Posts Tagged "happiness"

A New Attitude

Posted by cafebebemama on Jul 12, 2010 in Blogger Love, Motherhood | 25 comments

For those of you who know me, I’ve been struggling as of late.  Struggling to find meaning in the madness brilliance of the blogging world, struggling to find inspiration, struggling with struggling.  My stats have taken a dip, my followers (I hate that word!) perhaps have taken a trip and I’ve been wondering whether it’s all worth it?

Well, guess what?  It’s time for a new attitude!  I’m tired of stressing and struggling.  I’m tired of my mood mirroring the Google Analytics graph for my blog stats.  I’m tired of waiting with bated breath for indexes and kudos to bolster my confidence.  Enough!  Because, you know what?  I’m good enough!  I’m smart enough!  And gosh darn it, people like me (well, I think they do)!

Cafe Bebe has been a source of pride and an emotional roller coaster.  I want people to read what I write…who doesn’t?  Why would I have a public BLOG if I didn’t?  It’s nice to have comments from people who feel moved to comment.  It’s confidence boosting to know that you’ve made a difference or have made people laugh.

What Cafe Bebe shouldn’t be is a replacement for living my life and being a brilliant mother, wife and me!  As an extremely wise blogger told all of us at Cybermummy, life is for living, not blogging.  Get out and live it and the content will follow.

I have the supreme honour of being a stay-at-home-mum to a truly amazing and precocious Little Miss.  She’s the light of my life and makes my life better every single day.  Cafe Bebe is my place to share her story and our adventures together.  It’s time for me to regain control of myself and not measure my worth or lack thereof on the stats and indexes and honours.  I give you my New Attitude Promise:

• I will not focus on the stats unless asked directly for them.  I will instead revel in the few (or many) who come to Cafe Bebe and enjoy what I have to say.  I will be pleased when a few more visitors stop and will not fall into a blue haze when they don’t.
• I will continue to wear a Tots badge but I will not tap my toe waiting for the index to come out each month to see who’s higher or lower than me.  If I manage to stay in the Top 100, I’ve done well.  If I don’t, eh…no worries.  I’ve established relationships that will not end just because I don’t have a double digit number on my badge.
• I have done a mega-cull on Twitter.  I realised that A LOT of people were “following” me that NEVER interacted with me (or me them for that matter).  I realised that quite a few followers had not tweeted in months so obviously they weren’t REALLY following me.  I culled about 600 followers.  I had been at about 1200 followers.  WHO REALLY CARES IF 1200 PEOPLE ARE FOLLOWING ME IF THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT ME?  Twitter is a brilliant social media opportunity to promote your business.  But if all you do is follow people in the hopes that they will follow you back and click on your site, you’re not really embracing the fun of Twitter.  So, if you follow me on Twitter, interact with me a bit or I won’t follow you.  There’ s just not enough time in the day people.
• I will utilise my NEW SMARTPHONE TECHNOLOGY (OMG, thank you Natalie of Sophie 4 Sophie) to free me from the laptop and get out of the house with my daughter.  I will happily accept other gifts of technology to free me even more!
• I will use the prophetic motto from the 80′s:  “Don’t worry…be happy!”  I have an amazing husband, gorgeous daughter, lovely friends, supportive family, success in writing…I’m grateful for everything I have.  It’s time to stop sweating the small stuff and start enjoying everything I have.  Life’s too short.

Who’s with me?  Time to break away from the Google Analytics graphs?  Time to be happy that ANYONE reads what you write?  Time to free yourself from the Blog/Rat Race??  Start writing for you and only you.  I believe good things will follow.

Thank you for tuning in to another post from Cafe Bebe.  Come back when you can…I’ll always be here whether I’m blog number 48 or 95 or 7131.

Shiny Happy People Meme

Posted by cafebebemama on Jan 23, 2010 in Blogger Love, Little Miss Adventures, Motherhood | 1 comment

My little shiny, happy person

I’ve been tagged…that’s right.  Tagged to take on another challenge.  The Shiny Happy People challenge as originated by Rosie Scribble and handed to me by Insomniac Mummy.  I’m not big on awards or memes (I still don’t understand what a MEME is…someone please tell me!) but this one is FUN!

The challenge:  Name a song that makes you happy – a song you would listen to if you needed a sudden injection of happiness. Post an image that makes you smile, it can be anything – a silly photo, an image taken from the internet, anything at all that puts a smile on your face (and isn’t too rude!)

The picture above of Little Miss was taken recently when we were out as a family in Stamford.  We were reviewing a café for its family-friendliness for an article I was commissioned to write (yes, commissioned = paid!).  We’d tried to get into this café 3 previous times and on the fourth, we were successful.  Little Miss was rather pleased with her full-English breakfast and I snapped a photo…how funny is her grin?  This makes me smile!

Now, as far as the song goes…I have chosen Abba’s “Dancing Queen”.  I love this song in all of its glorious cheesiness.  It brings me back to a time, about 10 years ago when I was working at a Gymnastics Gym in Peoria, Illinois.  We had a staff party with a tropical theme and many tropical drinks were drunk that night.  Pineapples were eaten, dances were danced.  And then, “Dancing Queen” came through the speakers.  One of our lovely coaches was quite the Dancing “Queen” he was (wink) so now, every time I hear “Dancing Queen”, I think of that night and that time and smile a lot.  Have a listen…Abba is always good for putting you in a happy mood!

And just for fun, I will leave you with one more.  My second New Year’s Even here in England, my hubby and I attended a New Year’s Eve party in Peterborough.  You know, the one’s where you get your hotel room and a lovely meal and brekkie in the morning for a nice lump sum?  Yes, those!  One of the popular songs at that time was “Show me the way to Amarillo” by Tony Christie.  The amazingly funny Peter Kay did a hysterical version of the song for Comic Relief and it’s that version that I share with you.  At our New Year’s Eve extravaganza, this song came on and EVERYONE was out on the dance floor jumping and jiving and clapping and running!  It was amazingly funny and I can’t help but get up and clap whenever I hear this song.  Turn up the volume please…

I hope these songs and the Little Miss picture above bring a smile to your face.  As far as tagging…I’m only going to officially TAG one person as I know she wants to be brought into our Meme World:  Kim at Kim Unplugged.   This is a happy challenge and she could use some happy!  As for the rest of you, I openly TAG you all to take up the Shiny Happy People meme to see what sort of happiness you can bring to the blogosphere.  Ready, steady…you’re it!