They Found Me…

{image via shutterstock}

When I first stumbled across Get Off My Internets, I couldn’t stop reading.  (It’s sort of that train wreck fascination thing…  I definitely laughed when I shouldn’t have and then prayed they’d never find me.)

For real.  I really didn’t want them to find me.

Get Off My Internets is basically a website that makes fun of other bloggers, talking about blogging “news” and random happenings in bloggers’ lives that they’ve posted on.  Pretty much making fun of them and belittling what they do, pointing out stupid things they’ve said and in general hating on people.  The main writer is actually hysterical.  Honestly, laugh out loud funny…  Witty and biting…  Which is why I never wanted her to find me!! I never wanted to be on the receiving end of what she was dishing out.  In one post a while back she said something about bloggers loving to give each other “rainbow enemas,” which my husband and I just about died over.   Yes, it’s true, we bloggers love to compliment & support one another.  Whenever I’ve had a rough day, my husband asks me if I need a rainbow enema.  And sometimes I do. 😉

There are also forums in it where snarkers/ maybe called cats, can post about things that bother them about bloggers.  And then hundreds of people write comments (if the initial thread was juicy enough) back.  

I figured it was just a matter of time before they found me (My terribly boring neutral interiors had been mentioned once or twice in threads but no really bad bashing to speak of) and this morning,  I saw a post on me.  (Mind you, I’m over a month late to the party…  It’s been going on since March 8th and continued on into April, but better late than never!)

The post was started by an Expert Hammycat being in shock over the listed price of a blanket on my bed in the Domino spread.  ($5K apparently!)  

It really upset and shocked many of the hammycats and some went on to say that I should have only spent $1k on a single blanket and done something better with the other four thousand dollars, like donating it to charity.  

Now, the throw blanket on my bed didn’t cost $5K.  Nowhere near that…  and a store actually loaned it to me for the photoshoot because I wanted it to look prettier than my usual camel wool one.       

But alas, the alleged cost of my bedding led to other issues, as any great hammycat post would…  And the posters got to talking about the cost of my sofa, my stove, and my fabric line, my kitchen the size of my bed, why we have so many kids, and how my husband and I have gone from living in a modest split level to a crazy new house.  And how could my husband have afforded to stop teaching and partner with me full time (actually “assisting” me it would seem)  and how could we afford design staff?  How I always talk about how tired and busy I am and how I never really write about client projects so it’s doubtful I actually have very many clients at all, so how is this all financially possible?  Some think I get money from blogging, family… or even the lottery.  And of course, there are the dreaded “food”  and “family” posts where I share pictures of food and my kids and food with my kids.  And generally it seems like there are lots of hammycats who liked me when I was struggling to make ends meet when I first started out,  but now, can’t really stand me.  I can’t leave out that many of the posters were surprisingly complimentary of my work and our business and there were even WKs (not sure what it stands for yet? = my heroes!! i love you!!) who defended me.  I read the posts out loud to my husband this morning and I have to admit, the hammycats are funny.  They had us cracking up about more than a few things.  (“humble food brag posts” anyone??!!! hahah) 

The truth is, no major windfall happened for us, though that would have been nice.  We bought our first fixer-upper low, put a lot of sweat equity into it, and sold it for a profit.  At the same time, while we lived there, we grew our business and saved.  We got our new house- which is by the way, 400 square feet smaller than our old house- for great deal.  It was another fixer-upper, of course, and we’ve worked on it for a year.  We’d saved up enough that we could afford contractors this time.  Every day, we continue to work hard for our clients and our business.  There’s been no magic behind our process…  just goal setting and sweat and an amazing team of people and clients helping and supporting us.  

As for the Domino shoot- the Domino team is AWESOME.  They didn’t stage a SINGLE thing in our house and I styled it myself.  Not only are they truly nice people, they’re incredibly devoted to showing homes how they really are and I totally respect that about them.  Their magazine’s new format is based upon shopping so that’s why they list items and their retail prices and if the exact same piece used in the story isn’t available, they will list something like it so readers who want to find it, can.   I’m guessing that’s where the blanket price came in.  

As for the $5k blanket…  no I didn’t spend that much on a blanket, but if I had, am I not free to spend my own money as I see fit?  Would hammycats prefer bloggers leave a list of their charitable contributions on their sidebars to make sure we’re giving away enough money to justify what we’re buying?  Our family takes giving pretty seriously but it’s not something I feel the need to write about on here.  

And as for me...  I can only be myself.  

A generally happy person who feels overwhelmed every once in a while and who has never been able to keep her mouth shut.  I say “love” and “I’m so excited” a lot and grossly overuse exclamation points and smiley faces.  (I’m actually shocked that didn’t really come up from the hammycats!!)  A lot of great things regularly happen in my life, but there are also constant rejections and closed doors.  It all is what it is.  I pretty much trust that things happen the way they do for a reason and when things don’t work out, I take another path.

I realized way back that if you tried to please everyone when you wrote a blog or post anything on any form of social media, you’d have nothing to say.  So all I can do is be myself and stay true to writing about what I’m thinking about, working on and excited about.  (Which will continue to be my family, decorating, food & random stuff.)

The last thing I wanted to bring up is that one of the commenters mentioned that she won a giveaway on my blog years ago and sent me an email thanking me and I didn’t write her back and it changed her opinion of me.  That’s something I feel really badly about.  It’s something I struggle with daily.  I literally receive hundreds of emails a day and try to respond to all of them but there are times when emails slip through the cracks and I either accidentally delete them as I’m deleting junk mail or I miss it.  I genuinely care about people and would never purposefully not respond to someone.  I hope anyone reading that at least believes that.  I’m really trying.  

So, now that they’ve finally found me, I can say that I’m a survivor of Get Off My Internets.  (so far…  Not sure if you’re supposed to directly address it or ignore it .)  And I’m not scared of them finding me anymore…  it wasn’t so bad after all.  Have a good one!