(p.s. keep reading for the deep-dark confession at the end!)
I’m sure everyone’s heard of that Harvard Nurse’s Study that basically found out…nothing. Or, that maybe you shouldn’t feel guilty about that extra bowl of Ben & Jerry’s. It found, basically, that a low fat diet did NOT (so they say, although looking at how the study was conducted, I’m not 100% sure about this) help prevent breast cancer, that calcium supplements don’t do jack for osteoporosis, etc., etc. Thanks a lot!
However, a clinical finding that resulted from this study that sounds pretty right to me is that the lack of a close friend/confidante adds to your health risk factor to the magnitude of smoking or a high body mass index (BMI). The researchers surmise that having a friend who supports you and whom you can confide in helps reduce stress. Duh! The idea of burden shared and joy magnified is very obvious.
I was thinking about support and stress reduction when, one day, I went to my web page and found this nasty message:
YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED
Then of course in my email in-box I found all these messages to the tune of, “Hey, did you know your website’s been hacked?” It was just one of those yucky, creepy upsetting ways to start your day.
But then I thought, whoa, hold up. The reason I even have a web page (and a very nice one at that: check it out marielee.net) is because of a friend. My publisher said every author needs their own web page these days, and therefore if I didn’t want to find all my books on the remainder pile, I’d better get one. But when I started asking around about getting one, I found they were really really expensive to have designed and maintained. A different author friend offered me her designer, who’d do the page for a relatively cheap $3,000.
A while ago I reconnected with an old college friend, Christian Crumlish, with whom I found how else? Via the internet. Christian is a big-time professional blogger, and while I was glad to re-establish the friendship, at the time, as a print writer, I tried to politely withhold my bewilderment and skepticism of his odd profession. I felt like an old coot with the suspicion of some new-fangled invention.
Yep, yep, yep: that’s my skeleton in the closet. Until recently, I never even considered doing a blog and in fact, could consider myself somewhat anti-blog, as I felt they were inferior to print materials.
Christian basically donated his time and put together the web page for my book, and it looks so cool. He’s very tolerant of my stupid questions (remember, I’m the DOS wordprocessing person), and told me how to fix the web page in just a few seconds. It was actually no real biggie. What’s the biggie is having a friend who’s so selfless that he’s willing to do some huge, professional job for a friend, with no thought of getting anything back (how many free copies of my novel can I send him?).
So anyway, unfortunately I fall so easily into that glass-half-full-and-will-probably-start-leaking mode too too quickly. Time to take a deep breath and remind myself, if not for family and friends, I wouldn’t have half the wonderful things I have. Including this blog!
Ahhhh. Feels less stressed already. Have a great day.
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