Daily Thoughts

I’m a little TOO honest sometimes. I tend to just say (or type) what’s on my mind, without cranking up my moral editor first. Honesty is a good thing, when tempered with kindness, but there’s the rub. Most of the time, when we’re being brutally honest, we’re also angry or hurt. It’s very difficult to not be cruel when we’re hurting and want to strike back.

It seems that in my life, I’ve sometimes taken subtle cruelty to an art form.

I learned under the unwitting tutelage of my mother (God rest her soul), who, while being the woman I loved most in the world, many times took a perverse pleasure in hurting other people. She was not bold enough to just say things to people’s faces, though. She would stand aside, just within earshot, and talk in a loud voice, saying the most horrific, hurtful things. Or she would resort to veiled criticism, which sometimes was the worst.

An example of her cruelty was what she did to my sisters and me. For all of our lives, she took pleasure in playing us one against the other, making us each hate the other for no reason other than what she led us to believe. It changed us. It somehow turned us into what she thought we were. I was the “crazy” one (I was actually the most sane, but nevermind that), my older sister was the stupid one (she had more common and money sense than any of us), and my oldest sister was the responsible one (I don’t even want to go there).

The saddest part of all of this is that while my other two sisters hated me, I didn’t hate them. In fact, all I ever wanted was for them to love me, and I spent 40 years of my life trying to achieve that before finally giving up. It was too late by then. The roles were set, the lines were drawn, and the rift between us would never be crossed.

My mother recently died. Her legacy will be that my sister and I, the only remaining living siblings, will never speak to each other again. The wounds cannot be healed anymore. There are too many, and they are too deep. We both know that this was done to us, but now, it’s embedded too deep in our psyches to ever be healed. When my mother died, I became an orphan.

But like I’ve always said, sometimes good comes out of the worst situations. My mother’s family — my aunt and her children — rallied around me and gave me an anchor, just when I needed one the most. My sister would say they are not worth having as relatives, because she thinks my aunt and her children are trash, and has said so on many occasions. So like I used to say to my son when he didn’t like something I was serving for dinner, “Good, more for me!”

Love isn’t something you can just dole out when you want to gain something from it. Unfortunately, my sister doesn’t seem to be able to learn that. At 68, she still blames everything in her life on the fact that I was born, and that she didn’t get to go to college right out of high school. It’s sad, really. For someone so intelligent, she is truly ignorant of the realities of life.

And the saddest part is that we can all see what she can’t — that she is EXACTLY like my mother.

I was going to give up this blog, because I was depressed about someone who was trying very hard to make my life miserable. Then I found out that this person is twice as miserable as I am, and I decided to do something else.

Today is going to my first positivity day. I’m tired of being down, and depressed (a physical condition, but I’m fighting it), and negative. I’m going to be positive from now on, and try to turn every day into rainbows and sunshine.

Yes, I know that’s impossible. I know some days I’ll get angry and depressed, but if I can carry one positive thing away from that, I’ll be happy with that day.

The first thing I’m going to do is to say to anyone I’ve had problems with in the past, I’m sorry. I fully accept my part in any problems that we may have had, and I am releasing all of that right now. For my part, you will see no more clinging to past hurts. Yesterday is gone, and there is nothing we can do about it. We may never be friends, but at least we can have a truce, a cease fire if you will.

I’m a creative person. Every day, I’m going to create something, be it a craft project, a writing, a garden spot, anything positive and creative. You can only change the world by creating, not by tearing down.

Don’t get me wrong, I will continue to fight injustice, such as the Google issue. I am sick and tired of corporate greed, and I see my struggles, and my triumph over those struggles, as something positive. Perhaps I can show those with similar problems that they, too, can fight the giants and win.

I struggle daily with financial issues, self-esteem issues, depression issues, and plain out old laziness. My life is just barely liveable. I intend to change that. I’m the only one who can. I’ve been sitting around like Rapunzel waiting for a prince to come and rescue me from my self-built prison tower. Today, I’ll leave the tower and see what good I can do in the world.

If each of us honestly tries to just do one creative, helpful, or positive thing a day, we can change the world. There are more of us than them. Just look at what happened after 9/11. Over 3,000 people died, but millions of people rose to the occasion and brought this country back from the brink of destruction.

Our country is in trouble, no doubt. It’s in trouble because of the greed and avarice of a few very powerful people. Believe me, these demons are laughing all the way to their private planes as they leave our government. Their main goal was to rape the economy and get out. So here we are, some of us, like me, in a real financial crisis. This country has seen worse. We have come back from worse. We can come back from this.

But we can’t come back by expecting the government to bail us out. We can only do it by taking positive steps in our own lives. Start today. Let this be your positivity day as well.

I love little boys. I had a couple of my own. They are so sweet, and cuddly, and try so hard not to be.

My neighbor’s 3 year old g-grandson stays with her on weekends. This week, he’s there three days because the day care is closed. This morning, he was in a ” no” mood. He cried because he didn’t want to go outside, but once he got out there, he laughed and ran and had a great time.

It’s so much fun to watch him. He loves hiding under trees. He’ll walk along the sideewalk, going into every yard that has a tree with hanging branches, and just put his face into it. He especially loves the palm fronds.

It’s been so long since I looked at the world with wonder. You can get pretty jaded by the time you’re my age, after all the trials and tribulations you have to go through. But when you feel that way, you should spend some time around small children. They’ll let you see again what is wondrous in the world.

I love the words to this Lee Ann Womack song:

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand by the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you’ll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance.
I hope you dance

Got this email today:

Hello,

We understand you are concerned about the earnings from your AdSense
account. When we reinstated your account under the log in
xxxxxxxxxxxxx, we also applied a credit of $x.xx to your earnings
for this month, reflecting your valid earnings prior to the account
disabling. Additionally, $xxx.xx has been credited to your account for the
check that was issued to you earlier. You’ll be able to see your finalized
earnings for this month when they’re posted to your account’s Payment
History page during the first week of next month.

We appreciate your patience, and apologize for any inconvenience. If you
have any questions, please visit our Help Center at
http://www.google.com/adsense/support, or contact us at
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

O.K., so this still does not tell me WHEN I will be getting said check. I want it now, and intend to make it very clear to them that I expect it ASAP. I did reply asking if I could expect the check next month, but thinking about that, that’s not soon enough. I want it express delivered to me next week. I’ve suffered enough.

I’m still moving my stuff off of Google. I’m still not using Adsense anymore. My love affair with Google is done.

Today I was notified that Google had reinstated my adsense account. When I went to check my account, I found that they had, in fact, stopped payment on the check.

I don’t intend to line their pockets with anymore adsense activity until I receive full payment from them. This is the letter I wrote to them today:

I really must insist that you reissue the check you stopped payment on. If I was vindicated through your own investigation, then there was no reason to deny me legitimately earned payments. Having this check bounce caused me to have to pay an $8 overdraft fee, which I must also insist that you repay to me. I know you will say that I should have read your terms of use, but I’m not in agreement with not paying someone who has worked faithfully for you for 14 months, with no problems, and then because of someone else’s actions, has lost every penny she worked for before.

Like I said in a previous correspondence, I will pursue this as a labor issue. I have no problem spending my time on this. It’s a matter of principal, and when I consider the thousands of people you have done this to, and the millions of legitimately earned dollars you have denied adsense publishers by these methods that are questionable if not illegal, I will, as I said earlier, pursue this to the ends of the earth.

I will expect to see a check for the full amount owed me, including the $8 overdraft fee, within the next few days.

Sincerely,
Deborah Aldridge

So we shall now see what Google will do. I wanted to be vindicated, but I don’t know if I will ever feature adsense on my blogs again. This whole incident has left a nasty taste in my mouth where Google is concerned. I’ve already started looking for other places to house my blogs, and will probably be closing all but one of my Gmail accounts as well.

In a country where corporate greed runs rampant, Google was one of the good guys, but evidently, that has changed. You know the old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Like the Who sang so many years ago, “Won’t get fooled again!”

Awesome video, obviously made before the election, but still awesome.

I have lupus. That means I frequently have a condition known as “brain fog”, which is exactly what the name implies.

I’ve been trying all day to think. Not think of anything in particular, just think at all. I had a plan to write a certain number of articles today, and that didn’t happen, because I couldn’t think.

Thinking is a necessity for a writer. A writer’s block is one thing, while brain fog is quite another. I know what I want to write, and the research is done, I just can’t put the thoughts together in my mind and get them down on the screen.

Well, I did get four articles done today, and a draft in the works, so I’ll just have to work harder tomorrow.

If my brain decides to work.

You were supposed to be our safeguard in Congress. You were supposed to be there to guarantee that Obama and his crooked cronies didn’t slam their agenda through the Senate, and onto the taxpayers. Why would you accept the Secretary of State post?

I remember reading that someone threatened you about getting behind Obama or your career in politics in New York was over. I remember watching you at the convention, and even though the words were strong, there was a look in your eyes that couldn’t be disguised….anger.

You know what they’re saying, that this is “keep your friends close, keep your enemies under your thumb.” Why would you let yourself be put under anyone’s thumb, Hillary, why?

And what in the world possessed Bill to let the White House approve all his speeches? OMG! That is just ludicrous, for an upstart President to want to edit an ex-President’s speeches!

I will never understand this, Hillary, as long as I live — unless…

Are you doing this to destroy him once and for all? If he fails at foreign policy, will you run in four years? That would be great, but I don’t see how you could do that. Of course, if Colin Powell is any precedent, you could try your best, quit, write your memoirs, and wait until 2012 to slam his ass to the wall. You and I both know that if Colin Powell had been the nominee instead of John McCain, no Democrat would have had a chance. It could be the same for you, you know.

So go, do your best, but don’t forget, you belong in the east wing, not the west wing.

This story makes me so sad, I can hardly type. A 19-year-old took a handful of pills on a live video feed, and no one who was watching did anything to try to save him until it was too late.

It seems he was egged on to do this by others on the live station, and a group of body builders. I sincerely hope that these people who encouraged this are prosecuted for manslaughter and put into prison, where they can be treated like they deserve. I also hope the parents of this child sue the **** out of them!

If anything is to be learned from this, I hope that the people who were watching it and did nothing learn that you should NEVER take a suicide threat lightly. If you think someone is serious, TELL SOMEONE, tell a parent, tell the police, ANYONE. If it’s online, and you call 911, they can get to the feed and find out where it’s coming from very quickly and get that person some help.

I think this child was just trying to get attention. He wouldn’t have done it on live t.v. if he thought everyone would just sit watching and let him die. He wanted to be saved, and nobody did. It just totally breaks my heart.

I remember being 19. I had my first serious boyfriend then, and I remember wanting to die when we broke up. If I had, I would not have met my husband or had my son two years later. When that relationship died, again, I wanted to die. But I didn’t, because someone talked me into going back to school instead. There I met my next husband and had my second son.

When my second husband died, I wanted to die too. My children were the only thing that kept me going, and they are what keeps me going to this day when things are really bad, as they are now.

There will always be bright days and dark days in your life. Nothing is forever…except death. Death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

There is so much more to life than what you are feeling when you are a teenager. When you are young, everything feels like the end of the world, but believe me, it isn’t. Maybe the end of that part of your world, but there are bigger and better things awaiting you.

I grew up in an alcoholic, abusive household. I was poor. I was depressed, and nobody saw it. One counselor at my school called me in and asked me if everything was o.k. at home, and I lied, said it was, because I was ashamed. He didn’t pursue it. I wish he had. Don’t be ashamed. Be smart. Talk to people who are trying to help. If I had, I would be in a better place today, and so can you.

Don’t be ashamed or afraid. If you are depressed or thinking of suicide right now, as you read this, call the National Suicide Prevention hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). It’s open 24 hours a day, and has someone standing by, ready to help.

And if you think that nobody loves you, think again. You will be breaking someone’s heart, making someone feel guilty for the rest of their lives, and most likely, it won’t be the person you want it to be. It will be the one person you never wanted to hurt.

My internet life pretty much revolves around Google. I use so many Google services that to change them all now would literally take longer than it took me to start them all.

Everyone who reads this blog knows about my recent Google woes. If you don’t, the relevant posts are listed on the bottom of this post. To summarize, I’ve been through attacks by pornographers that led to the disabling of my account, several correspondences back and forth with Google to try to get reinstated, having the owner of Hubpages get involved on behalf of several other Hubbers who were disabled for the same problem (which originated at Hubpages) and now a bounced adsense check.

Today, I once again wrote to Google, and I will write to them and to anyone else I have to until this is resolved. To some, it’s only $100. To me, it’s a matter of broken trust.

This is the letter I sent to Google today.

Hello again,

The situation has gotten worse, because now the check you sent me has bounced. This money was earned legitimately, before the illegal activity on my account by the pornographers. All invalid clicks up to the this money was earned was reported to you and dealt with by you. It took me 14 months to earn that $101.59, and the problem did not start until a couple of months ago, so there is no need for you to have stopped payment on my check.

I cannot let this go. I have this thing about fairness, and this isn’t fair at all. To take legitimately earned click money away from me due to some sick person attacking me and taking down my adsense account is just not right. I need that money. You don’t. This is akin to working for someone for 14 months, unpaid, then getting fired for a rules infraction and having them tell you that they are not paying for the previous 14 months because you broke a rule.

This has now become a labor issue. Please do not make me pursue it as such. I am an activist. I am a fighter. I will take this to the limit. Please don’t make me do this. Please just let me give you my banking information and wire transfer the money into my account, and I swear, I will never darken your door again.

I loved and trusted Google. I beta tested Google Pages. I was one of the first people to have Gmail. I have several Blogger Blogs. I use Google Docs on a regular basis. I use Google Analytics and Google Alerts. I even read my RSS on Google Reader. I was thrilled to be accepted into adsense. I had fully intended to be an adwords customer when I could afford it. Being a part of Google was like a dream to me. Now my dream has turned into a nightmare. I’m crying as I write this. I cannot believe you are doing this to me.

Please make this right.

Deborah Aldridge, an ex-Google faithful.

It’s going to be interesting to see what Google does about this. If I can fight them and win, it will be a moral victory, but a very hollow one, because they have lost my trust and allegiance.

I’m now looking for somewhere else to house my blogs, which breaks my heart, because I spent many hours making unique templates for them. I would leave them where they are, but I’m afraid that Google will delete them for no reason at all, and I’ll be left with nothing. The best I can probably do is to move them all to Wordpress until I can afford outside hosting, and learn enough about the Wordpress program to put them up there.

I don’t want my adsense back. I just want my $100 and to be done with Google. They frighten me now.

Related Posts

The Dreaded “Adsense Disabled” Notice: Why Is Google Punishing the Victims?

Google: The Worst Possible Model for Customer Service

I used to love all things Google. I had one of the first gmail accounts, and now have several. I was a beta tester for Google Pages. I have several Blogger blogs. I had adsense on all of my blogs, plus my hubs on Hubpages.

I was a happy camper. Until now — and it seems I’m not the only one.

Google has become one of the worst companies in the United States to do business with. Yes, it shows up on the Forbes “Best 100 Places to Work” every year, either #1 or #2, but that’s only half the story.

If Forbes had a “Best 100 Places to do Business With” category, Google would not be on that list. Customer satisfaction with Google is plummeting, and they seem not to care, and not in a great hurry to do anything except make it worse.

Google Adsense is a disaster. The program was wonderful at first, providing a meager income to millions of bloggers and webmasters, and a very good income to some. Then people started abusing adsense, Google AdWords customers started balking, and afraid of losing its paying customers, Google took measures to stop this. Unfortunately, when they couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys (or just didn’t want to spend the resources to do so), they resorted to the wholesale disabling of adsense accounts of perfectly innocent people. The appeals process is a joke. Maybe one out of every 1,000,000 accounts disabled ever gets reinstated.

Then the adsense checks started bouncing. Not surprisingly, Google denies that there is no money in the account, and places the blame squarely on the banks. They say that the tellers don’t know how to handle the checks. The fact is, that their checks are so easy to replicate, that there are fraudulent Google checks floating around all over, and banks don’t want to accept them. Google says it is “looking into the problem” with the checks. They have been looking into it for years, with no resolution.

Now it’s happened to me. My Google check bounced, putting me in a real financial bind, since I only had $40 in the bank to begin with. It put me into overdraft, costing me fees, which will probably amount to more fees before it is over. I’m out of work. Heaven knows when I will be able to deposit that money into the account. In the meantime, a debit of less than $3 is going to bounce, costing me even more.

I am not happy with Google anyway, since they closed my account without good cause. I tried to send them a message through their contact form, but you have to have the date of issue of the check and the check number, which they suggest you get from your account. Therein lies the problem. I can’t get into my account!

So I contacted them through another contact form, then found an address I could email them directly, and did that. I don’t plan to hear from them anytime soon. It’s been weeks since they got the appeal for the disabling of my account, during which time they have also gotten calls from the owners of HubPages appealing to them to reinstate he accounts of many of their members (see link at the bottom of the page for the full story), and to date, nothing but an email saying they are considering my further information submitted to them.

Today I’m going to go to the bank and try to ascertain why they bounced the check, and what I can do from that end, but from what I’ve read online, there is probably no solution there. This takes a lot of time out of my day, that I should be spending working.

If I should find that Google did, in fact, stop payment on my check, I will go to the ends of the earth to fight them. They may think I’ll forget it, because they are so big, and I don’t have a chance, but they don’t know me. I will call or write anyone I have to, up to and including the White House. Obama promised change, right? He promised that he would not let the huge corporations treat us like crap. So I will go to him. I will take this to the airwaves, to the limit. I will get everyone who has ever been screwed by Google to join me, and we will storm the headquarters.

$100 my ass! This is about more than $100. This is about a huge, seemingly evil, corporation trampling on the rights of its customers, not only in the U.S., but all over the world.

They would do well to just to send me the money and be done with it.

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