The One Where I Screwed Up

So, I haven't posted in a couple of days.  Nothing really new about that.  I know you all are painfully aware of how sporadic my posts can be.  But in this instance I had an excuse other than being lazy. 

I received an email from Blogger at the beginning of this week. It scared me, and made me re-evaluate everything about my blog.  I was probably on the way to doing this anyway, but this gave me the extra shove.  Before I tell you what happened, let me say a few things first.  I have never, nor will I ever put ads on my blog...so my blog is totally not for profit by me or anyone else.  I'm not trying to make money off my blog or any of it's contents, nor will I ever do that with this blog.

Apparently I copy infringed on someone by using one of their pictures in my blog.  Blogger took down the post and I got the reprimand (please spare me lectures.  I know what I did was stupid.  Believe me when I say that you could never be harder on me than I am on myself.  If you feel the need to lecture, fine, but I will be deleting your comment if you do).  Back in April when I was participating in the A to Z Blog Challenge, I used a picture I found of the painted desert in one of my posts.  I NEVER implied that the picture was my own or tried to make money off it in any way.  I also gave photo credit to the website where I found the picture, which I naively thought would protect me from this.  I had seen it done on other blogs so I just followed their lead.  I'm pretty sure my mother warned me about doing this when I was little.  You know, "If everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?".  Apparently Mom, I would.  So here is forewarning about following the crowd...don't do it.  I'm pretty sure you are all smart enough to know this though.

Anyway,  I have taken down all the posts that included pictures "borrowed" from the Internet.  Spending time in court defending myself against copyright infringement is not my idea of a good time.  I'm weird like that.  It really hurt to remove the posts, but I only have myself to blame.  I feel stupid and embarrassed.  So, lesson learned...I will not be doing that again.  Kind of puts a damper on my Arizona Almanac posts though.  I'm not a world traveler...not even a state traveler...not even a little bit.  And I'm not much of a photographer either, so that's going to limit what I'll be writing about.  Unless you'd like a tour of my back yard, which is in Arizona.  I could pass it off as Arizona wilderness, if you saw it, you'd understand...it hasn't seen a mower since softball season started.  I digress...

I've been thinking a lot lately about this blog and what I want it to be.  I read tons of other blogs.  I have a good amount of blog envy.  I try not to, but it's what I'm best at.  Comparing myself to other people, and not in a "I'm better than you" way, but a "I can never be that good" kind of way.  Which I tell my kids not to do all the time.  Practice what you preach...another lesson my mother tried to teach me.  Apparently I'm not a very good student.  So, I started really paying attention to the blogs I absolutely love and one thing became clear.  Every single one of them writes about their everyday life.  They write conversationally, which is how I like to think I write.  They write about the things they love.  Their family, their hobbies, their husband/wife/significant other...all the things that make up who they are.  And they are darned interesting.  See, I always feel that if I write about my life...who would want to read that?  I'm certainly not that interesting.  But what I realized was that I'm no different than most of those people who's blogs I read.  Well, most of them are thin, and most of them have young kids...but other than that...we are pretty much the same.  And I find their blogs amusing, entertaining and sometimes informative.  I feel like they are my friends.  And I think I feel that way because they just share who they are.  With no pretension...they are just real people writing about what really happens to them.  So that's what I've decided to do. 

I'm just going to write about my life.  Those of you who know me know that I am honest about all aspects of myself.  I have no desire to portray something I'm not.  So, you will probably get lots of posts about crocheting because that's really what I'm obsessed with right now.  I'll try to mix it up a little, but if it's heavy on the crochet...I apologize up front for that.  I'll probably talk about my kids some..sorry kids but it's for the good of the blog...you'll just have to live with it.  I will certainly be talking a lot about my husband because being that he is the King of Procrastination...well, he's full of good material.  I'll probably write about the cat.  The weird cat.  Sheesh she's weird.  But I'll save that for another time.  So, I'll just be writing about me and what I'm doing from now on.  The blog is called The Gerri Chronicles after all.  I guess I should be writing about Gerri.  I might throw in an interesting tidbit about Arizona here and there...but there will be no pictures unless I took them....so don't hold your breath :)

That's it.  Thanks for reading and thanks for sticking with me.  I'll be doing lots of crocheting this weekend so I should have lots to share in the future ;)  Hope everyone has a terrific weekend!