“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”
–Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, p 31
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”
–Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, p 31
I’m a Mormon, so I do not lie.
I don’t cheat, steal, or tell half-truths.
Every Latter-day Saint promises to be honest in his or her dealings with his or her fellow man or woman, when answering questions about worthiness to attend the temple (more on that, later). That promise is also part of the whole ‘be like Jesus’ thing from baptism.
Why worry about honesty?
When we are honest in every way, we are able to enjoy peace of mind and maintain self-respect. We build strength of character, which allows us to be of service to God and others. We are trustworthy in the eyes of God and those around us.
LDS Gospel Topics, “Honesty”
Logically, I must admit that I’ve lied, cheated, stolen, and half-truth’ed sometimes. I lied to a salesman last year when I said we’d moved out of state. I cheated in Civ 2 twice. I went through a stealing phase around age 12. And I half-truth to my toddler every time I tell him the cookies are all gone.
The point is the standard’s in place. The expectation is there -and I can (honestly) say, I’m one of the most honest people I know.
©2022 Chel Owens
……
We Mormons are officially members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and are to drop any name but that. Since many recognize the nickname of ‘Mormon’ and it works with the alliteration so well, however, I will use the term.
My other note is that I will keep to official doctrinal practices. I will add my own application of them, especially in response to comments.
My final note is that I LOVE discussing anything I write. Don’t be rude, obviously, but any and all queries or responses are welcome.
My final note beyond the final note is that I do not seek to convert anyone. I ought to, but am motivated by forming connections, answering curiosity, and straightening pictures. So, you’re safe.
My friend, Matt Snyder, tagged me for a Sunshine Blogger Award way back when I dropped the ball and haven’t landed a successful down since…
Anyway, here are his questions and my answers:
© Gilgal Sculpture Garden 2020
Check out my past awards for people to follow; plus Lisa Howeler, and Kat of The Lily Café.
I’m too tired to come up with 11 questions, so anyone who wants to can answer these three:
~~~~~
©2020 Chelsea Owens
~~~~~
Rule Thingies:
Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you and link back to their blog.
• Answer 11 questions the blogger asked you.
• List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award in your blog post.
• Nominate 11 new bloggers & their blogs. Leave a comment on their blog to let them know they received the award and ask your nominees 11 new questions.
Writing just ain’t what it used to be.
You can blame deteriorating families, global internet, Google ads, readers’ short attention spans-
Hey! I’m talking here!
The point is that there is a lot of CRAP being dumped onto the web for a quick buck.
And I’ve helped.
So. many. ADS!
I worked for 9 months writing clickbait like, “You’ll DIG These Puppy Party Ideas” and “How to Flock a Christmas Tree.” Every day that I worked, I followed the same schedule: look at assigned topic, search l’internet for images, copy and save said images, paste and link back to images, then fill in-between the stolen images with text. SEO-heavy, keyword-laden, ad-interrupted text.
After the article requirements morphed into something impossible (and my kids were off for summer break), I requested a pay raise. The owner declined and we mutually split ways.
Sometime last year, I missed the money, tiny amount of prestige, tiny amount of purpose, and that my writing had produced money.
I therefore joined Freelancer. Look at all these jobs, I thought. I can do these jobs! …Then heard nothing in response to queries. Freelancer even lowered my rating because I bid too often.
So I stopped.
One thing I did notice, however, was how many job opportunities were for writing “medical articles,” “technology reviews,” and “150-page books.” There, in the posting feed of freelancing, exists the dark underbelly of writing. Every need for any words is running through this sludge-producing factory; hundreds of requests a second.
It all made me sick. Plus, I was only approached for fraudulent jobs. I even had a potential ’employer’ deposit money into my account and have me start ‘working’ on a website. Yeah… he turned out to be phishing for me to have money deposited into my bank account for ‘art sales,’ and… yeah.
Freelancer refunded the processing fee after my money magically disappeared. I pulled myself out of the working pool.
Recently, however, I was approached by someone who sent me messages on Freelancer and on my public Facebook page. He had a job for me, even though I was confused who ‘he’ was. The picture was a blonde woman with a child who showed high-level testing results. The person writing to me, on the other hand, was a man from Bangladesh we’ll call Barshi.
He explained that he rented that blonde person’s account and that he bid on jobs then reassigned them to competent writers. I hadn’t had any success winning jobs on Freelancer, so I shrugged and took it.
After I finished, he sent me a message about what his main business purpose was: renting legitimate accounts from people with high scores.
He asked me if I’d let him rent my account. He offered 100 USD a month for it, since I had somehow managed to score 100% on Freelancer’s English Level 1 exam (because I speak English. And I write English).
He asked me to do this dishonest thing at least eight times over the course of our communications, around instructions for other jobs.
I quickly realized that his rate of $10/1000 words was not worth the time. A couple of the jobs he bid on were worth it, but it turned out that his rate was the same whether I edited a video script (15 minutes) or completely fabricated a person’s My Story for his/her blog (90 minutes).
I also learned that clients were not always clear in their instructions, and that working through Barshi made that part even more difficult. Despite crafting a My Story of 300 words from 12 phrases of ideas, Barshi came back and said the client hated it. The client said the sentences “had no value” and the piece didn’t come across as “professional.” That’s probably true, given that the client told him he just wanted people to know he wanted to share his idea of beauty and potential with the world and not make it sound like a sales pitch.
When he came back with that feedback, plus demands that I completely rewrite it despite still only having vague client instructions, plus admitting the whole thing was worth $3, I said to forget it.
I thought I was rid of him forever.
But yesterday, an angry Barshi wrote back to tell me I was a liar about my work being original and unique.
The person to whom he submitted my vacuum cleaner review rewrites (don’t trust what you believe out there, folks) claimed they were not unique.
I am an honest person, to the point of too much honesty. Barshi even knew that, feeling comfortable enough on other occasions to tell me about his family and conditions in Bangladesh. He even gave me his account information when I needed to be paid once.
When the big, bad wolf of debtors came prowling around and he did not understand enough English to tell his client to stuff it, however, that rich man’s servant went skulking around for another to blame.
So I feel no guilt in writing Freelancer to tell them about the fraud among them. I feel no guilt telling you all about the garbage that is out there, that is churned out every second to the webs.
Mostly, I feel disappointed in my fellow writers. I’m talking about the proficient English-speaking ones, the ones who can write and who are agreeing to let people like Barshi ‘rent’ their accounts.
“I take rent from usa people,” he wrote. “Everybody helps me with out you.”
“Are you saying other people are fine with your renting their account?” I asked, to clarify.
“Yes.”
Like I said: writing just ain’t what it used to be.
My mouth says I’m fine as my pain twists the tone and you hear it in the release sometimes you ask no really what’s wrong but I can only say
Nothing that’s all I feel by choice empty my mind my feelings most especially my soul anything that might be there has been bled dry and I am a skin of a person fluttering in the wind of others’
Change never for me every day the same drudgery-papered walls never the front of the parade nor even the front of the convoy but always the crew walking just behind to scoop the waste of others’
Happiness a dream or conciliatory statement I say to defer inquiry but I can only be happy if you are because I am the receiver of broadcast emotions buffeting my over-sensitive antennae and I really just say I am so you’ll stop asking because
It’s easier this way you’ll leave me alone and that’s where I want to be I think and yet I do not because thinking would mean I am alive and I try and try to not be alive and thinking and feeling and
Hurting so much hurting but soon I will sleep after not sleeping because here in limbo I can handle it until I can’t but the between is best and where I can numb and look up at you and say
I’m fine.
I’ve been married to my husband for almost 16 years. Before you start adding on your fingers in order to determine my age, I’ll also tell y’all that we initially met in junior high school and began dating at 16.
Just as the term ‘high school sweethearts’ does not involve the clean romance touch of a Hallmark movie, sixteen years of marriage does not involve …well… the clean romance touch of a Hallmark movie, either.
We’ve been having a rough patch lately. I’m a bit too honest, honestly, and have brought up our roughness and subsequent marriage counseling to other women. I have yet to encounter one who does not respond with, “Oh, yes! Marriage is tough. I think everyone ought to do counseling!”
But I’m a people watcher. I’m a people reader. Other people tell me they all have problems and marriage is a challenge, but other people do not act the way my husband and I do.
I’m not asking to be placed in other couples’ bedrooms. I am often wondering if the issues we have are really the same as others’. -Because I have also had other women talk about conflicts or personality quirks with lighthearted humor.
“You know how (my husband) gets,” a neighbor told a group of us at lunch. “He’s always cranky when we travel somewhere and he has to spend money on food.” She laughed; we laughed. She and her husband have been married long enough that they are now empty-nesters. She also said, “I explained to my son that married people like us may complain and tease, but we love each other.”
My teasing comments about my husband started a recent fight because he got self-defensive and then withdrew. Then I, quite maturely, nagged at him and complained so he (naturally) got more defensive and eventually said mean things to get me to go away or (as I told him) hurt me as much as I hurt him….
It all sounds rather childish typed out, but is quite devastating in the moment. Don’t worry; we’re working on it.
Our therapist says we’re not unique but I’m a doubter. Does everyone really have problems in marriage? Do you laugh it off and know you love each other anyway? Or, is couple-hood what Erma Bombeck used as the title for one of her books: A Marriage Made in Heaven, or, Too Tired for an Affair?
—–
What a week! This was the schedule, at least according to my sneaky back-posting:
Wednesday, December 12: What is the Beat of YOUR Creation?, a short, sweet post about music and its role in creation.
Thursday, December 13: Skinwalkers, XLV
Friday, December 14: Winner of The Fifth Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest announced. Congratulations, Ruth Scribbles.
Saturday, December 15: Beginning of The (Sixth) Weekly Terrible Poetry Contest (Check it out!).
Sunday, December 16: Fractured Fairy Tales That Lost, my entries in Carrot Ranch Literary Community‘s contest awhile ago.
Monday, December 17: Inspirational Quote by Matt Kahn.
Tuesday, December 18: Wilhelmina Winters, Seventy-Six,
Wednesday, December 19: This post.
I’ve been swamped with Christmas projects. I have only to make cookie plates for all the neighbors after uncovering my kitchen, then wrapping all the presents whilst the children are snuggled all very tightly in their beds.
Hi. *Shakes your hand* My name is Chelsea. I’m not too fond of it, but haven’t found a better replacement.
Sometimes I try a different name. I speak it, softly, in my mind. I reach deep within, testing whether my soul feels a long-lost connection. Do I sense recognition; a neuropathic reaction?
Always, as with my current placeholder, I feel nothing.
That may have gotten serious, and fairly quickly. Sorry about that. In most of my writing I prefer some humor. In social situations, however, I have caused a few awkward pauses, followed by, “You’re a deep thinker.”
Naturally, I reflect, “Do you not think?” No, I do not say that sort of thing aloud -most of the time.
Though motivated by authenticity, honesty, information, and openness regarding vital issues; I retain a discretionary wall when it comes to relatives, my location, and deeply personal information.
I will write openly about depression, but keep a respectful distance from family affairs.
Again, heavy stuff. I have a tendency to want a certain thorough sketch of my person at first introductions. I seek complete understanding of my character and motivations, though best attempts will never be perfect.
People categorize as they wish, read the words they wish, surround themselves with like-minded peoples, and avoid the unknown unless they actively seek it.
For these reasons, I choose to finally admit my membership in a few common categories waaaay down here.
Firstly, that I am a mother. A married mother. I have children that I birthed and I attempt to raise. Since it influences my writing and observations on the subject of parenting, I specifically have four boys.
Secondly, I am religious. I am also not religious. The two play out in desires to write more sanitary observations, while understanding and agreeing with logical scientific ideas. I’d like to say the two are happily married, making love-eyes forever across a candlelit table. The truth is closer to them being married in general, with all the real-life disagreements therein.
At this point, if you’re still reading, you will learn that I own no pets currently. I briefly had a dog. A life goal of mine was to own several dogs, perhaps on a ranch somewhere. Then, I married an anti-dog man. No, I don’t blame him or think he’s odd. Yes, dogs are stinky, expensive, difficult to train, hairy, and were too much like a permanent toddler for me at the time.
Actually, I lied somewhat. I just remembered we have a Betta fish named Toothless. He’s black with purple shading.
I want my blog to be as unlimited as my writing desires tend to be: sometimes a poem; today a life reflection; a quirky story outlining a friend’s foibles another day. That may be a tad difficult to navigate.
My ultimate goal is to be world-famous, naturally. My realistic goal is to connect with a community of writers; to appreciate others, and be appreciated in return.
This is all rather deep. Perhaps I should have stuck with the usual If you could go anywhere..? question.
Even that would have landed you with Perhaps the moon…