Blue Bike Communications

06/17/2022

What did you do last weekend!? I wrote a book! Check out ebook. If you have questions about values, choosing a co-housing partner, the real estate purchase process, accounting and management, GET IT! Also includes a copy of our co-tenancy agreement so you can see the legal-ese.

01/14/2021

Just a reminder to my extended network that TOMORROW is the last day you can get my eBook for just $0.99 on Amazon. I have never read an eBook, but apparently a lot of people like them. If you're one of those eBook reading, technologically advanced, blue-light-blocking-glasses-owning people, then today is the day for you! Pick up the eBook for $0.99 (or be retro like me and order a paperback).

For eBook Link: https://buff.ly/34hkpbT

Or just buy it for real at this amazing shop: https://bookshop.org/a/20391/9781636765600

Upper-middle class women are in the throes of the female midlife crisis, as political, social, economic, career, and parenting pressures collide. By centering on our own healing and self-care, white women have largely ignored the needs of other women, reinforcing traditional patriarchal values and c...

01/12/2021

I went to my book sales dashboard and found out that MORE THAN 100 PEOPLE have ordered my book from Amazon!!! That is so crazy wild and amazing. I already have 6 five-star reviews! But my goal is 41 reviews by my 41st birthday on February 11! Please review it on the Amazon in the next 30 days to cement my legacy as a person whose friends, colleagues, and family members are willing to endure all of this for a year AND then go on Amazon and say it was a wonderful experience. xoxoxo

BUT, then don't actually buy it there. Buy it here: https://buff.ly/3owLakJ

The Deal of the Dollhouse: How Toxic Self-Care Nearly Destroyed Me

01/11/2021

Preorder shipment #2 on the couch! Next up, labels for shipping and a celebration with myself, in quarantine, that I'm getting them all out to the people who supported me early in this process. THANK YOU for your financial life preservers so I could make my dream real.

Buy it! https://buff.ly/35t9XhZ

01/10/2021

Half of my pre-order shipment is prepped and ready to go out the door tomorrow (if I could figure out why doesn't want my money). I spent all day today writing notes to my biggest fans, closest supporters, neighbors, friends, and family members. It was joyous work.

I have decided that through the process of processing these orders, focusing on what I have right here - a chance to thank each person and send bundles of love into the world, and my work at Blue Bike for the most incredible small businesses, I'll come to understand what it all means and what direction to go when it's time to change direction.

Right now, I'm just so happy for all that it is in this moment.

Link for the book: https://buff.ly/35t9XhZ
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12/27/2020

Add to the list of the things you probably SHOULD NOT do during the weekend after Christmas when you're divorcing, missing your dad, and hanging out alone: Clean out your junk drawer. I mean, why? NBD? Paperclips and post-its that have lost their 'stickie?' Errant bits of staples that break off when you’re reloading the stapler and keep falling sideways in the channel, so you give in. It's like 10 staples? Srsly?

But trust me, don't do it. The junk drawer is a portal to the past. You'll find itty bitty grains of sand that made it through TWO moves to remind you of all that is gone.

A pin of who I loved once. Our last set of checks from the joint account. Papa's pocket knife from when the ER nurse gave his belongings for me to take home that last time we were admitting him. The 9,000th corkscrew you bought on vacation with your lover because you never remembered to pack one, but always bought some wine to share on the patio at whatever cute hotel you were visiting and paid $20 to have an opener... back when you had a lover.

F**K YOU junk drawer.

12/23/2020

I've never been in a book club, have you? I was thinking about it and not one time have I been in one of the ubiquitous lady book clubs where you gather to discuss some agreed-upon work (and often are charged with the activity being an excuse to drink with your friends).

Let's consider why I've never experienced this cultural phenomena...

(1) A lot of the time the book de la vie was the Bible. Not a great fit for me as a non-believer to invade that space with critical religious theory.
(2) I am insufferable and would turn into a literature professor and my friends don't want to subject their friends to that. I get it, really.
(3) My friends and I rarely need a book as an excuse to hang out and talk intense life lessons.
(4) I never learned to read.

BUT, now that I am actually a writer of books, I can offer my services of book club GUEST. Now, that doesn't mean I think you should read my book as the book club book. Instead, I have a lot to say on "the patriarchy et al," middle-class women and the midlife crisis, infidelity, relationships, etc.

Four books I would recommend for book clubs:
- All women, required reading - Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Married women who are bored/annoyed with married s*x - Claire Dederer's Love and Trouble
- People struggling with mortality - Alice Siebold's Lovely Bones
- Women in the dumps with small children - Glennon Doyle's Carry On, Warrior
- Women who need to be convinced that their own history matters - Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones
- Women finding community - Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer

12/22/2020

EEEEEEK! Thanks to all of my supporters who bought the $0.99 eBook this week!!! I busted into the top 100 on Amazon - ranking at #58 in Women's Studies!!!! YIPPEE! Thank you to everyone - and get the word out on the eBook deal (not only for my vanity, but also because it's actually an insightful, fun, and quick read - and will give you a ton of ideas for how to untangle your values, taking the first steps to liberation from our hyper-capitalist-anti-intellectucal-patriarchal-isolated-racist system....or something like that.

LINK TO PURCHASE: https://buff.ly/2KwdHYC

12/22/2020

People from all parts of my life have been congratulating me on the release of my first book, The Deal of the Dollhouse: How Toxic Self-Care Nearly Destroyed me. It's so wild to get texts where people I know and love are HOLDING IN THEIR HANDS copies of the book (I don't even have my first paperback copy yet!!! Haha!). It feels absolutely amazing.

THANK YOU to everyone for supporting me.

If you're interested in how this process works - for everyone out there who says, "Someday I want to write a book." I would say prepare for at least 40 hours per month for around 10 months for writing, editing, rewriting, the damn thing five or six times.

Not even counting if you do a hybrid publishing model like I did where I raised money to pay for printing in advance by pre-selling books.

I am a writer of blogs and reports, brand copy and websites, brochures and snarky texts - but this took writing to a whole new level for me. I hope this book is something people will read, give feedback on, and help make me a better writer and thinker because I would LOVE to embark on this journey again.

For now, the best ways to support me are to share this post, buy the book (ebook available for just $0.99 on Amazon), write me reviews on Amazon, and tell anyone you know who writes in media or podcasts or whatever that I'm so cool that they should loop me in to their publicity machine! Because I am!

LINK TO PURCHASE: https://buff.ly/2KwdHYC

12/21/2020

This weekend I was knocked down and out by crippling anxiety. I had been looking forward to a quiet weekend at home with my kiddo, and starting Friday I walked into an intense stretch of obligations and interruptions that I couldn't seem to escape.

A sick doggo to tend to, a rescheduled happy hour meeting, dozens of texts, a happy kid excited to see her mommy after a week away, people stopping by, people asking for help or information or coordination, work deadlines, gifts to buy, food to make...all melding with the existing noise of everyday life.

I felt my heart race and the feeling of dread that I'd fu**ed something up so royally that no one would ever forgive me. My brain was screaming that I'd forgotten something so important that I was going to soon be paying the price for letting a ball drop. I wanted to cry and to run at the same time. I couldn't focus on work, but the work kept piling up.

I turned first to exercise. A long walk with the doggo. Didn't help. I took my meds. Didn't help. I slept late. Didn't help. I had some wine. Didn't help.

It wasn't until Sunday at midday that I realized that I needed to just stop. Silence the phone. Lock the door (with the kid inside). Say no. Cancel plans. Turn on soothing music. Get out the glue gun and just breathe. Four hours of crafting, painting, gluing, and gift wrapping alongside my little studio partner and I felt relieved. Restored.

The anxiety was triggered by me not recognizing that I was giving more of my energy than I could sustain. I had given up my most precious possession: my own time and attention. I needed to get it back, refill my tank, and find that energy and strength to reengage with my community later yesterday afternoon.

The options for healthy self care usually can't be bought. Taking care of yourself is more about making the decision to value yourself, and then from that loving position, asking yourself: What do you need to feel safe right now?

12/21/2020

I know we all have love-hate-hate relationships with Amazon, Facebook, and the tech giants et al, but I REALLY want to get my book in the top 100 on Amazon before the end of the year. I know that sounds nuts, but really just the "top 100 in a specific category that I targeted," not like the top of all time.

Anyhoo, last week I was #112 in self help, but I've fallen off. If you have just $0.99 (LESS THAN A DOLLAR BY ONE WHOLE CENT), then please go buy the eBook for me!

The Deal of the Dollhouse: How Toxic Self-Care Nearly Destroyed Me

12/21/2020

I love Samantha Bee and couldn't agree with this more. "What can seem like innocuous woo...can quickly devolve into pseudoscience." And WOMEN are the most targeted for this snake oil, undermining our actual health care quality and the levity it deserves.

These peudoscience "wellness" products are unregulated, potentially dangerous, and have caused vulvas to be burned by hot steam or toxic-shock syndrome from putting rocks in vaginas.

For the upper-middle-class Goop crowd, we can always sue or go get actual help after a 3rd degree p***y bonfire, but what about the women who are turning to "alternatives" because they can't afford health care in our fu**ed up system? Who is protecting them from toxic snake oil, harmful and untested treatments, and potentially expensive care after things go south?

Not Gwyneth Paltrow.

I've dug into the snake oil, pyramid-scheme, social media bubble of all of this bu****it and the multi-trillion-dollar pseudoscience industry that is preying on us. You want to really feel better? Get smarter.

For more my full analysis, pick up my new book, The Deal of the Dollhouse, today: https://buff.ly/2KwdHYC

If the current health crisis has shown us anything, it's that anti-science beliefs are stronger than ever. The pseudoscience beauty industry is booming and i...