Every morning as I check my email I end up deleting all my free gifts from Walmart and Harbor Freight. I’m always amused that companies I don’t use are so eager to give me gifts.
And then there are the folks who write to me pointing out that there are some problems with my website. They’re all happy to tell me that, for a fee, they would a: redesign the website from the ground up or b: fix it so it’s number one on Google. The truth is, I have absolutely no desire to be number one on Google. I delete all of those, too.
My website is a tool for staying in touch with my fans and readers. In case you haven’t noticed, there is zero advertising. It is designed and managed by a former daughter-in-law who is also my permanent IT person. She runs the website in her “spare” time. In her real life, she’s a professional architect with a three-hour commute. I’m incredibly fortunate to have her assistance.
But the junk emails that really “gar my greet,” as my mother would have said, are the ones who are interested in offering their services as “guest bloggers.”
When I left Bisbee to go to college, I was in Tucson and only a hundred miles away from home, but every Tuesday, my mother would sit down at the kitchen table after she got the other four kids off to school and write me a letter, always done with her perfect, old-school penmanship. And despite having only a seventh grade education, her grammar and spelling in those missives were always perfection itself.
As for the content of those letters? There was never anything of earth-shattering importance. She’d relate the latest news from Yuma Trail— what was going on that week with the Weatherfords or the Hancocks or the Dunkersons. She’d let me know what was happening in the lives of both my older and younger siblings. But most of all, she took the time to write and that showed she cared.
Every Friday morning, I would race back to Pima Hall from class, hoping there’d be an envelope waiting in my mailbox at the dorm reception desk, and there always was—every single week for all four years.
Did I keep any of them? No, because I was young and stupid at the time, but nonetheless I’ve treasured receiving them each week in my heart ever since.
And that’s what my blog is all about. They may not be handwritten, but my posts are a way of letting my readers know what’s going on in my life on a weekly basis.
Since I’m writing about my life experiences, I don’t require the services of a guest blogger. Why not? Because it turns out I already have a ghost blogger filling that spot.
Her name is Evie Busk. Every week, when I sit down to write these little pieces, I know my mother is looking over my shoulder and nodding her approval.