My old Facebook page appears to have been deleted, which I am surprisingly thankful for. It was tainted from being hacked and taken from my power, their greedy threads trying to reach others within my group of friends. But my friends were smarter than them and put warnings out at every post seen that they were not who they pretended to be. I created a new page and blazed my own guns at them, shouting to the world my old page had been hacked and was not to be trusted. They did not appreciate my fight and sent me messages, trying to pull me in to see how much I wanted the page I had kept for over a dozen years. It carried many memories, but I didn’t lose them because they live inside me, not on a page. I continued to ignore their requests, reporting daily to Facebook support, which I found nary a soul on board. However, more hackers were eager to work with me to regain my page. (Insert eye roll)

This was also an eye-opener in how much pressure we put on ourselves to be successful and sell our brand. Selling a few hundred books would be wonderful, but that is not the whole reason why I began writing. I write to give someone a fun escape, including me.

I have written stories since elementary school, and it is only now that I am trying to follow that dream. I almost lost my life a few years ago and regained a new view of why you should follow your heart. I am also fortunate to have the most understanding husband in the world. We may live with less now, but we love and laugh more.     

Life is filled with lessons, and the lessons I learned from this are:

1.  Don’t automatically trust that it’s your friend sending a message. Ask personal questions first.

2.  Make sure you are fully awake and caffeinated before doing the first one.

3.  Some people are assholes, and all I can hope for is karma to give them loose bowels and an itchy rash. 

4.  I have some pretty spectacular friends who watched out for me and had my back. 

5.  Your friends are on Facebook, but it doesn’t mean Facebook is your friend.