I just learned how to enjoy Facebook more

August 24, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 12 Comments
Filed under: Facebook, Friends and Family, Social Networking 

I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook, but I do go there two or three times per week to see what my friends are doing.

I’m not one of those people who goes “friend crazy” on Facebook. I have just under 300 friends there.

Lately, I’ve been getting tired of going to the Facebook home page, because I just wasn’t interested in what I was seeing most of the time.

But, this evening, based on a chance comment I read somewhere yesterday, Facebook got a lot more enjoyable for me.

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs over the weekend and someone — I don’t remember who — said something about Facebook friend lists in passing. He or she didn’t go into any depth to explain it, but it stuck in my mind, somehow.

This evening, when I went to Facebook, I went to their help center and found out what friend lists are.

Over the last few weeks (months?) I’ve seen the “Add to list” link when someone requests to become my friend, but I never thought about it.

Tonight, I learned that I can create multiple lists to segment all of my friends into smaller, more useful groups.

I went to the Friends tab on Facebook and waited for the drop-down menu to appear and then I chose the All Friends link.

Then I went through all my friends there and added many of them to one or more lists. I created a list for close friends, another for family, another for bloggers, one for Squidoo friends, one for marketing, and so forth. I may go back and add other lists, but I’m pretty happy with what I accomplished this evening in a surprisingly short time.

I was also a bit surprised when I realized I had not a single clue who some of the people were who I had accepted as friends. I don’t remember ever seeing some of their names. Over the next few weeks, I’ll visit the profiles of the ones I don’t remember. Unless there is a good reason to keep them, I’ll be removing them from my friends.

After all, how much of a friend can they be if I don’t even remember who they are?

So, after doing all of this, I still didn’t see how it would be useful to me.

I went to the Facebook home page and still saw the same old mish-mash of updates that weren’t very interesting to me.

Then, I looked into the left column and saw some links. At the bottom of the short list was the link labeled “more.” I clicked it and there were my brand new friend lists.

I clicked on the Family link and a few seconds later all the updates were from my family members on Facebook. Now, that was interesting and useful!

After reading that, I clicked on the Close Friends list and read what they were up to.

Next I clicked on the Marketing list and enjoyed reading their updates – for the most part. It turns out that some of the updates really weren’t all that interesting. I may be removing some of the people in that list from my friends.

In the next few minutes, I clicked on each new list, in turn, and really enjoyed reading updates that were more or less grouped by people in categories in which I was interested.

I can already tell that I’ll spend more time on my Family and Close Friends lists as I continue to use Facebook.

Several people are on multiple lists.

It was interesting that I chose to add some people I know in real life as Close Friends and a few people I’ve never met in person, but who feel like close friends, anyway.

Maybe you already know all about this and you’ve been doing it forever and wonder how I could be so dense. That’s okay. Sometimes it just takes me awhile to learn to use the features each tool offers.

I know for certain that I’ll be using friend lists on Facebook from here on out.

What about you?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Getting back to work

December 12, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 11 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, CafePress, Friends and Family, Success and Failure 

I’ve been missing in action the last couple of weeks.

After Mom’s funeral and burial, I thought I was doing okay. For about a week, I was surrounded by family and some of my closest friends and everything was going well.

Then, last week and this week, I have been alone in this house with so many memories of my Mom and Dad, and I just haven’t felt like doing anything. So, I took some time off. Mostly, I’ve been watching movies and TV shows I’ve rented from NetFlix and sleeping.

I’ve downloaded a couple of thousand emails and responded to the most important. The others will be skimmed or just deleted. If you sent me an important email and I haven’t responded in the next week, please resend it. I’ll try to keep up from here onward.

This week has been rather miserable. I woke up from a nap and thought I was getting a kidney infection or worse. The pain was sharp and intense. I couldn’t get comfortable sitting, standing, or lying down.

Fortunately, after a few days, I was sure it was a pinched nerve instead of a kidney infection or stone, so I started doing some easy stretches several times a day. Yesterday, I felt a pop when I moved just right and the pain is now much less and seems to be going away. That’s a very welcome relief.

If you’ve ever been in constant pain, you know how hard it is to concentrate on doing anything while you’re hurting.

I didn’t expect Mom’s death to take all the wind out of my sails, but it did. So much of my life has been focused on caring for her that I just didn’t know what to do. So, I gave myself permission to do nothing, for awhile.

This morning, I woke up for the first time feeling like I wanted to get back to work.

I tried making myself get back to work last week, but it wasn’t working. Today, however, I feel very different. I’m looking forward to getting my business back on track and writing about the things that have been working for me.

Fortunately, even though I haven’t felt like doing anything for the last three weeks, my websites have been working night and day for me. I’ve continued to make affiliate commissions for sales of Site Build It! and other products I’m proud to use and promote.

Even though I haven’t done much of anything with my Squidoo lenses for the last couple of months, I still received a payment from Squidoo this week and that doesn’t take into account the sign-ups to various offers and affiliate commissions I’ve made on those lenses.

Lots of you have been purchasing t-shirts, calendars, mugs, shopping bags, and other products from my Shirts-Mugs-Hats.com shop, powered by CafePress. While sales are lower than last year, it’s always nice to see lots of “You made a sale at CafePress” subject lines in my incoming email. Thanks to all of you who have purchased this year!

And, of course, there are quite a few other, smaller, income streams that add up to enough to make working at home profitable and worthwhile for me.

I have plans for more systematization of my marketing efforts in 2009 and I’m going to share what I’ve been learning with you in the coming months.

To be sure you don’t miss anything, you may want to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed (see the large RSS icon at the top-right of every page) or subscribe to the postings via email by filling in the form at the top of the right column of every page, right below my photo.

I’ll do my best to make it worth your while.

Despite the world-wide economic problems, it is still worth promoting quality products – whether they are your own or via affiliate links – and earning from every sale.

Everything moves in cycles. The economic situation will improve in time, and those who put in the work now will be in a good place when confidence rises and people start spending more in the future.

It’s okay to take some time off, now and then, but it’s not okay to quit.

I’ve just been taking some time off, and now it’s time to go back to work.

Act on your dream!

JD

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Happy Thanksgiving!

November 27, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 3 Comments
Filed under: Friends and Family, Musings 

I want to wish a very Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends around the world, even if you live in a country that doesn’t celebrate today as a holiday.

Today, I’m thankful for a loving family, great friends, and hot chocolate on a cold morning.

I’m also thankful for all the friends I’ve met online who live on widely separated continents. Most of you, I’ll never meet in person, but some of you have become very good friends.

Yesterday, I spent a very enjoyable day with my family and friends. Today, I’ll spend more time with family. I made sure to hug everyone, some more than once.

I’ll get back to business next week. Today is a day to celebrate being grateful for all the things I’ve received, the great friends I’ve met, and the joy of a loving family.

I hope you have a wonderful day, too.

All the best,

JD

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In Memory of Mattie Lee Dilbeck

November 25, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 36 Comments
Filed under: Friends and Family, John Dilbeck, Musings 

Today, instead of affiliate marketing, I’m going to talk about Mattie Lee Dilbeck, my Mom.


In memory of Mattie Lee Dilbeck

Mom died on Friday evening, November 21, 2008, and it was a difficult day for several reasons.

Before I talk about her death, I want to talk about her life.

I am one generation from the farm. Mom and Dad both grew up on farms and worked very hard when they were young, and that’s something that probably made them stronger when they were old.

I don’t know how many stories I’ve heard about plowing fields behind horses and mules under the hot summer sun or picking crops when their fingers were so cold they could hardly move early in the fall mornings.

My Mom was the oldest in her family and Dad was the youngest in his.

Mom and her younger brother, Floyd, used to work together to plow the fields when they were young because it took both of them to manage a plow. Mom collected arrowheads they found in the fields and I still have a few of them, now.

Mom was born on November 6, 1920, and was a child of the Great Depression. As a result, she recycled and reused everything. She was a master at getting full use out of something and discarded it only when it was completely used up.

She was a master at getting the full value of coupons and spent years clipping and passing them around to her friends and relatives, easily saving several hundred dollars per month in foods and household goods, which was a useful skill when money is tight, and it has always been tight in our family.

Mom had to drop out of school before finishing high school to help on the farm. It was only when she was in her mid-20s that she learned of the Berry school in Rome, Georgia. Even though she was about ten years older than her schoolmates, she went back to high school at Berry Academy.

For the next few years, she worked her way through the school and one of the things she loved was baking for her fellow students.

While there, she saw Henry Ford when he visited the school and – if memory serves – she made a short speech for him and his friends.

When she graduated, she was Valedictorian of her class and this was a great accomplishment for her and is something she valued her whole life.

After Berry, she moved to Chattanooga and started studying nursing at Erlanger Hospital.

In those days, nursing students could not be married (for whatever strange reason) and she was less than a year from graduating when she met Bill Dilbeck. Mom’s sister Geneva told me that it was a love that could not be denied.

Mom was an honest person her entire life. She told the truth, even when it was inconvenient. Some of her classmates told her to get married and just lie about it. That was what a few of them had already done. Mom would not do that. She quit nursing school and was married in December 1950.

Mom and Dad moved to the Atlanta area. My grandmother, Cornelia Godfrey, was sick and I think Mom helped care for her. My memory is vague about some of this.

Cornelia died shortly before I was born, so I never knew her. I’ve been told that I missed a very good person.

I was born in 1952 and my brother, David, in 1957.

While going through Mom’s papers yesterday, I found a two page receipt for the hospital stay and services when I was born at Georgia Baptist Hospital. For delivery, doctor’s fees, anesthesiologist, surgical, miscellaneous, and a room for three days, the grand total for my birth was $74.20, paid in cash on July 4, 1952, when they brought me home.

Dad wanted to call me Firecracker, but Mom put a stop to that. It’s a shame, because I like being called Firecracker.

I won’t go into a lot of detail. The highpoints…

David was born in December 1957. I don’t know what he cost.

We moved to Vero Beach, Florida in 1960, because of Dad’s arthritis. He worked hard managing several thousand acres of citrus crops during the early 60s.

We were close enough to Cape Canaveral that we could watch the rockets of the space program launch on TV and then rush outside to see them streak upwards into the sky. When the first Saturn V launched, we were amazed to be able to read “USA” on the rocket from about 70 miles away without even using binoculars.

After going through a hurricane in 1965, Dad decided that was going to be his first, and last, experience with those storms and we moved back to the Atlanta, Georgia, area.

Dad was hired back at his old job at Mullins Brothers Paving Contractors in East Point when we happened to run into his old boss in a restaurant while looking for a place to live. Dad never even had to look for a job. How’s that for a sign?

They bought a house in southern Fulton County and Dad worked at Mullins Brothers until he retired in the early 1970s. Mom worked as a power machine operator at several factories and worked even harder raising a couple of cantankerous sons.

Dad had been raised in eastern Tennessee and Mom in north Georgia. When he retired, they split the difference and bought a house – the one I’m in this morning – in Murphy, NC. That way, they’d be able to visit both branches of the family fairly easily.

Dad was about seven years older than Mom, so she had to work when they got here. She worked as a power machine operator for several years and then was hired on the Older Americans project by the USDA, where she worked in a tree orchard for several years.

By this time, I had moved to Murphy to help them out because Dad’s health had started to decline. Even so, he could outwork me any time he wanted. I taught computer programming at the local community college.

When Mom retired, she signed up for college, because it had always bothered her that she never was able to finish college and dropping out of nursing school had been one of the big disappointments of her life. A couple of years later, Mom graduated with an Associates degree in Business Administration, and then she retired.

Life went pretty well for both of them for the next few years.

In the summer of 1991, just a few days after going to watch the Independence Day fireworks, Dad died in his favorite chair of a massive heart attack. One minute, he was getting ready to go work in the garden and the next minute he was gone.

For the next 17 years, Mom continued to live here. She was an active gardener and loved flowers and herbs. She could tell you more than I ever wanted to know about any flower or plant in her garden and around the property.

Mom spent over 30 years studying our family history and easily knew more about the Godfreys and Dilbecks (our direct branches, at least) than anyone else on the planet. Much of this research was done before the Internet, and it required writing many letters and visiting many places to find the information she needed. I’ve put a small portion of what she learned on my Genealogy page or Genealogy Overview page.

I have boxes of records – mostly hand-written – that Mom collected during her genealogy research and we’re lucky that she compiled a good bit of it into a couple of books that she had printed for our family. Several of us have copies of those books.

We lost a great family historian when Mom declined to the point she could no longer do the genealogy research she loved so much.

Mom was always learning something. She has dozens of books about birds (she loved hummingbirds), flowers, gardening, cooking, and many topics related to her religion.

Mom was friendly and could talk to anyone.

She was a loving parent, loyal friend, devout Christian, and would do anything she could to help someone in need.

Mom was always scrupulously honest, even when it was not convenient for her.

She taught me how to read several years before I entered first grade and encouraged my education throughout my life.

In 2001, on Halloween, she started bleeding and couldn’t get it to stop. I took her to the emergency room. A few days later, on her birthday, she was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Weeks of radiation and chemo preceded surgery in Asheville, NC. What was expected to be a stay of a few days turned into over six weeks in two hospitals. The cancer surgery was successful, but she suffered nerve damage that left her in constant pain, and unable to walk or care for herself.

They wanted to put her in a nursing home in Asheville, but after talking it over with Mom, I said, “No.”

My daughter and I brought Mom home and I cared for her – where she wanted to be – until August 2008. It was a lot of work, but I would make the same choice today. She helped me when I needed it, and I have been happy to return the favor when she needed my help.

In August, her health suddenly declined and she had to be hospitalized. A week later she was moved to the nursing home attached to the hospital. Her health continued to decline and she found it harder to communicate as the weeks went by.

The last couple of weeks were frustrating. She was losing weight and strength. After her birthday, it was difficult to communicate with her. It seemed that she understood what she was hearing, but could not complete a sentence.

On Thursday, November 20, 2008, I started running a fever and throwing up. All the yucky side-effects of getting sick. I was planning to visit her Friday afternoon, but was sick enough I had to call the nursing home and ask them to tell her I would not be able to make it.

Late Friday afternoon, Mom’s doctor called and told me that Mom’s systems were failing and he didn’t think she’d live longer than a day, if that.

I called my brother, daughter, and ex-wife and told them. David would not be able to get there before Saturday morning, but Dena (my daughter) and Kathy (my ex-wife) went to the nursing home to be with her. Of course, I was too sick and they would not have let me in, anyway.

Dena called later Friday evening and said Mom was asking about me. She held the phone to Mom’s ear and I was able to tell her I love her and told her that everything would be alright.

Later I learned that David and my cousin Jacque also had a chance to talk to her.

Unfortunately, we could not understand what Mom was trying to say, but Dena said she smiled when listening to us, and we can only hope she understood what we told her.

I fell back asleep.

Sometime Friday evening, November 21, 2008, I’m still not exactly sure what time, Kathy called and told me that Mom had died.

It has been a very sad weekend and I’m sure today and tomorrow will be sad, too. Mom’s funeral will be this evening, and we’ll go down to Coal Mountain, Georgia, tomorrow to bury her with Dad and her family.

She’s better off than she was. She has always been an active, friendly, and talkative person, but it was very difficult to understand what she was trying to say the last 10 days, or so. Most visits consisted of talking to her, helping her sip some Sprite or juice, and holding her hand. Now and then, I could understand what she was trying to say, but it was getting more difficult.

I posted some photos of Mom on my Facebook account yesterday so Dena could try to make a CD that we can show at the viewing. We don’t have many photos of Mom, and I lost many when a harddisk crashed a couple of years ago. But we do have a few.

This should be the link to the public gallery, if you are interested:

Mattie Lee Dilbeck Photo Album

One of my favorite photos of Mom should be visible at:

Mattie Lee Dilbeck – this is the same photo that is shown at the top of this post.

There is much more that could be said about Mom, but I’m going to stop here. I’m still feeling bad and I think I’m going back to sleep for awhile.

Some of the details here may not be entirely accurate. My memory is not completely reliable on some of these details, and I’m still really foggy about what has happened over the last weekend. At least I’ll be well enough to attend her funeral and burial.

I’ll be getting back to work later this week, but the next few days will be family time.

Townson-Rose Funeral Home created a memorial page for Mattie Lee Dilbeck, should you wish to visit it.

In lieu of flowers or gifts, try to help someone or a family who is hungry this holiday season.

All the best,

JD

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The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination

August 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Comments Off
Filed under: Act On Your Dream!, Friends and Family, Success and Failure 

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, recently delivered her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.

I was told about this speech by one of my friends on the members-only SiteSell forums for Site Build It! subscribers. Thanks, Colin.

If I hadn’t heard about her speech there, I might have missed it and that would have been a real shame.

In reading her speech, I was surprised by how little she referred to Harry Potter, even though writing her novels took her to dizzying heights of success.

Instead, she talks about the liberation of total failure and the importance of imagining new futures and different pasts.

In talking about failure, part of what she emphasized was:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I have experienced this level of failure a couple of times in my life. It isn’t fun, but it can be educational and liberating. Depending upon how you react to it, these experiences can put steel in your resolve and be a foundation upon which you can build your future success.

It reminds me of the lines Kris Kristofferson wrote in “Bobby McGee” when he said, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Once you’ve lost everything – materially, that is – you aren’t encumbered by the things you want to believe about yourself, because many of them fall away as you lose houses, cars, credit ratings, and other things we associate with material affluence.

Other parts of the experience can be harder, or they can be liberating. For example, to one person, losing a spouse can be something that will hurt for decades. To another, it can be a difficult, but liberating, experience that will make it easier to build a better life, move in a different direction, and grow more as a person.

This level of failure is truly difficult and poverty is not something I would wish on anyone.

However, it can be life-changing, if you take the steps to do what you truly want to do. Like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, you can rise to new levels of success, understanding, and personal fulfillment that you would never have achieved, otherwise.

Is it easy?

No.

Can you do it?

Yes.

As she progressed with her speech, Ms. Rowling says this about imagination:

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Here is where the speech took a turn that really surprised me.

I was sure she was going to emphasize the imagination that enabled her to write all the Harry Potter stories, but she went in a very different direction.

Instead, she talked about her earliest exeriences when working with Amnesty International and all the suffering that had been experienced by people who had been tortured and killed and the uncertainty, pain, and worry experienced by their family and friends.

I have to tell you, this is totally outside my own experiences, but after reading what she wrote, I have found more empathy for the people who have experienced these horrors.

Compared to them, even in my deepest failures and during the darkest days of my life, I have had it easy and safe.

Ms. Rowling continued and said:

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Imagination is a powerful thing.

It is the basis for all future inventions.

By imagining, we can achieve things undreamed of by others.

Napoleon Hill said, in Think and Grow Rich:

Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

This is the power that we have to create new worlds and change the horrors we have inherited from those who preceded us.

We can write novels that inspire millions to read more.

We can develop better products and services to solve problems and offer opportunities to people around the world.

Or, when used negatively, we can imagine worse things that we can do to make the lives of our fellow earthlings even more miserable.

The choice is up to us.

The choice is up to you.

Or, if you prefer, you can choose not to use your power of imagination. You can continue to lead the life you’re living and not imagine the great future you can live if you pursue your dreams and follow your passions.

Again, the choice is yours.

Ms. Rowling closes her speech by talking about her friends. These are the people that offer support and help in times of need and share joy in times of abundance.

Even when I lost everything, I still had my friends and family.

True friends can be even more important than your family, because you may have closer bonds and more in common with them.

You don’t need a lot of friends, but I hope you have a few really close friends with whom you share your life. These friends are treasures worth far more than the rarest metals or the prettiest sparkly rocks.

Share your life with your friends and family. Help each other live to your fullest potential.

Thank you, Ms. Rowling, for an outstanding speech and I’m happy I was able to read it. (If you have broadband, you can watch the video.)

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

Now, it’s up to you.

You have the power to change the world.

Act on your dream!

JD

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