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Facebook outage: Can we live without social media?

Yesterday when Facebook and its family of apps had an outrage that lasted for five hours, I didn’t know about it until it was around the time that Facebook and the other apps were restored. Why? Because I was busy living my life. The situation made me think back to the time of my life before Facebook was a thing.

What did I do before I joined Facebook? While I’ve had several part-time jobs during my marriage to Ray, I’ve mostly been a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. Below is a funny pic of Leah, Ray, and Heather when we went to Dunn’s Cider Mill for cider doughtnuts and for Heather to take Leah’s homeschooling senior pics with a good camera. That was fun!

At the cider mill with Leah, Ray, and Heather

At the cider mill with Leah, Ray, and Heather

Most of my days pre-Facebookwere spent teaching my daughters, cleaning the house (I used to be quite obsessive about this and Ray would complain that I bought more cleaning supplies than food), running errands, grocery shopping, reading, and journaling. 

Ray and I with our 3 beautiful daughters, Heather, Leah, & Eden

Ray and I with our 3 beautiful daughters, Heather, Leah, & Eden

The reason I even got online on the internet was because Ray encouraged me to get a website to sell my books and to promote myself as a speaker to get paid speaking gigs. In fact, most of my book sales and my bookings as a speaker have come by word of mouth and from Facebook. 

Beth Jones speaking

Beth Jones speaking

Later, I wanted to join Facebook to keep tabs on our 3 grown daughters and see what they’re up to! Now they’re hardly on there at all. Why? Because they are busy living THEIR lives! (I now resort to texting or calling them to see what they’re doing and have lunch or coffee with them, at least once every couple of weeks.)

Our granddaughters Violet & Annabelle at the Louisburg Cider Mill eating cider doughnuts and drinking apple cider

Our granddaughters Violet & Annabelle at the Louisburg Cider Mill eating cider doughnuts and drinking apple cider

Some younger people aren’t using Facebook at all. Millenials and Gen Zers are getting off Facebook and they’re going other places like Instagram and Snapchat. They’re doing this because of an influx of older people on there, competition from more mobile and visual-friendly platforms like Instagram, and Facebook’s privacy scandals. I know that our granddaughters Annabelle and Violet use Snapchat instead of Facebook. 

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Blog, Books, Ebooks, Faith, Spiritual Gifts, Writing

3 tips for book/eBook covers to draw more readers. And revealing my new fiction book’s cover!

On today’s Facebook Live video, I accidentally cut it off at the end. So I re-recorded the video, 3 Tips for book/eBook covers to draw more readers. And I revealed the cover of my new fiction book and its title that I’m working on right now!

You can watch the video which I recorded on Zoom and uploaded to YouTube here at the link below:

https://youtu.be/aBAYuWCSAn8

How the idea for the book came about

One day in my business coach Diane Cunningham Ellis’ Inspired Business Academy (IBA) training class, she mentioned the video game Tetris. Believe it or not, I’d never heard of it before or played it. It is a video game created by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984 for the Electronika 60 computer. 

Tetris game. Image source: Unsplash. Hello I'm Nik.

Tetris game. Image source: Unsplash. Hello I’m Nik.

When Diane explained its concept, I immediately thought, “That is a new book idea!”

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Blog, Faith, prayer

We need hope

The death toll has now risen to 9 dead, and the people of the USA and even the world are anxiously waiting news for a miracle of survivors from the tragic Champlain Towers condominium collapse in Miami, Florida. Survivors and their family members of the USA’s 9-11 attack grimly remember that horrifying day as they watch the news about the condo. In the midst of this new tragedy, we’re also dealing with the Coronavirus (and the Delta variant), outbreaks driving some places back under new lockdowns, and other frightening news like the  extreme heat wave across the western United States.

It seems like there is so much bad news now, which is why I rarely even read it any more. I read just enough every few days to know what is going on in the world for prayer/intercessory purposes. 

Hope

We need GOOD NEWS and HOPE.

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