Once again I’m renewing attentiveness to my Do-Not-Complain project, we’ll call this Reboot C1. I’ve been through so much this past month, with the server crash, data loss, and server move. I strove through it all to stay calm and focused. Getting riled up and angry would have made my tasks more difficult. It’s not that I was a doormat. I spoke up strongly and repeatedly to the hosting company in order to get things fixed. But I strove not to “whine” – I strove to lay out the issues, lay out our needs, and work hard to achieve them.
I find that positive energy works wonders. As part of this crash and data loss we lost nearly all of our Mused submissions for the upcoming issue. And with the server issues I couldn’t email the Mused community to let them know. When I finally got things working I emailed everyone with the state we were in and made a plea for them to resubmit. They all rallied, raced, and we got a normal full blast of submissions to work with! It was awe-inspiring and amazing. Everyone wanted to help.
In amongst all of this, Lulu (who I use to have some books on iTunes and Barnes & Noble) had a glitch and put live two books that were supposed to be Kindle Exclusive. Amazon immediately spotted that and they stripped ALL of my books out of the Kindle Exclusive program. I have 133 books in Kindle, and a fair portion of them were Kindle Exclusive. They had been seeing substantial sales. Rather than get angry, I took a deep breath and looked at that situation. I wrote Amazon to see if they’d undo the change. But I’m also looking at putting all my books out on all platforms. If this is to be my new situation, this could be a very good one – and thank goodness it happened with some lead time before the holidays. I have time to get everything up, live, and set (with Bob’s help) to take advantage of all those holiday purchasers. So this could be a great opportunity. If Amazon does indeed put them back into Kindle Unlimited that would be fine too. So I’m just waiting to hear which way they’re going to go.
I have so much to be grateful for. A warm house to live in. I’m making progress on the decluttering. We brought in all our potted plants and we have marigolds, peppers, lavender, saffron crocus, and all sorts of cool things growing for me. I have my artwork up in five different galleries. I’m working on an illustrated haiku chapbook that I’m really enjoying. Debi and I are working on an illustrated children’s book which I’m loving. I have wonderful friends and a darling boyfriend. To complain that life has its normal ups and downs seems silly. Half the world lives in pennies a day and barely has clothes or food. I am grateful.