.

Hit me with your best shot. Convert me, Tumblrites.

While discussing this with Kathy this morning, we started discussing what O.P.P. stands for.  I had a similar conversation with coworkers in a bar in 2000, but can’t recall what the consensus was.

My understanding was that O.P.P. stands for “Other People’s Pussy”, considering the source is rap group, Naughty By Nature. Kathy, on the other hand, thought otherwise. The conversation went something like this (probably NSFW or anyone who hates the P-word):

Kathy: I thought it stood for Other People’s Privates.  I could be wrong though.

Joelle: Pretty sure it’s pussy. It’s a rap song! You think rappers are going to say “privates”?
Joelle: “Yo YO, SMACK THAT BITCH UP in her no-no bathingsuit area.”

Kathy: yeah but it was a rap song in 1991. they were lame then.
Kathy: because also… the guy says “you down with OPP” and the girls say “yeah you know me”. So it could also be Penis.

Joelle: “I’m down with Other People’s Genitals”
Joelle: Urban Dictionary Definition of OPP

Kathy: why would a rapper girl be down with pussy? I dont think the chorus singers were wearing Crocs and baseball hats.

Joelle: I don’t think it’s a “rapper girl”. It’s just a backup singer. Naughty By Nature had no women.

Kathy: yeah but so what, the girls were singing it. It says here (referring to Urban Dictionary) it could be either, or privates

Joelle: I love this conversation

Kathy: in a VH1 presentation of the 100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs, Treach of Naughty by Nature states “OPP can stand for anything, the first O is Other and the second P is People’s but the last P can stand for anything.”

(I love that she’s quoting Treach of Naughty by Nature with such authority.)

Kathy: POT PIES
Kathy: PODIATRISTS!

Joelle: I suppose. I think the initial meaning was “pussy”, but over the years, people have had to interpret it however due to the popularity of the song.
Joelle: I can’t FATHOM that a bunch of bad-ass black rapper dudes were all “I say, old chap, I feel ‘pussy’ may be exlcusionary, so let’s make it all encompassing and allow for further interpretation.”
Joelle: I am down with pot pies, though.

Kathy: No, but the theme of the song is being down with humping people, men or women and there is no way to encompass pussy or penis in one word, so they probably just left it questionable. Not that I think they were trying to be fair… I’m sure Mr Rapper looooves pussy.

Joelle: punis?
Kathy: Penssy
Joelle: penussy?

Kathy: I’m down with Other People’s Pencils

Joelle: I’m down with Other People’s Paleontologists.
Joelle: Or Po’Boys.
Joelle: Or Pilates.

Kathy: Palestinians
Joelle: PALESTINIANS!

Joelle: Other People’s Porkchops?
Kathy: I think it stands for Old People’s Pot.

It kind of goes off the rails after that… Kathy’s husband got in on the conversation.

Mr. Kathy’s Husband: maybe its stands for the Oregon Pirate Party
Kathy: or Original Pork Police
Kathy: Open Pot Pie
Kathy: Ornery Pig Pen
Kathy: Ostrich Poop Pick-up

You get the idea.

Kathy: How am I supposed to take a product seriously if they claim it contains ” summer snowflake bulb extract”? Was it harvested by nymphs on the Isles de Harmony?

Me: “It contains the tears of rare pink-tailed unicorns and the crystaline ballsweat of the enchanted forest imp.”

Kathy: Certified Organic ballsweat of the enchanted forest imp…
Kathy: this is another ingredient, and they’re totally serious
Kathy: Monk’s Pepper Berry Extract

Me: Ingredients: twigs, leaves, tibetan monk balls, water, fairy dander, pegasus dandelion ear wax and natural fragrances.

Kathy: tibetan monk ball extract.
Kathy: I dont pay 30 bucks for monk ball extract

Me: Warning: Processed in a facility that also processes pixie farts.

Anyway, when I found this out, I, along with a lot of other people, moved their domains from GoDaddy to NameCheap or another registrar. (I picked NameCheap because they seem much more transparent as a business, their prices are comparable, their customer service was really awesome and they are openly anti-SOPA.)

Once I cleared out and transferred all our domains from GoDaddy for both my personal account and our Moxie account, I tried to close my accounts. You know, delete them. Like you should be able to since they were your accounts to open in the first place. But guess what? Apparently, you can’t.

I searched high and low on that site and found nothing. I did Google searches. And finally, I called their customer support and was informed that I cannot actually delete my account. Their recommendations are as follows:

• Remove all your products and domains from your account.
• Disconnect any payment methods.

That’s it. So your account just sits there, with your personal information in it, just in case you might ever want to return.  But what if you don’t want to return?  I just want to delete my accounts!

I asked the customer service person — quite nicely, actually — if there’s someone else higher up I could speak to about this. They insisted no, there wasn’t and bid me a nice day. Seriously!  She said, “I’m sorry, no. You can’t delete your accounts with GoDaddy and there’s no one higher than me on this subject. Have a nice day.”

Apparently, this woman is the Grand Poobah Empress of GoDaddy Account Deletions.

I hung up and went about my day, but now I’m still getting GoDaddy emails with no access or link to unsubscribe at the bottom. And the real pisser? They close every email “Thank you for being a GoDaddy customer.”

That just frosts me. I AM NOT A GODADDY CUSTOMER and I DONT WANT TO BE and STOP ACTING LIKE I AM. It borders in harassment.

With all the recent accessibility issues regarding GoDaddy, I’m concerned that accounts with our business name, personal information and usernames are just sitting there, empty, waiting to be exploited by hackers or GoDaddy themselves. This is unacceptable to me. It has my name on it, I want it deleted. It seems unethical and maybe even illegal to deny that, no? (I don’t know about the legality, but if it’s not, it’s certainly FISHY.)

I wanted to login and change my username and email address to something fake, but it wouldn’t let me. It said you have to verify the email address change — obviously I can’t do that if the email address I entered is fake.

So you’re just stuck. I suppose they probably expect us to just sit on it and forget, but I’m not forgetting. I’m going to raise a stink. I will call and demand to talk to supervisors until someone can pull their thumb out of their ass long enough to hit “delete”.

GoDaddy, you may have changed your tune about SOPA, but that was only because you were scared of losing business, which you did — a lot of it. It has nothing to do with your business ethics, which are questionable, at best.

Some might see it as no big deal, but I care about what happens to my personal information. I admit, I sign up for a LOT of stuff on the internet, but if I don’t use it, I try to go back and delete the unused accounts. I don’t like all my cheese hanging in the wind, so to speak.  (Who thought of that expression?)  This is no exception.

Dramatic as it might seem, I feel as though I’m being held against my will and it pisses me off.

Courtesy of vajazzleville.com

Recently, Mel and I had a conversation about vajazzling. Then we tweeted a bit about it and then Kathy was like “What the hell is that and why are you guys discussing this without me?”

The following is this morning’s follow up conversation on said topic.

• Joelle: tell me the truth. did you Google “vajazzle”?
• Kathy: no but I have a good idea of what it is lol
• Joelle: Vajazzling: (v.) The act of applying glitter and jewels to a woman’s nether regions for aesthetic purposes.
• Kathy: That’s what I figured

• Kathy: I feel like when you show someone your vajazzle, you should do jazz hands
• Kathy: Mel thinks its overkill
• Joelle: dude, by the time someone is down there, they’re so thankful to be there that as long as it doesn’t stink, I think they’re happy
• Kathy: HAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
• Kathy: You can’t tell someone “Your vajazzle stinks.”

• Joelle: my waxer does that service now… she says people come in for it more often these days.
• Joelle: it reminds me of when people used to stencil trim and dye their bushes, like hearts and bullseyes.
• Joelle: I mean, why not grow it long, braid it and hang crystal beads? you could call it The Bo Derek.
• Joelle: you could run along the beach in slow motion with your beav out

• Kathy: I think it’s pointless
• Kathy: if you’re into vajeens in general (men or women) i think all they care about is that they get to get near it. they dont care of it looks like a disco ball
• Joelle: right? I was like, “what if you turn out the lights and have a strobe? do people start doing blow and dressing like Bianca Jagger?” You don’t need to turn your twat into Studio 54.
• Kathy: I could have a synthetic wart hog attached to mine and Steve would still be like “wanna do it?”

• Kathy: what if you implanted a strobe light in your uterus?
• Kathy: so every time you opened your legs it was like showing up at Friday Night Wrestling
• Kathy: “Come on DOWN!”

• Kathy: I wonder if you can make your bush a mullet.
• Joelle: that would definitely be “party in the front, business in the back”
• Kathy: I’m googling that
• Kathy: interestingly when you google [bush mullet], you get a lot of images of George Bush…

I left San Diego Wednesday at noon on Jet Blue, who despite the bird-flipping, slide-exiting, job-quitting flight attendant’s recent escapades, is a pretty awesome airline. The seats were roomy, I could stretch out my legs completely in front of me, there was free DirecTV (so I timed my entire trip by how many 30 minute Food Network shows I watched) and the snacks were tasty items like Terra Chips instead of crappy peanuts. And the pilot got us there almost 40 minutes before he said he would, so that was nice.

I took a cab into Manhattan from the airport and proceeded to spastically tweet about how to tip the cabbie. I’m an overtipper and standard tipping here is 20% for like, everything, it seems like, so with a $50 cab ride, I was concerned about giving too much. Of course, despite the encouraging 10% recommendations from Twitter, I still overtipped.

We decided to escape the hub-bub of Blogher, we’d stay elsewhere… so we booked ourselves at Empire Hotel. We found out after we made our reservations that it’s Chuck Bass’ hotel in Gossip Girl, which was pretty funny. While the staff and management at Empire were really lovely, the place was a total Monet. It’s much better on TV.  It looks beautiful from a distance, but when you get up close, it’s much shabbier than the marketing implies. We knew it was a vintage building that had been renovated, but how long ago? There was water damage on the walls, the chairs were pretty worn, our rooms had cobwebs in the corners and the beds… oh my god, the beds. It was like sleeping in a mausoleum — hard, hard mattresses.  HARD.  We both were in pain by the end of the trip.

Oh, also? Apparently, the rooftop deck bar is the hot place to be on a Thursday night. There were lines of short skirts around the block to get upstairs.  If they offer you the 11th floor, despite the spectacular views of Lincoln Center, don’t take it. You’ll hear remixes of Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam and hooker heels on your ceiling until 3:30am (and heat rises, so the hallways were constantly like, Africa Hot, while our rooms were Meat Locker Cold).  Given that we had to be up at 8am for the conference, we sweetly called down to management — I swear! I even made him laugh — and they moved our luggage to the old people’s floor for us the next day and knocked $75 off our bill for two nights. Like I said, great management, mediocre rooms, granite mattresses.  It does have a lovely lobby bar, though.  We called it our Brokedown Palace. With lube.

Thursday, after we had coffee at Starbucks by our hotel and enjoyed the company of a total character we named LoQuatious (who put lipstick on his forehead and exfoliated with a kitchen brush right there in front of us), we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Loved it, gorgeous, amazing, could have spent a week there. I was especially into a Degas I’ve never seen before called The Tub. I just was entranced by it.

Then we set up for the Green Soiree hosted by Safemama and organized by 3 Green Angels.  That was a lovely affair, though I spent most of it hiding in the corner by the open bar.  I’m not a mom, I don’t blog about green topics, so I was just there as support for Kathy — to help. Once the set-up was done, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Eventually Sommer came over and gave me friendly crap for being antisocial, so I topped off my wine, mingled and had some stinky cheese. Post-soiree, we ended up at the Hilton bar with Sommer, Alicia and Yvonne, follow by the aforementioned Lisa Lisa incident.

The next day, we hit BlogHer.  First we cruised the expo halls, where we saw Padma from Top Chef, Tamra from Real Housewives of OC and my personal highlight — the Jimmy Dean sun.  We saw him with sun and sans sun downstairs at the elevators.  I can see why they hired him — he’s totally approachable and super nice, even out of costume. I can’t believe I didn’t get a photo.  I did, however, run out of business cards the first day.

After lunch, we hit the bar for a mid-day cocktail before the Blog Design panel, which was one of only two panels we attended. None of the topics grabbed our attention this year. I didn’t feel like there were any panels that spoke to me — the single, non-kid-having, semi-wise ol’ blogging sage, web designer. I think we’ve got marketing down and I don’t need to learn how to build my brand as a blog, really.  We’ve been doing this for a while now. So we used that time for signing books and beer. You know, the important stuff.

The Blog Design panel had some really good information presented by Design*Sponge. We especially enjoyed her encouragement to hire a professional and her candidness about how much it really costs and why it’s important for your blog if you’re trying to build a following or a brand.  She talked about textures and being unique and why consistency among all online outlets is important.  That was good info, presented very well.

The other two speakers — well, the 2nd woman (whose name I can’t recall) had some good info, but overall her pitch felt a little like a downer. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was no practical application in her information, really and while she seemed like a nice woman — she basically just told me boys like lines and girls like colors.  And Alex, the (mostly print?) designer (who I really dug, personally; she was charming and funny) had some inaccurate info and presented it in a kind of scattered way that non-tech people wouldn’t understand. In fact, it seemed like even she wasn’t really sure how to do some of the things she was speaking about because she kept referencing CSS generators and programmer friends who help her.  I think she was a little nervous, but like I said, soooo charming (and pretty cute, I might add), that it almost didn’t matter.

I would’ve liked to have seen a Blog Design panel that really gave bloggers practical tips for good blog design practices and maybe explain a little about what CSS is and why you do what you do with it. Touching on SEO, where to place ads (and what size) and how blog design structure is relevant might have been good, too.  While the blog owner’s perspective on blog design was good (Design*Sponge), it would have been helpful, I think, to have an actual blog design professional on the panel — at least one.

But I digress. We are considering pitching a panel for next year (and asking one or two of our esteemed colleagues to join us). Not that we’ll necessarily do a bang-up job or anything — I get nervous, too — but I think if the whole panel had been more like Design*Sponge’s portion of it, folks would have left with a stronger understanding of their blog’s innards and direction.  I’m just sayin’.

Friday night, after freshening up back at the Brokedown Palace, we hit the Voices of the Year Gala, cashed in a drink ticket or two and then I wasted no time in getting up to do a little live band karaoke.  I’ve sung with a live band, I’ve sung karaoke, but I’ve never done both at the same time. It was really fun!  And surprisingly, I wasn’t even nervous. Then we hit up Ray’s Pizza for my first (and only!) slice of Real New York Pizza™. I was NOT disappointed.

Kathy recorded a snippet of  me singing. You can’t really see me, but you can hear me.

Saturday, after a stroll down to Sephora at The Shops on Columbus Circle, we rolled into BlogHer just in time for lunch, then hit the Fitness Blogging panel, which was nice (though was more of a Q&A and less of a presentation).  It ran a bit long, though, so we snuck out early and went for a little walk. I wasn’t feeling very well, for some reason — the pain in my back, neck and arms from carrying soiree swag bags and sleeping on stone slabs took it’s toll, so we headed back to the hotel, where I laid down for a bit while Kathy dashed off to the Green Affair party.

I met up with her and Statia later, feeling much better and we all got our groove on at the Sparklecorn and CheeseburgHer parties.  Both of which were really fun, though Sparklecorn seemed to have a more elaborate turn-out… at least at first. They had a Charm City Cake, they had great pop culture posters, unicorn glitter and a really good DJ.  CheeseburgHer was a bit more intimate, but did end up overflowing by the end of the night.  The best part (aside from dancing with friends and recording The Robot) was the giant cheeseburger-shaped, Tempurpedic-like bed. Had I spent one more second on that bed, I would have fallen asleep.  Empire Hotel needs cheeseburger beds.

I think we ended up down at the hotel bar again after that, if I recall correctly.  Then back to the hotel, where we both laid awake, complaining to each other about the uncomfortable beds and singing songs about pimps.

Sunday, Kathy was off super early to catch her flight and I spent the morning wandering the area in search of quintessential New York foods I wanted to try. I hit Tasti-D-Lite, where I had two bites of my .99 cent soft serve (overrated!). I had a hot dog off a cart in Columbus Circle (near the Park), which I promptly threw away (gross! gross!), I got a pretzel that I nibbled at the benches in front of Trump Tower, but decided I’d have better luck hammering nails with it (tossed!).  I gave up and decided it was all crap and went back to the hotel to catch a cab.

Bad idea. My 90 degree cab ride to the airport was in stop n’ go traffic so by the time we got to JFK, I ended up hurling in the ladies, pre-boarding.  JFK and I have a special bond now. Then I sat on the tarmac for an hour before take off, though despite leaving almost 90 minutes late, the pilot got us in only 20 minutes late, so… not too terrible. Again, kudos, Jet Blue.

So… there you have it. More information than you ever wanted to know about my first trip to New York and first time at BlogHer. I wasn’t sure if I’d attend again, since the panels are really the part we’re paying for and those didn’t really blow my dress up — but I’ve changed my tune. It’s here in San Diego next year (YAY!) and we might throw our hat in the ring for a blog design panel, if anyone decides they’re interested in attending.  Plus, it’ll be nice to have the home court advantage.

Are you going to BlogHer ’11?  San Diego welcomes you.

Me: and drink Sunny D from the carton and demand to know where their Pizza Rolls are?
Me: and you waltz in with a strategically positioned bag of Doritos and they all exclaim how you’re the best mom in the world?

Kathy: something like that
Kathy: only I’ll tell them to make their own damn pizza rolls and I wont be wearing a matching sweater set

Me: well, you DO drive a mini van… it’s a gateway stereotype. Next you’ll be getting drunk at 3 in the afternoon while your kids nap. Oh… wait…

Kathy: i dont drive a minivan THANK YOU

Me: I love that that is the part you took offense to.

Doesn’t that sound like every boss you’ve ever hated?  When I remove myself from it and look at it as an observer, I feel like now, if I were in a traditional office, I’d be that boss that no one invites to anything.  Except… I’m usually the girl that people do invite to things, that coworkers and colleagues want to have around. It occured to me the other night that, now that I’m my own boss and I hire people to do things for me,  I’m totally Chandler when he gets his promotion in Friends.

“Perfectionist” ranks up there with “she’s got a great personality” in terms of desirability, and it makes people think you’re an overbearing pain in the ass, but without perfectionists in this world, the Earth would be (and sometimes is) one giant orb of mediocrity. It drives me crazy when the opportunity for greatness presents itself and it’s met with “good enough”.  Why be good enough when it can be great?

Of course, we’re only human and sometimes things won’t be perfect. And I know I am imperfect, despite my many creative efforts to blind you all with my glorious gloriousness.  (*clap clap*  Look over here!  Awesomeness!  Shiny!)  I don’t think that means I should stop trying to excel, to go beyond and to achieve something greater than was there before.

But it can be… well, a little exhausting.

Along with accepting responsibility for own my quirks and shortcomings, I blame my detail-oriented, perfection-seeking, boss-man-type tendencies on the former Boss Men in my own life.

While I loved my dad very much, I wouldn’t exactly call him a mentor per se… but he’s the one who may have started the perfectionist movement in my life, at least when it comes to my brain.  (Body image is an entirely different can of worms.)  I was not permitted to get anything less than a B on my report card in school and even then, those were to be sparing.  All A’s is the goal of every parent, but when I didn’t excel (like in math, for instance), I got a lecture about what “C” stands for (it’s “cruddy” and/or “crappy” in case you didn’t get the memo).  When I would argue that “C” stood for ‘average’, my dad would say “What does ‘A’ stand for?” and I’d sigh and say, “Superior.” and he would reply without missing a beat, “So, is my daughter average or is she superior?”

You can’t exactly tell your father, “Dude, when it comes to math, I’m average. Embrace the reality.”

I’ve had two ‘official’ mentors in my life, aside from the obvious, though short-lived apprenticeships with my mom and my grandmother — my high school choir director and my former creative director. And while I may not have known it at the time — perhaps even resented them at the time — I value and am thankful for just about every anal retentive tendency they instilled in me.

My high school choir director was (still is, I’m sure) a really great man.   Some other kids didn’t like him or thought he was too hard on us… but overall, I really liked him, even though it was sometimes uncool to admit. He recognized talent in me, he nurtured my abilities and he gave me positive affirmations about my music where I had little to none at home. He provided me opportunities to grow as a singer, to recognize that I have a gift and sometimes, he made me cry and want to throw sheet music at him because he pushed me so hard.  At the time, I thought he had it out for me, but by graduation, I realized that he saw something in me that made him want to make me a better singer, a better performer and perhaps by simple consequence, a better person.

A little less than a decade later I was fortunate enough to meet my former creative director at the haircare company I used to work for. I was churning out Powerpoint presentations for the salon division and basically doing administrative work, which while I was really good at it and loved my job, I longed to be doing something more creative. I’d been dabbling in web design, building my own sites and I started bringing that creative panache to my Powerpoint work.  I think I can safely say that I had some pretty rockin’ Powerpoints… full graphics, lots of color, they didn’t really resemble anything remotely Powerpoint at that time and the creative director of the graphics department noticed.  We became friends and when he left the company we kept in touch.

When I was laid off less than a year later, I contacted him and he worked really hard to get me a job as a freelancer in his new department and kind of threw me into the deep end. I had little to no experience in Photoshop, had a gentle handle on basic HTML and couldn’t use a bezier tool to save my life.  But he kept throwing work at me and giving me more responsibility and even though I wanted to take that one pixel he wanted moved and shove it up his ass sometimes, his need for perfection rubbed off.  Within 2 years, I left the company and here I am, doing what I do.

He told me once that when he met me, he knew I had ‘star power’ (I think that was the term he used).  He said he knew I would be something amazing, do incredible things and otherwise make something wonderful of myself.  He knew, even when I didn’t.

Both of these men… well, Dad included, all of these men, knew that I was capable of so much more than just ‘good enough’. And their standards were very high, so they made mine high.  And now… now I admit, I kind of expect that level greatness from other people, especially when they work for me.  It’s not always fair to do that, I realize, not everyone can handle that kind of stress — even I can’t.

And while I’m grateful for the lessons my mentors have instilled in me, sometimes I feel like it makes me not very likable in the boss department, especially as a woman. A man can demand perfection and that makes them “tough” and “ballsy” and “ambitious”.  As a woman, it can make me a “bitch” and “difficult” and “high maintenance”.  I like to be likable, I really do — I like it so much it conflicts with my need to be perfect and then?  Then I need a cocktail. Or three.

I was told something so brilliant the other night that it made me rethink a lot of things. A friend told me it’s ok to piss people off once in a while.  I can’t control how someone else feels, I can only control how I react to it.  I knew this, but something about the way she said it or the timing at which she said it, but suddenly, it clicked.  I worked really hard to get where I am in my life — not just professionally, but emotionally and even physically.  And I didn’t get here by always being liked, though did try.  And I was far from perfect.  So, so far. Sometimes I make  mistakes and sometimes I make bad choices and my decision to learn from those mistakes and choices is where I grow  and not only accept my imperfections, but allow myself to shine in ways I didn’t know I could.  And there’s perfection in that, I think.

I didn’t have to like my mentors, I just had to listen to them, to learn from them.  And while I didn’t always like them at the time, I did always respect them.  So, that’s one more thing they’ve taught me about being a boss — you don’t have to like me, but if you work for me you have to respect me. And if you don’t, that’s ok because I respect me and you can be replaced.

So sayeth Boss Man Bing.

But never — never! — has anyone ever sent me an email like this. Never ever and I’m rather glad because I’d probably have some kind of rage aneurysm and collapse muttering really classy things like “I’ll cut a bitch!” or similar.

Lawrie (@indextwo on twitter) gave me permission to repost this letter he posted on Facebook. Umar can suck it.

I didn’t know what Girls Aloud was until a few minutes ago, but I’m not English. But I am totally blown away that someone can be so incredibly arrogant! I can’t believe this Umar guy had the audacity to rip off people so blatantly, let alone approach a hired designer and basically threaten them, all the while tooting his own tool. It’s… well, it’s mind boggling that people like this exist. What the hell? Seriously.

With this… I can!  Let’s try uploading a photo:

Huh. This is interesting.  I’m not sure if these effects I’m seeing in Windows Live Writer will show up and my images don’t seem to be floating properly, but we’ll see what happens when I publish.

Carry on!

Ok, I’ve since published this and I must say… I’m pretty impressed. I checked out the html code within WordPress and it’s not a big hot mess. And I’m editing it right now within WordPress and it’s keeping all the effects and styling. I don’t know if i’d use this all the time ,but for clients who really need this kind of WYSIWYG type interface, this would be a lifesaver. Kudos, Windows Live Writer!