My Favorite Self-Help Stuff

Today’s self help blog post is going to be pretty personal…

Over the last few days, I learned a painful lesson…

Always back up everything!

I tried to go to one of my blogs — My Linguistic Leverage blog that I’m using to market a lot of my online services, and it was GONE!

Completely gone. And, as it turned out, irretrievably gone.

What the heck happened?

I’m not entirely sure.  All I know is that all the files were gone from my server, and that there were no back-ups.

At first I was hoping that my trusty web host would be able to restore everything, but as it turned out, when they ran the most recent back-up, the blog was already gone, so if they had  had anything before, now they didn’t.

There was ONE saving grace!

Google came to the rescue…

I went and checked the Cache of all the pages I could find and saved them all in files and as PDFs, so I can copy and paste at least some of the articles back.

It’s not all of the stuff I lost, not by a long stretch. But the most important info is still there, and I will be able to put it back over the next few days.

The lesson…

Back everything up.

And also, don’t panic.  Sometimes, there are surprising solutions. I didn’t think of  checking with Google until I thought, gee, at least I’d like my article marketing services page back, and my “helping you with your internet business” services page etc., and some of the key articles.

And then I remembered Cache… and thought, let’s check what’s there, and a lot of the pages were there.

Interestingly, not all of them were, but the ones I needed most I could get back.

So there’s a lesson here — back up everything, and do it regularly. I’ve been very negligent on that count, and I will do a lot better now.

I’ll back things up now on TWO external hard drives as well.  And I’m looking into back up solutions that are in cyberspace.

Also, it’s key to stay calm when stuff like that happens…

If I hadn’t, I might have missed the cache window, and it would have been really all gone. And that would have made this an even more painful lesso. As it turned out, it was more of a wake-up call.

I was all ready to get back home and resume my “normal” life, and then, when I looked up my connecting flight at O’Hare, there it was: “cancelled”!

I went to the customer service desk, tried to get them to put me on a different flight, but the agent told me that my chances were very slim to basically non-existent (overbooked by 6 and a waiting list of 20 for a flight on a plane so small that half the passengers had to fail to show up in order for me to get on), so I took her up on her offer to put me up in a nearby hotel.

The part that bothered me most: My suitcases were going to arrive at their destination without me! There was room for THEM on the only other flight to my destination, but not for ME! What a bummer.

Here I had a great opportunity to either blow a fuse and create a stress fest, or take it easy! Obviously, the second was a much better option. Stressing wouldn’t have gotten me on a plane, and it might well have alienated the agent.

So since I couldn’t change things, I decided to make the best of them and enjoy my detour. At first, I thought of going into town to enjoy some blues, but considering my still pretty bad cough, I thought that maybe the blues would have to wait for another time.

Instead, I used my meal voucher for getting the fanciest of the dinner salads with dessert from my favorite gourmet take-out at O’Hare (La Tapenade), and went to the hotel.

As it turned out, a Target was only two parking lots away, so I went there and got the few things I wish I had packed in my carry-on, and then proceeded to enjoy my dinner and the hotel’s not quite free but very good wireless connection. And essentially a free evening that allowed me to relax and give myself a break before I have to face my “real” life again.

After eyeing the various bottles of spring water that sat attractively arranged all over my hotel room with a bit of suspicion (sometimes they turn out to cost $5 each), I finally called the front desk. No, the very friendly customer service person said, those were all complimentary! Nice!

And yes, the shuttle is free too. So now I’m going to enjoy the hotel’s amenities (including their very deliciously scented shampoo) and then catch some zzzzs. I’m sure that’ll help my cough and also ensure I’ll be ready to catch my plane first thing tomorrow morning.

Next time though, I’ll be sure to pack a few essentials I don’t want to sleep without into my carry-on.

Meanwhile, I feel a sense of gratitude: after all, the airline didn’t attempt to fly with a mechanically compromised plane, so I appreciate their thoughtfulness and their integrity in valuing everybody’s safety over their on-time arrival scores!

I’m traveling to New Zealand! Yay!

My fundraisers to pay for the trip worked even better than I had expected, especially that Warrior Special Offer where I offered my writing services at a rock-bottom discount — I’m still totally swamped with writing gigs, which is why I haven’t posted much on my blogs lately as I’m working my way through the assignments one after the other. I hope I’ll get them all done by the time I leave!

Who knew! But they’re very interesting and good practice. Hopefully all that practice will make me a lot faster too eventually.

There’s another lesson here I think. Be careful when you offer your labor too cheaply. My thinking on that now is “don’t” or at least, put a cap on it. I only have so much time and energy, and if there’s too much to do for the time available, I’m right back in stress land.

So anyway, I got my tickets, the ones from San Francisco to New Zealand and back, and also the ones for Virginia to San Francisco (I bought those last night).

Why two separate sets? Two reasons (at least):

1. I needed to buy the NZ tix as soon as possible because those seats fill up fast. That’s not so much the case for the VA to SF tickets. And it’s a way to stretch out the expense a bit.

2. I used to live in the SF Bay Area. So this way I can schedule a stop-over in San Francisco for a couple of days and spend time with friends there, which is GREAT! I’m really looking forward to it.

Now back to writing And also to writing my conference paper on the persuasive strategies in internet marketing, a research topic I became interested in when I kept wondering how they did this: I read an email and then the next thing is I’m scrambling to get out my credit card, and before I know it I bought something else.

Does that ever happen to you too? I’ve gotten a bit more immune, but it still happens. So now I’ve decided to turn it into a scientific study. How do they do that? It’s very interesting! I want to learn how to do it too, so I’m really double-dipping here

Well, back to work. Y’all have a fabulous day!

Elisabeth

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Hello Dear Reader,

Welcome to my shiny new favorite self-help blog! I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do…

I’m so excited that I finally got this blog set up! I’ve been meaning to do this for a good long while, and now, finally, here it is!

Why did I want to have a blog? Doesn’t everybody have one? Just kidding.

Well, I guess I’m a bit of a self-help junkie and as I have accumulated info that helped me on my personal path of growth, I’ve shared it with friends, some of whom seem to feel like I’m a walking encyclopedia of the stuff. A very biased walking encyclopedia.

Biased how, you may wonder… I’m a big fan of self-empowerment! Kind of like Oprah’s slogan of “live your best life.” Or, like Abraham puts it: “Nothing is as important as that I/you feel good.” And the cool thing is that it works!

So what I’ll be doing here is writing little blurbs on all sorts of resources I’ve found that I really like. I mean REALLY like!!! With my biased but helpful (I like to think) commentary. And links to share with anyone who wants to give them a whirl.

So there you have it. Any questions?

Here’s one: who the heck is writing this blog.

Well, I was going to use a nom de plume, also known as pen name, because I’d like to remain anonymous for the time being. But then I couldn’t send my friends to this thing, and even if they found it they wouldn’t know it was mine. And what would be the fun in that?

So I’m going to use my real name, sort of.

Coming up within the next day or so: my first post on a favorite self-help tool.

Stay tuned and have a wonderful day!

Elisabeth, the self-help guru wannabe.

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