During the day, I don’t believe in ghosts. At night, I’m a little more open-minded. ~Unknown
Happy Halloween!
The aimless ramblings of a career-frustrated, wine-guzzling forty-something single Mum.
As you may know if you have been keeping track of my blog, I love autumn. It is by far my favourite season. There are no words to explain how this time of year makes me feel. And I especially love October, which is the pinnacle of the autumn season. The month is packed full of my favourite things; my son’s birthday, the smell of woodsmoke, the golden fire in the trees, the falling leaves. And, of course, the jewel of the autumn season – Halloween.
I have to admit, everything post-Halloween pales into insignificance until Christmas, and November almost gets forgotten. But it is technically still autumn, and did I mention how much I love autumn?
Of course, I’m not the only one, as I found recently while searching the internet for quotes to post on my Facebook page. There are so many literary quotes out there that capture the beauty of the season perfectly. And so, instead of finding my own words to describe how wonderful autumn is, I’m going to give you 20 of my favourite quotes.
There are no rules set in stone when it comes to Facebook page etiquette. However, there are many unspoken rules.
When you are starting out and hoping to rely on the generosity of established pages to help your page grow, it is good to have an idea of how to request this successfully. After all, you don’t want to annoy the very people whose assistance you need.
When I was starting out, as I mentioned in my first post, I had no clue what I was doing and basically bulldozed my way through my pages first few months of existence. Until a page owner very publically admonished me. Yes, I learnt the hard way, and that was probably good for me as it made me stop and think.
Now that my pages are mildly successful, I do see other baby pages making the same mistakes I initially made. There is a very fine line between introducing yourself politely and rudely using another, bigger page to ‘pimp’ your own, and this is what I am going to explain to you now.
Page etiquette
So, you’ve started your own page and you’re wondering how to get it seen and gain followers. What better place to do this than on somebody else’s bigger page. It is sure to get noticed there. But there are certain routes it is best to avoid.
What not to do
What you should do
I hope this helps in your journey as a new page owner. Good luck!
Coming soon: Understanding page reach
I haven’t read a Karin Slaughter book in a few years, but after devouring two offerings this month (this and Criminal) it has definitely reminded me of why she is one of my favourite authors.
Set in Atlanta in the 1970’s, Cop Town is a gritty tale told from the viewpoints of Maggie Lawson, police officer with the Atlanta Police Department, and Kate Murphy, the rookie she is partnered with. There is a killer on the loose – the Atlanta Shooter, who has already taken the lives of four police officers in identical killings. The book opens with the brutal murder of Don Wesley, partner to Jimmy Lawson, Maggie’s brother and fellow cop. Ex-footballer Jimmy, nephew of bullish Terry, also a cop, is the Golden Child of the Atlanta Police Department, and can do no wrong. Or can he? Something isn’t right, and Maggie and Kate are determined to solve the case despite the scorn of their fellow counterparts.
Right from the off, we are thrown into the turmoil of the era. Atlanta in the 1970’s is not a nice place to be in if you aren’t a straight, white male. Fresh from the Vietnam war, the majority of the police officers are old school and strongly believe that the police force is no place for a woman, especially one who is widowed, moneyed, and Jewish (Kate). Maggie doesn’t fair much better, even with family in the force, and doesn’t appear to have any support from them.
I must admit, this book paints the police force in the ‘70’s in a particularly unforgiving light, rife with drinking on the job, police brutality, evidence tampering, bigotry, sexism, and racism, amongst many other things. The male police officers in particular are awful, and the way the women accept the treatment inflicted upon them by the men is extremely frustrating.
Despite that, Karin Slaughter has written a corker of a book, and Maggie and Kate are excellent heroines, and extremely well-written characters. Following on from Criminal’s dabbling in the 1970’s, this is a fast-paced and enthralling police procedural, and I hope to see the girls in later books.
My favourite day of the working week, at last! And this Friday is particularly momentous as it heralds the beginning of my long-awaited week off work. Yay! I’ll have more time to blog! 😁
I also have a busy weekend ahead, filled with family and food and one or two alcoholic beverages. I’ll need a week to recover!
Have a great weekend! 💜
A couple of days ago, somebody asked me how I had almost reached 60,000 likes on my Facebook page, A Little Bit Of What You Like. She was impressed with the format I used, yet bemused as to why her own page was struggling.
In fact, A Little Bit Of What You Like is actually my ‘baby page’. This is what us multi-Facebook page owners call our smallest page, the one that has fewer followers and does not attract as much traffic as our bigger pages. Funnily enough, A Little Bit is my second oldest page, launched on November 2013. In contrast to the most recent addition to my Facebook page stable, Fragments of my Mind, launched in February 2015 and having just exceeded 190,000 likes, A Little Bit is indeed small fry.
I have to admit, since it’s recent revamp, A Little Bit is my secret favourite. It is also my most low-maintenance page, and my prettiest.
I began my Facebook page ‘career’ in late 2012, with my sexy page Undisclosed Desires. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and my page was quite honestly a mess. I had got it into my head that I could communicate with my crush through the photos posted on my page as I was unable to communicate with him in real life (another story!) But it quickly became obvious that he was unlikely to even stumble across my little tadpole in that great big sea of Facebook. By this time, I was already hooked and it didn’t really matter anymore. I was a fully-fledged Page owner, and I wasn’t giving up my page without a fight.
Posting away merrily, unfamiliar with the Facebook Page Community Standards, I was rapidly hit with a succession of reported posts based on the material I was posting. Too sexy, apparently. These reports lead to bans on both my page and my personal profile, and eventually my page was unpublished for constantly violating the Community Standards.
As I said earlier, I wasn’t going down without a fight.
Within hours of my page being unpublished, I had created a new one – Undisclosed Desires 2. This time, I knew what to expect, and I knew how to make my page grow. Through the power of networking, my fledgling page hit over 1,300 likes overnight, in its first day of existence.
So how did I do it?
Getting your new Facebook page off the ground.
Coming soon: Page etiquette
Yet again, it’s been a while since I posted, and my posts have recently been very few and far between. Again, I do not have a reason, apart from supreme lethargy. I have little motivation, energy, or enthusiasm for anything these days, and I definitely need to give myself a good kick up the backside! I am also behind with my monthly overview as we are now well into October. I have no excuses. Life has been particularly heavy-handed recently, both on my purse and on my emotions. I definitely seem to be having a stroke of bad luck.
As with my August overview, I am hoping that, by listing my achievements and short-term future goals, I can boost my enthusiasm levels, but even now, a few lines into this post, I am racking my brain for one single achievement. Yes, it has been that bad. I can’t complain as I have a home, a job, a family that support me. Yet nothing seems to be going right.
Okay, so I am going to apologise right now, before this goes any further. This has all the hallmarks of one of ‘those’ posts, the ones where I grumble and moan throughout. It could very well go in that direction as I am in a particularly pessimistic frame of mind today, so let’s do things a little differently this time. Instead of listing my achievements, I am going to list my failures, the things that haven’t gone too well. Let’s call them ‘happenings’, for want of a more neutral term.
My recent happenings:
You may have noticed that I ended there with a couple of achievements, which is a result. I knew that by offloading my grievances, I would make room for those little gems to peep through the gloom. It’s sad that social media makes up a large portion of my achievements though, which isn’t entirely true. As I mentioned earlier, I have a home, a family I love. A job that I don’t really want, but which helps to pay the bills. And I walked for charity. Things could be worse.
Goals for October:
We are already well into October so my goals will be few. Looking back at my August overview, I didn’t really achieve any of the goals I set for myself, apart from the Memory Walk and the MOT (which didn’t go too well!)
So that’s my September overview – better late than never! Hopefully, October’s will be delivered on time.
This book was my Kindle First choice for October. The life of a rather dysfunctional family living in the backwaters of Texas is turned upside down by the appearance of Eve, a young woman who has suffered terrible indignities and abuse from a very young age. Having escaped from traffickers, Eve has been secretly watching the family and studying their relationships, and it triggers a yearning inside her for something she has never had. Caroline, the matriarch of the family, welcomes her into the fold with open arms, and Eve soon catches the eye of Henry, Caroline’s son. This could have been a beautiful love story, but Eve is damaged beyond repair from years of abuse, and it is only a matter of time before things go very wrong. Henry, in the throes of passionate obsession, does his best to clean up after Eve’s tragic mistakes, with catastrophic consequences.
This book was listed as Suspence on Amazon, but I didn’t find it suspenseful in the slightest. In fact, I’m not really sure what it was trying to be. I did feel for Eve, who was extremely damaged, and nobody really tried to help her or even scratch the surface of her many problems. Although the story touched on some very ugly issues throughout, it was never described in any detail and the book managed to retain a fairly innocent quality. But there was a lack of description to all aspects of the book, which is why I found the characters quite two-dimensional. I felt that so much more could have been done with the story, but then I am used to reading pretty raw crime and thriller novels, so maybe it was just a little tame compared to what I’m used to.
I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.
A little harsh, maybe, but it kind of explains how my week has gone. Work is currently a swear word and this Friday couldn’t have come soon enough! I am looking forward to staying home, chilling out, drinking some wine, and watching box sets. I have recently subscribed to Netflix, four years behind everyone else (I certainly know how to move with the times!) and I’ve just finished watching season 1 of The Mist (based on the Stephen King novel). I’m now halfway through season 1 of Bates Motel, which I’m really enjoying. So I have a hot date with my TV this weekend. Wow, I really know how to live! 😉
Have a wonderful weekend! 💜
My #WeekendCoffeeShare this week is actually going to be a #WeekendTeaShare, in my case anyway, although I can offer coffee if you prefer, or lemon tea, or even hot chocolate; I have a plethora of hot drink options to offer. The choice is yours. I myself will sip at this lovely cup of good ole Yorkshire Tea as I summarise the past five days.
I opened the week suffering from a bad cold, which rather surprised me as I am rarely ill. I started with a sore throat and runny nose on the Friday and snuffled my way through the day at work. Saturday was the same, which I anticipated, but I stocked up on cold and flu capsules and assumed I would be better by Sunday. Generally, I am only sick for around two days, which has been quite annoying in the past when I have considered milking an illness. You can’t really milk something that no longer exists! Well, some people can, but my inbuilt honesty won’t let me do that. This time, however, I woke on the Sunday morning feeling like death warmed up, and looking like it too! This continued well into the week, and even now I can still feel the remnants of the cold in my stuffy nose and slightly sore throat. I must be getting old. Either that or I’m just not looking after myself properly. I have been aware for a while that I need to exercise more. Since taking an office job last year, I basically sit on my backside for the majority of my life, which can’t be great for my health. That’s one for my to-do list; get off my arse and do something!
I’ll think about it, anyway.
Today is the first day of October, which I am excited about. I love October. I’m not really sure what exactly I love about it. The vibrant reds and golds in the trees. The fallen leaves. Being able to wear snuggly jumpers and put the central heating on without looking odd. Halloween. A reason for the weather to be crappy. Hot chocolate and stews. My son’s birthday. Spending 15 minutes defrosting the car before work each morning.
Okay, not the last one.
For the past two years, I have enjoyed a holiday in October; Cyprus in 2015 and Crete last year. This year, I unfortunately couldn’t afford it. Previously, my son was in primary school, and his head teacher was fairly lenient around holidays in term time, as long as your child’s attendance was good. However, now he is at high school, all of this has changed, and holidays during term time are unquestionably NOT ALLOWED. So we will have to wait until I win the lottery or something.
Apart from holidays, I am also a big fan of Halloween. I love the whole idea of it more than I actually love the actual day, because it inevitably rains. I love buying pumpkins and attempting to carve (destroy) them. I love decorating the house with fake spiders webs and Keep Out signs. I love seeing the kids out trick-or-treating, even though, as I mentioned above, it’s usually in the rain. Sometimes, I even love to dress up and go out with my best friend Michelle. Not this year, unfortunately, but I’m still looking forward to Halloween. I dream of hosting a fancy dress party, but my natural aversion to people has so far prevented me from getting any further than searching up Halloween on Pinterest.
Anyway, I digress. My week has mainly involved me being ill, and work being the same old, same old. As of tomorrow, we will be out in the main office with the recruiters instead of hidden away in our own little Team Accounts room. Apparently we don’t mix enough with everybody else, hence us being uprooted. I find it extremely unfair, but that’s mainly because I like hiding away from the crowds. This coming week is going to be an eye-opener!
I’ll keep you posted. 💜