Blog update. Was "necessary price changes."

[Mystress]

  I wanted to offer a little update on the other thread, but as a new topic because that thread wandered off the topic and this post even more so.

   Remember when I said I thought it might be fun to have a big bank account?  Tomorrow, it reaches 5 figures. Barely over 10k, but that is more money that I've ever had at one time in my life, before.

  Turned out, somebody made a provision for me to get a death benefit... I've got really conflicted feelings about that, benefiting from the death of someone I loved... but the fact is, what FST needs most is a little bit of investment capital and he was a stockbroker.  So I resolved my mixed feelings by deciding to give it to Goddess by investing it in FST. 

   Somebody else did the same, sending me 2500 UK pounds they earned working for a company they did not like the ethics of... purification by donation.

  Plus the all the other donations and renewals that came of pure love and appreciation.  I really cannot express what it means to me, to get such a warm and generous response to my expression of need.   I admit, it is a little strange how my head works...
  Heinlein said "Money is the sincerest form of flattery" and it is like donations or gifts are the only kind of testimonial or expression of thanks I can accept as being really for me, the human woman, for the care of the vessel.  Cash expressions of gratitude seem to be an exception to the energy hygiene discipline of always giving power back, to the giver or to Goddess. 
  "The labourer is worthy of her hire." That is a sweet validation of my work.
   Thank you all, so much!

   Of course, I give it to Goddess anyway,   Donations paid for stuff like the new member management system, and upgraded hardware and software to recapture the videos in preparation for Gustaf to re-edit them and make flash mpg instead of awful ancient realplayer.  That job has been on my plate for 3? years?  Completion is on the horizon and I am really excited!


   One person took the "teach the Mystress to fish" attitude and sent me a book and CD set, instead of a donation. "The four hour work week."  It is about a guy who had an online business, successful but 18 hour days at the computer, 7 days a week... eh? sounds familiar.  He made some changes and now he makes way more money working only 4 hours a week... and works from various exotic locations while spending 6 months at a time exploring the world. Not all of his solutions work for my business, but...

   Welcome to the joys of outsourcing!!

  I've done some outsourcing before, but mostly hiring friends or depending on volunteers. The member management system was installed by the guy who wrote it, for an extra fee on top of the software price.

    I tested the waters, put up a project on rentawebslave.com (kidding about the name) and take a look at K-teacher now!!! 

   OK.. It looks almost exactly the same, because that is what I wanted... but it is really amazingly better.  A Polish freelancer converted it into a database driven content management system, "Website Baker"  which makes it a breeze for me to update pages.  Now it looks exactly the same in every browser and every resolution, (something I never had the patience to deal with) except the user can still make the essay font larger if they need to.  The html files are now php files but your html bookmarks will still work.   All the navigation links including the sitemap, update themselves automatically when I add a new page, plus there is a link at the bottom of every essay to a pdf version of the page, for print or audio readers for the visually handicapped.  Automatically generated. You can print yourself a custom Kundalini primer! All broken links repaired, and it is ready for me to plug in google adwords so the site will start paying for itself just by existing.
   All for $290. usd! What a deal!! 

   I've given him two more projects and promised him two more after that, including performing the same conversion on the Kundalini-gateway.org which I haven't had time to do anything with, in about 5 years.  I'm 3 years behind on getting the archives up...

   My web empire out grew me several years ago... but I had not realized how much the impossible things-to-do list of repairs and updates, was wearing at me.  Keeping me stuck at this desk.  I am grateful to the many volunteers who lend a hand, I depend on them... but I still could not keep up.  Pressure of so many incompletions leading to workaholic tendencies. Feeling like I was always behind and knowing I could not catch up with the work, let alone the changing technology. 

  Outsourcing...  and now I have this crazy idea... that my impossible things to do list, might actually... get finished???

   Wow that is a weird idea and I can barely comprehend it... mind blowing. ADD folks don't get to experience completion, very often.  Hard to imagine what life will be like, without that albatross of incomplete web projects. WOW!!  Really. WOOOOOWW!!

   I am also going after an even bigger albatross... one whose stench makes me want to run and hide under a tree like a terrified rabbit.  My ADD comes with a hefty dose of beaurocracy-phobia... and I may need that as a legal defense, if I let that stuff pile up untended, much longer!!  Accounting, incorporation, taxes... AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!   and back under the tree I go!  (Breathe....) 

  I quite like this thing, of solving problems by throwing money at them. It doesn't work for everything, but for some things it works amazingly well.  I get paid to do what I do best, and hire other folks to do what they do best.

  The trick was, having money to throw.  My local CHADD sent me a list of ADD friendly professionals, including organizers, accountants...   Dare I dream, that I can hand somebody several boxes of unsorted paperwork, receipts, paypal statements and some cash... and they will hand me back a proper accounting record of my work this past 7 years?  Of course, I will have to tell them what the receipts are for, etc... but it is doable? 

  Whew! 

   Three reasons I have not been promoting FST very much in the past few years:
  - embarrassment at the condition of the videos.
  - knowledge that the stench and weight of the untended bureaucracy albatross increases exponentially with $ucce$$. (terrifying)
  - not knowing if I could support thousands of students... but starting a lineage and training others to replace me, has soothed much of that concern. I want more students, so I can affoard to pay the lineage teachers I am training.  Potentially, FST can provide an abundant career for a bunch of folks while continuing to make the world a happier place by teaching individual people what to do, to become happier.  That is my secret hero trip.  

  I found a great quote for the new FST payment page:

  “No man can become rich without himself enriching others”    Andrew Carnegie

  Yeah, Baby!!  I learned it as a teenager.  That is what I am about.  Donations and renewals show me that my work is of value to people, more than other types of "thank you" that I cannot keep because karma responsibility would follow.

  There is one investment I am going to make, and it may seem sideways from FST but really it isn't, because it is taking care of the one person who has supported my work more than any other... my #1 and only slave and hubby druid.
  he has seasonal affective disorder, and it has been a cold snowy winter, he is getting way too stressed working at a job he would have retired from by now, if not for me asking him to stick with it a little longer until we can transition to me being the breadwinner... and I am worried, watching him crack up before my eyes.  Fade like a flower out of the sun.  he is the one person on the planet I genuinely *am* responsible for, my slave... Goddess gave him to me. 

   he used to take a motorcycle trip to California every Feb to get his solar fix.  The last few times... gunfire in the campgrounds, redneck drunks fighting, military jets screaming overhead... not relaxing. he cannot affoard a sunshine vacation, because he spent too much taking care of me... but he really needs one.

  I can park his butt on a beach in Cancun for a week, to be a human solar panel and get recharged,  (and take myself with him) for about the same $ as he spent fixing my car last summer, and that is what I am going to do.

   For myself, I couldn't care less about a vacation right now.  Long nights don't bother me, I am nocturnal.  I don't *want* a vacation, I am having way too much fun, getting stuff done, plus paper route and freelancers to tend... but he refuses to go without me and taking care of my man's mental health  outweighs all other priorities.   

  So, I guess I am to get a taste of the 4 hour work week lifestyle... tending my work from a cybercafe in Mexico, or druid's laptop, if I get a room that is wired for net. 

   druid's 53rd B-day is on Friday, Feb 1. We'd be catching a plane that day except ADD grrl cannot find her passport and birth certificate. The passport is not necessary but the birth certificate tucked inside it, is essential... and it takes a week to get a new one. 

  If anybody gets a psychic locater brainwave and can tell me where it is, that would be great!  I have not been getting any, and a week searching every drawer, bin, shelf, closet and box in my house has been fruitless.  I think it is just, gone.  My leather daytimer and palm lifedrive are also missing, and I haven't used them in months.  This suggests they were lost all together, passport and lifedrive were in the daytimer.  Dropped getting out of the car, picked up by a junkie and thrown in a ditch, to be found by a city worker 3 months later and the id turned in to the RCMP.. like my wallet last hallow'een or...  ?  Faeries?

(shrug) I've given up, I'm ordering a new birth certificate, and getting futher ahead on my projects while I wait for it to arrive.  Just hope the druid can hang in there. 

  Hm, ok, so that is mostly.. not really what I intended to write when I started... I'll post it anyway and start over. 

   

   

[hollyberry]

Really happy to read this post - sounds like the tanker is hauling around and turning into something much more wind and wave friendly......lovely. Hope your planned escape to sunshine happens to the benefit of your treasured druid...it's too easy to become so familiar until you imagine what it would be if you lost them.....real heart warming to hear partners talking kindly of their others.

P.S. please forgive my childlike notions about finances, I couldn't be trusted with a nursery school cookie bake when it comes to fund raising so naive. Anyway, just glad you're getting some help.

Very best regards