Week of Money: Where I delete everything and contemplate stopping blogging

DAY ONE

??:?? — I wake up tired. Little Bun napped a lot yesterday and as a result, last night, he was just unable to go to sleep. The bed was too hot, he kept wiggling off. He kept waking me up just as I fell asleep and I AM JUST DEAD today.

6:00 a.m. — Oh good it’s light on meetings today. I answer a bunch of emails.

6:18 a.m. — I check my schedule and block off an hour in the morning to be able to nap and bring my brain back to its normal state. I am so tired.

6:30 a.m. — I make a tea.

7:08 a.m. — I finish my tea, and take a yoga break.

11:51 a.m. — Meetings done, I am eating early. Little Bun tells me Babiest Stuffie wants to watch me work and made me a gift:

1:15 p.m. — Another meeting. Someone is leaving for their retirement. Everyone is amazed they’re retiring at 60. I’m side-eying the whole thing because I am already in on the secret of FIRE … LOL …

3:00 p.m. — Little Bun up from his nap, thunder stomps out and says: I WANT LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF MOMMY TIME.

3:11 p.m. — I make him check my schedule. He tells me I am free at 16:00 and I tell him that’s when we can Mommy Time.

4:00 p.m. — ON THE DOT, he is hovering by my side, buzzing with excitement because he gets MOMMY TIME.

4:45 p.m. — We play all of his bedroom games – Chasing Mommy “Where is mommy”, Trying to tap me with a pillow, and I make up one where I wrap him like a Baby Burrito (I used to do this all the time to him), and tell him: “Shhh.. Baby Burritos are quiet and delicious“.. and he wiggles out of the blanket squealing, being ANYTHING but Quiet and Delicious for their Mommies to eat them.

This is all a joke, so please don’t call Child services on me. Children of all ages enjoy being told they’ll be eaten because it gives them a sense of excitement, fake fear, really, because they know I’d never actually eat them…… I do this to all children, I pretend I’ll eat them and wax on about how delicious they are. 🙂 They all eat it up, no pun intended.

5:17 p.m. — Dinner time, then dishes, cutlery and laundry. I should vacuum as well. Maybe tomorrow. I’m very lax with house cleaning because a little dirt has never hurt anyone.

7:40 p.m. — Schooling. And I get this great message from someone who has had a fire lit under them!

8:22 p.m. — Time for bed. He made a 3D box (he’s getting better at them) to store things in. He’s really into this Baby Burrito game, so we play it a few more times.

Spent: $0

DAY TWO

??:?? — I wake up.. .NOT TIRED. YET TIRED. I slept well but it’s like I have a sleep deprivation debt to catch up on.

7:10 a.m. — Sweet bliss. I make tea, and then check my accounts. Wow this week is just flying by.

8:15 a.m. — First meeting of the day. I think my team is finally understanding how much I hate meetings, so we end up messaging instead.

8:40 a.m. — I take a short break to gossip with my partner.

9:26 a.m. — I see this relaxing video of a lucky baby getting massaged and I wrote: I miss massages so much!

Someone wrote back:

So I responded: I want Little Bun to massage ME. What kind of stress is he under!? I’m the one with knotted muscles…!!!

11:30 a.m. — I take another Play Break with Little Bun who has announced he wants A LOT OF MOMMY TIME AFTER HIS NAP. I tell him my schedule is free until 1 p.m., so why not finish his pages and Mommy Break now? He quickly powers through his pages.

11:55 a.m. — Mommy time. We are in the closet creating new pieces for our collection.

1:04 p.m. — Down for his nap. He seems to be working on some secret new thing, he has his pencils and crayons in the bedroom plus paper….

1:06 p.m. — I make a tea, and then MEETINGS until 5.

3:10 p.m. — I am talking, and to his credit, Little Bun sees me talking, and lets me think peacefully / talk carefully. THIS IS HUGE. Normally he’d be poking me or standing there breathing down my neck as I talked, distracting me and annoying me.

5:00 p.m. — Final meeting done. Little Bun had been giving me the “MOMMY TIME” eyes the whole time I was on my calls, but knowing I will get annoyed if he tries to get me to leave before. I have to finish these meetings and then I am done.

5:26 p.m. — We head into the bedroom and upcycle some more, and talk, listen to music and play together.

6:18 p.m. — Time for dinner. He watches Paw Patrol this time, and the new season of If you give a mouse a cookie.

7:49 p.m. — I go through my list of things to do, to make sure I have not forgotten to do anything for anyone…. my family, friends, blog life, ANYTHING.

8:56 p.m. — Schooling! Then bedtime routine! Then bed!

9:22 p.m. — We chat a little but then we just drift off to sleep, tired.

Spent: $0

DAY THREE

??:?? — I wake up and am excited. I am taking the morning off to go out with Little Bun and my partner for what Little Bun calls “Field Trip day”.

8:07 a.m. — We head out for the morning.

10:25 a.m. — Back home, I log into my meeting.

11:25 a.m. — More meetings.

1:10 p.m. — Break for lunch, Little Bun goes down for a nap after squealing about MOMMY TIME. I go into the bedroom and spend time with him, and basically miss my lunch hour. By the time I get back, I have a meeting and I am eating in front of the computer awkwardly with my headset on.

3:01 p.m. — Up from his nap, I hug and kiss him, and log into another meeting which he is not happy about.

4:47 p.m. — I am tagged in posts where basically an asshole posted Little Bun, and identifying details of where to find us. I am f*cking furious and angry. I decide it is no longer worth it. Why do all of this for free, spending hours creating content, and even if I love it as a hobby, only to end up having one asshole ruin everything and threaten my family?

They posted about all the places where you could find my son and I. Can you believe this? I already have issues with stalkers and now I have this to contend with.

You just simply don’t touch my family. I am fair game, but my child especially, stays out of this. You may disagree with me, call me all sorts of misogynistic, terrible names, but my son is someone I will protect at all costs.

Is it worth it? Is all of this worth it? The money I make off the blog, social media, it’s peanuts to what I make and I don’t need the money. To give you an idea, in one year, it is less than what I make in 2 weeks of working.

I found it to be a fun hobby, and it has done so many wonderful things like let me meet people I am still friends with to this day, 10 years later, and other people around the world I NEVER would have benefited from knowledge of … but if it stresses us out and Little Bun gets affected, I don’t see the point.

I am contemplating stopping blogging altogether. I take the weekend to think about it. I still have a month or two of posts left.

I have been extremely careful with my privacy because I don’t care about being famous or having anyone know who I am, or what I do, which allowed me to be more transparent than normal, but it just feels exhausting and no longer worth any of it if there are going to be assholes who don’t respect that at all (true in every part of the world).

6:47 p.m. — I feed Little Bun, exhausted, I lie down and think. He actually gave me trouble because it was already “so late” to watch Paw Patrol and eat dinner, and now he thought he would have schooling WAY too late with his father later, which would mean less Mommy Time in the night time.

I get frustrated – he spent the past hour and a half, playing a game while I waited for him, and then when HE decided he wanted to have dinner, it was already late, and my partner and I maybe had a 10 minute or less chat, which made Little Bun anxious because now our chat was eating up HIS scheduled time. I am frustrated, and I tell him that HE is the one managing his own time. He chose to create a new game, play it twice, read his magazines and run late into the evening which pushes his schooling schedule later.

7:15 p.m. — While he is in schooling, I spend my night reporting it to the police who open an investigative file after I send them all the screenshots, and then deleting some posts (over 1000 of them), all my affected media. It’s a case being opened involving privacy, cyberbullying, hacking and a minor.

9:25 p.m. — Little Bun tells me sweetly: Mommy, tomorrow since we are going out early, I need to wake up and NOT watch Dr. Binocs, and then we can go out and I don’t have to worry about my workbook pages and we can come back and I don’t have to rush to finish them.

Me: That is a wonderful, extremely smart thing to think about. I like the way you planned your morning and decided on your schedule.

Little Bun: YEAH!

Me: *heart bursting*, He will be a planner just like me. It will serve him well in life to think ahead and to plan a little before doing things.

10:20 p.m. — I toss and turn all night. I can’t sleep, do I delete everything?

Spent: $0

DAY FOUR

??:?? — I wake up periodically throughout the night, unable to fall back asleep.

6:11 a.m. — In talking to my few friends, all of which by the way, I met through the blog and now we are messaging and fairly close, living in different parts of the world, I think I will be okay with continuing but I am cutting out a lot of things.

For one thing, I cannot cut out things like my money or style posts, and expect to have enough content daily, so I am posting less. About 3 times a week – Week of Money, Link Love and one Money Post. Then occasionally, Ask Sherry stuff.

All social media will be gone. Find me on this blog only.

6:42 a.m. — Little Bun starts on his pages, but then gets distracted tearing up the business reply mail inserts in his new magazines.

6:22 a.m. — I log in to work.

8:08 a.m. — We head out for Field Trip Day – what I love about working remotely is being able to just leave for parts of the morning to spend with my family, and then I come back and generally work to make up the hours.

10:00 a.m. — Back home, while I am on calls and working, I am deleting everything I can. I think the person who hacked me, works at Facebook. There have been reports of people working there, using their “influence” and access to be able to access accounts. They have since cracked down a little, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t log in with someone else’s ID in another department, or what have you.

10:33 a.m. — It’s slow, trying to get rid of every post. I had over 8000 of them.

10:40 a.m. — I take a break after a call and eat.

12:28 p.m. — I take a short break to upcycle with Little Bun in the closet. We filled a whole basket with new items!

1:23 p.m. — He’s down for his nap, I’ve had my tea, and I am prepping for my next call.

2:47 p.m. — Call starting. This is a doozy.

6:39 p.m. — Still deleting things. And getting comments from a new person “Ted” who created a new email address to troll me. I am wondering why I even bother with this any more.

8:56 p.m. — We get ready for bed and read together his new magazines.

Spent: $0

DAY FIVE

??:?? — I wake up with a fresher start for the day. I am rethinking everything and maybe I’ll just start over. No more personal stuff, unfortunately. All style stuff is gone, all money, all personal talk, and I just talk in general. It’s unfortunate that it had to come to this.

6:05 a.m. — Little Bun starts on his workbook and I put away all the dishes. Then I log in and start working. Today’s going to be pretty chill which is exactly what I need. It will be nice to just clean up on things and get things done.

7:18 a.m. — Little Bun is distracted today, and wanders off to read books on his own in the bedroom. It is getting hard for me to keep up on homeschooling because it’s a lot of work to check his answers, guide him, read through the pages, remember to log in what he has done (they want a detailed account). They even want PHOTOS. That’s the part that kills me. I wish I could just mail them his workbook and say: Look, we did all these pages together. Or have someone video chat us and test him. Or send us tests for him to do while they watch him. I hope they give grace to exhausted homeschooling parents who didn’t want to even sign up for this in the first place, considering they’re working full-time.

7:40 a.m. — I am getting inundated with messages. Like a lot of them. I can’t keep up. I can only read and move on. All of them are supportive. Some are kind of insensitive, telling me I should essentially martyr myself and my family to keep going. For what? I am not exactly getting much out of what I am posting in the sense that I find all of this basic money stuff quite boring at this stage. And all of this work is for other people to learn, but to be honest with you, you either want to learn or you don’t. Whatever I post, doesn’t make a damn difference if you don’t feel motivated to change anything.

8:28 a.m. — A friend messages me, sort of confused why anyone would go through all of this trouble to harass me. She says we are pretty much normal people, not celebrities, not anyone with anything really to lose, no real public image to be damaged / to speak of, and we are boring in that sense. There’s nothing sensational with us, we’re just a bunch of people who prefer privacy over being famous, which has always been my thing.

I write back that it’s people with too much time on their hands who think they’re gaining something by doing this, when in fact, they’re gaining nothing at all. The satisfaction that they’re forcing me to delete everything personal?

Wow. All of that work for making someone scrub their profile, seems like a lot of trouble. Actually, even posting how successful I am just makes me more famous, and with more people following me or wanting to know me. I personally don’t want that, but it isn’t a bad thing either. I know people who would love to be asked to appear on TV, write books, make appearances and so on. In fact, some people pay for all of this and hire PR managers. I couldn’t care less.

I already had no personal social media presence to begin with. It was 99% someone who works (or knows someone who works) at Facebook or Instagram who was able to access any of my private & personal info that I deleted years ago. Facebook says they delete your info but they don’t, clearly, as posts from almost a decade ago, were still there to be accessed.

What they gain in the end, is a false sense of power because they have none over their own lives and wish they did. That’s it. It all stems from pure jealousy, angry that someone out there (a woman no less) is happy and doing better than they are, because I can tell you I have zero time in my life to fk around with anyone’s profile and lives, let alone spend days digging into someone’s life to achieve absolutely nothing. There are better things to do with my life.

9:24 a.m. — Meetings. They’re ENDLESS. It’s the bane of any corporate existence, and I’d much prefer it if they messaged me.

10:15 a.m. — I drag out the posts I had scheduled to the end of the year. I am slowly forming that I will just do less. I’ll do everything I did before, but without any personal style or money posts.

11:29 a.m. — I break for lunch.

5:08 p.m. — The night passes in a blur of feeding, cleaning, laundry, Little Bun playing with me, and then we read together and make up stories (his favourite). Through it all, I am deleting content.

Spent: $0

DAY SIX

??:?? — I wake up well-rested but still tired.

6:00 a.m. — We do dishes, Little Bun snuggles me, I make a tea, and we go and talk to the plants. Every morning, he goes in, and talks to the plants. We water them gently, and he usually says: Hello planties! I love you. Please grow big and tall. (It’s sweet because I told him that plants can hear us speak and now he’s taking his duties as Lover of Plants very seriously). He tells me they’re babies and which ones are no longer newborns any more (the super tiny seedlings). I also take a bigger handful of the chive seeds and plant them. Maybe the whole lot is “dead” or unable to grow. It seems like none of the ones we planted even sprouted a tiny bit. They should have at least sprouted in the past 3 weeks, a tiny bit but we saw nothing. Maybe we let the soil get too dry. I fret.

8:25 a.m. — We spend the morning in the bedroom playing Little Bun games like “where’s Mommy”, where he closes his eyes and chases me. Then we upcycle by painting in the closet, and listen to music.

10:30 a.m. — I have a lunch, then do all the dishes, and we chat about what’s going on. Lots of things happening around the world.

1:50 p.m. — Time for his nap, and I try to valiantly finish off these vegan marshmallows that are just.. honestly, terrible. They melt into slime in my mouth.

2:01 p.m. — Watching “Cruella” again, it’s a FANTASTIC movie. Not at all gory, no blood, not heavy at all. It’s quite a good fashion movie, with strong characters, and a delicious tinge of revenge.

2:56 p.m. — He’s up, playing Uno and watching games with Daddy. I am ordering things for my mother, like fruit seeds, and other baking things. I am basically her Personal Shopping Elf. $123.10

5:25 p.m. — I am working on basically organizing all my files.

9:01 p.m. — Time for bed.

Spent: $123.10

DAY SEVEN

This is what I decided.

———-

Want more? Read all of my previous Week of Money Diaries.