Stories

Are You A Single Mumtrepreneur?

Jo Caddy

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Tackling family life and running your own business can be really tough at the best of times, but if your doing it all solo, it can be like running a marathon adorned in a scuba suit from the 18th century.  I could liken it to working 3 full-time jobs. Your being full-time mum, full-time dad and full time Entrepreneur and there’s not much time for rest and relaxation, unless you count the 10 minutes of quiet time you get in the shower, when your lucky enough to get a shower.

I know how hard it is to try and run your own business when your the only adult in the house, when your responsible for everything, from the food shopping, to the bill paying, to the making of costumes for book week, to taking care of every aspect of the house and garden work, and all the little things in between, so I would like to do a special article honouring single mums in business and help them out with a little FREE promotion.



I’m looking for 10 single mumtrepreneurs to include in an article all about amazing single mums who are working hard to make a future for their families. I’ll give your business’ a shout out to help you get some more visitors to your stores/sites etc. All you need to do is:

Write a short story (max 250 words) about:

  1. Who you are
  2. How many children you have
  3. What your business is
  4. Why you started it
  5. How you started it (make sure to include any obstacles you had to overcome)

Then send it to me via the form on our T & C’s page. While your there, give the T & C’s a quick read and don’t forget to agree to them and provide in the ‘links’ box, all the links to your websites and social media accounts so we can promote them for you. I will feature the first 10 ladies to send through their stories, if there is more than 5 extra submissions, I will do a second article, just because I can!

Let’s work together to help single mums succeed in realising their dreams and making a better future for their children. That’s what the Mum Life Stories Community is all about, supporting mums in their Mum Life Journey to being all that they can be.

I haven’t forgotten about you Mumtrepreneurs with partners either, there will be another opportunity for you at a later time in another article. Be sure to sign up to our mailing list so you don’t miss out on the call out. You’ll also receive our monthly newsletter, with all the latest news, stories and promos (including writing competitions and giveaways) plus a FREE ebook exclusive to our email subscribers.

 

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Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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Hello From The Other Side

Jo Caddy

Ok so I’m going to put myself out there, risk rejection, disappointment and a blank comment box staring back at me like the canvas of a painter who has lost his muse, and say hello from the other side of this medium.

I’ve been running this blog for just over a year now, my commitment has been up and down, due to life circumstances but I’ve ramped it over over the last month, not posting every day but still, committed and consistent. I’ve gotten a lot more views, best month ever on record actually but there’s still something missing, this gaping hole that leaves me wanting.

I long to hear from my readers, my community of followers, the reason I blog. What has made you smile? What has made you cry? What has made you want to click that little x on the browser tab and check out youtube instead? Are the articles and stories entertaining and informative or do they leave you with questions unanswered?

What would you like to see more of? Less of? Just enough of?

Give me a ‘Hi’, a ‘Bye’ a ‘How ya doin?” Tell me your name (or an alias, it’s all good), where your from, how life is, your tax file number (scratch that one), what you do or what you want to do, something, anything about you that will give me a clue to who is reading what my fingers transfer from my brain to this portal (called my computer screen) to the unseen world of the wide web.

Type a letter, a word, a sentence, an essay, I don’t care, just be you, the you only you can do, and I’ll be me the only me I can be and we’ll both be poets when we didn’t know it, if your happy and you know it, clap your hands!

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If you love me, or just this blog, why not sign up to my email list. Info on writing comps coming soon, plus all the latest goss, news, stories and promos with a FREE Ebook on Time Management, exclusive to my email subscribers.

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Accomplish more IN a fraction of the time

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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THE CHOICE: A FlashFiction Story

Jo Caddy

I’m Back

There you are! Sorry that I haven’t posted in quite some time, life has been hectic and full on lately. It’s been 4.5 months now since I became a single mum again and I’ve had quite a struggle balancing out 5 children, this blog, my online store, life crisis’, sickness in the house and my social life, well…who am I kidding? I don’t have a social life, I’m a single mum of 5, haha. But that’s ok, at the moment life is wonderfully chaotic and making time for me and the things I enjoy (including this blog) is almost impossible, but it’s just a season. A time is coming where I will be passionately and vigorously writing on a daily or more likely weekly basis and filling this blog with amazing content (a little bit of confidence never hurt 😉 In all seriousness though there are some great articles in the pipeline and some inspiring stories awaiting publication and it’s just a matter of time before I will get them all up here for your reading pleasure.

Today I have an intense piece of Flash Fiction from my very own Mother Suzy Caddy, to share with you. I hope you enjoy it and please stay tuned (follow us for updates) for more stories coming very soon.

Suzy Caddy is retired and lives in Perth, Western Australia with her husband David. She is a Mother to two daughters and Grandmother to 5. When she’s not spending time helping in various church ministries, she loves to bake, write and be crafty!


The Choice

I stood there, tears running down my face. I needed this job, it was imperative I kept it. After all, my two young girls were counting on me. How would we survive without it. It was becoming harder and harder to get a good job, so much had changed. So many legal forms to sign. Oceans of politically correct hoops to jump through. Proof of this, proof of that. Where would it end.

I didn’t know what we would do. There was some money stashed away, and we all had ready bags packed, just in case. But still, I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I had hoped they wouldn’t ask me to do the one thing I could never do. Once I went down this road though there would be no going back.It was happening everywhere now and so many people were losing their jobs. Because of minority groups, things had changed dramatically. Even the people I worked with where so different from when I had started here 15 years ago. My girls weren’t that young any more at 11 and 12. Although this would test them to the limit. I hoped I had done my job properly. They were both kind and compassionate. I had warned them this day might come, and told them to be ready.Was I crazy.

How could I jeopardise everyone like this. But how could I not. I was continually being told, these are the rules now, if you want to keep your job, you must comply, but what they were asking me to do, what they were asking all of us to do, was unthinkable and I couldn’t, wouldn’t agree. It wasn’t right.I considered carefully then, what I would need. There was ample provisions in the supply room next door. I needed to hurry though. Glancing around, I slipped into the room and quickly appropriated all I could from the drawers and cabinets and threw everything in a drawstring bag. Then, heart pounding, I grabbed my mobile and made the phone call.

Next, I checked the hallway. No one. I suspected they wanted to distance themselves. Cowards. Out of sight out of mind, seemed to be how everyone avoided the moral disgrace but at least their absence made it easier for me to do what I must.Just do it and be quick I had been told. But no, never. It was beyond imagining. Carefully I approached the bench. So innocent, so pure. So unsuspecting. The syringe full of life stealing liquid sat in a metal tray next to the cot, awaiting my compliance. My tears nearly blinded me as I choked back sobs and gently gathered the tiny 34 week new born baby girl, who was very much alive, into my arms. I stared at her perfect tiny face and knew I was making the right decision. I would never comply.

Wrapping her gently and holding her tightly against my chest , I fled down the back stairs of the hospital to my car, praying they wouldn’t notice I was gone, for quite some time. My girls would be waiting at home, ready to leave for our lonely little cabin in the mountains, and the unknown.

~ Suzy Caddy

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The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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Opening a Dropshipping Store: The Real Deal.

Jo Caddy
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“Open a dropshipping store” they said. “Start selling in minutes” they said. Blog post after blog post I read, detailing the seemingly effortless steps to creating and launching an online store. I soaked up the information like a Chux paper towel, thirsty for reassurance that the investment of time and money would be worth it. There were hundreds of blog articles offering step by step instructions on how to set up shop, claiming that if you were willing to put just a little bit of effort into it, you would be up and running and making thousands in no time. To a desperate single mum of 5, this was the inticing sugary treat I was looking for. See I was determined, to find a way to make an income working from home, something that I could do on my own time schedule, around the little ones that were still at home, causing beautiful chaos every minute they are awake. I was motivated and willing to work every spare second I could find and then some, but would it be enough?

Now I’m not going to pretend this is a “how-to” article as I don’t believe I’ve yet reached the entrepreneurial height of e-commerce expert, so I’ll leave the advice part to more seasoned professionals. This is more an adventure story of how one online store newbie set up a functioning shop to sell the things she loved.

This page contains affiliate links, so if you click on one and make a purchase I may receive a commission. Affiliate links help me keep this page running and provide the possibility of eventually being able to pay the awesome writers that contribute to the amazing stories on this site.

Get your FREE Ebook

How To Accomplish More In A Fraction Of The Time eCOVER WHITE

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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Setting Up Shop

So creating an account with Shopify was the simple part, they have such an easy to use interface and their tutorials and help centre are amazing at making it smooth sailing to create and launch a store. I started with the free 14-day trial to see exactly how easy it would be and to my delight, there were helpful steps and instructions all along the way. They have a good range of free templates which are more than adequate for a new store but I found some cool templates for a small fee that I’d love to apply at a later stage.

Now my plan had always been to dropship products, dropshipping is when you go through a manufacturer or wholesaler to add their products to your site and when a customer buys the product, the wholesaler or manufacturer sends the product to your customer directly so you have no need to keep inventory at your home or waste time on packaging and posting. You pay a lower amount to your supplier than you charge your customer and keep the profit. Sounds simple right? Well, it is, but there is a lot more to the process than all those blog posts lead you to believe. Here’s a good & realistic blog post I found on the topic of dropshipping.

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Nintendo Switch (Neon Blue/Red) [new look packaging]

Choosing a Niche

Now all the blog posts and articles I had read, all advised lots of research when it came to choosing the products to sell on my shop, and being selective, choosing a theme that would incorporate just a few products. For example, products that had pineapples on them were apparently very popular late last year. Choosing something that is popular but hadn’t yet been specialized is what they called a ‘Niche’. There were various keyword search engines and analytical tools they recommended to help me find my niche, which I took a look at, but my heart was already set on Bohemian and Vintage inspired clothing and home decor and for some reason, I could not deviate from this mindset.

So I searched up individual products and believed that my choice of ‘Niche’ was good enough to at least give a try. I decided that I didn’t want to spend all my time trying to sell something I didn’t have a passion for and I’d always loved the boho style of fashion and decor but in the past had not been financially blessed enough to be able to decorate the way I wanted to and my low self-esteem made me too self-conscious to be bold enough to wear whatever I wanted, so t-shirts and jeans became my mum uniform. I am pleased to say that I have recently turned over a new leaf. My circumstances have driven me to long for a fresh identity. I want to embrace all of who I am and find a style, even a lifestyle that is unique to me and full of inspiration and beauty. I feel the Bohemian theme represents who I want to be. Strong and bold and independent but beautiful and soft and natural at the same time. I want a store that represents all of this as well!


Filling my store with products

Once upon a time, no one knew what the heck dropshipping was, it could have been anything from the latest dance craze to some new youtube challenge where toy ships where dropped on unsuspecting pedestrians from some random buildings and balconies around the world. Today, there are hundreds of companies that provide dropshipping and choosing one is no easy task. After spending a day looking at the various companies and what they had to offer, plus reading about the process of choosing a supplier, I decided to take the easy road and go with the supplier recommended and affiliated with Shopify.

Oberlo has hundreds of thousands of products to choose from and they can be easily imported into your Shopify store. You can use their photos and titles and make changes to suit your store and then arrange them how you like into different collections. That’s the easy part. What most blog posts won’t tell you is how tedious and long the task of writing a description for each product can be, especially when you’ve never seen the products yourself. Keeping them short and simple was the only way I was able to list 200 products in 3 weeks (juggling it around the kids). Then those products have to be made available on different sales channels which is where things got tricky for me.

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The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You’ll Ever Need

Connecting my store to Sales Channels

If having this blog has taught me anything, it’s that you cannot rely solely on one marketing platform if you want to get noticed and get people coming to your site. So to give myself as much exposure as possible I created a page on Facebook, a profile on Instagram and an account on Ebay. Setting up the accounts was a cinch, I mean how many of these had I opened in the past simply for personal use, but after trying to link them to my store, I came across a few hurdles.

It became apparent that to do business on these channels I would need to register for a business name and ABN. The ABN was no problem as I’d had one before and it was a no-brainer re-activation. The business name was a little trickier. I’d settled on the name BohoJo’s right from the onset, it fit perfectly with my theme, incorporating my name like it was just meant to be. I’d searched the web to see if there were any websites by that name and came up empty handed, reassuring myself that it was a perfect choice and would be available for my use. So, I’d gone right ahead and named my site BohoJo’s, registering a domain www.bohojos.com and using the name for all my social media accounts etc. When it came time to make the name legit, I discovered through the business name search on the ASIC website that my name was too close to another name (not the exact name) already registered and so I was not allowed to register BohoJo’s.
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All-New Echo Dot (3rd Gen) – Smart Speaker with Clock + Alexa

Now to say this put a damper on my hopes and dreams for BohoJo’s was an understatement and visions of spending countless hours re-naming and configuring all my accounts were dancing through my head and making it spin out of control. It wasn’t long however before I picked my lip up off the floor and thought of a solution. Instead of changing the name completely, I simply added ‘Fashion & Decor’ to the end of ‘BohoJo’s’ since I’d already included it on my logo. Not wanting to add ‘re-design company logo’ to my list of to-do’s I prayed that this name would be available and to my absolute joy, it was.

So a simple tweaking of profile names was all that was needed so that my ABN details matched up with my profile information. I connected my shop to my facebook page and connected Instagram to facebook etc and then the real drama began. I’d seen other Instagram business accounts with shopping links on their product photo’s and wanted this option for my business. I looked for days at my settings and watched youtube videos and read blog posts about how to create shoppable posts but became increasingly frustrated when nothing would work. It literally took me over a week before I finally got some help through the Shopify help centre and felt an enormous depth of stupidity when it was easily solved with a simple toggling off and on of the Instagram ‘switch to a business account’ button. So lesson learned, ‘If all else fails, switch off and on again!’.


Business Settings

The night before my set launch date, I was feeling confident that I had enough products to get started and enough sales channels covered in order to get business and only one thing remained, setting shipping and tax information. Now, none of my products provided information about weight and dimensions from the supplier so there was no way I could determine what shipping prices to charge and I was opening the site up to all countries so I couldn’t possibly know how much delivery would be to every country, for every product without hundreds of hours of research. At this point, I felt a little overwhelmed and knew there was no way my site would be ready for launch the following morning. So, I postponed my launch for another week, assuring my followers on Facebook and Instagram that I was creating a better site in order for them to have a more amazing shopping experience.

I took the extra time to upload some more products and get all my settings and boring business stuff up to scratch. After a couple of hours of research into shipping methods and some more advice from the Shopify help centre, I settled on a universal shipping price for all products and countries, offering FREE shipping for purchases over $100. This may have been taking the easy way out, but I knew it was what worked best for me and my future customers.

I honestly freaked out a little when I looked at the Tax section of my settings and realized that tax and accounting were my least favorite part of doing business, mostly because I knew nothing about them. It scared me to think that I may do something wrong in this area and possibly end up with the tax department on my back and a bill that I’d have no hope in hades of paying. Another quick chat to the Shopify help centre put my mind at ease and gave me confidence that I was doing things right.

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Dragon Touch Y88X Plus Kids Tablet 18cm

Launch Day

After a few more hiccups along the way (too many for one article) and more than a dozen late and sleepless nights, I finally got my store to a suitable place for launch. Suitable, because let’s face it if you are a creative person like me or happen to have an eye for detail, nothing is ever perfect and everything could always use just a bit more tweaking, am I right? So I eagerly anticipated my launch, posting messages and pics on my social media channels in the hopes of getting people as excited as I was about the opening of BohoJo’s Fashion & Decor. Whether their level of excitement even neared my own, remains to be seen but launch day was my highest viewing period to date.

So I obsessively checked my site every day to see if the magical ‘first sale’ had happened as promised by the numerous blog posts I’d read about opening an online store, getting increasingly despondent with each passing day, as no sales were made. I started to allow the negativity to creep in and undermine my determined resolve until I remembered that ‘persistence’ is always the key to success. Besides, I didn’t just start this shop to make money for me and my 5 glorious offspring. I had a vision that this store would serve a bigger purpose and contribute to society in helping others less fortunate. So, I have partnered with a ministry that I have been involved with for several years already, which houses and educates orphans in Uganda. You can read all about how the sales from this store will be making a difference to these children here.

It’s only been 6 weeks since I launched the store and since then I have heard a few stories about sites that started off incredibly slow and just ‘took off’ one day. My social following is increasing day by day and best of all my e-mail list is growing steadily. Focusing on these things, I know that success is just around the corner. For now, I have a shop filled with things that I love, that bring me inspiration and a hope that someday soon they will bring inspiration to many others.

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Handcrafted Monogrammed Leather Tote Bag

What I’ve Learned

So what have I learned from this experience, you may ask? Well for one, things aren’t always as easy as people make them out to be, often more times than not, blog articles on the topic are designed to get you interested in the solutions that can be provided by the companies they are affiliated with and have provided numerous links to. Just so you know, I am not an affiliate of Shopify…Yet! Just kidding, don’t worry Amazon, we are still buddies. Secondly, Do and I repeat Do use the help centre provided on your store’s host site, whether it be Shopify, Amazon, WordPress, Etsy or some other store hosting site. They are there to help you with any issue you may be facing so utilize them and save yourself some time and a lot of headaches. Thirdly, do the research into sellable products but don’t sell yourself short and create a shop that you’re going to hate working on every day, nothing could be harder than writing 200 product descriptions for products that you don’t believe in. Fourthly, nothing is going to make you a millionaire overnight, but hard work and determination will hopefully afford you success in the future but it’s the journey that matters, I’ve learned so much about business and marketing already and I’ve really only just begun.

If you’d like to follow this story and keep up with how the business is growing, plus read more awesome articles and stories, please sign up to our mailing list.  You’ll also receive a FREE ebook exclusive to our email subscribers. One day I may be able to write a Mum Life Success Story about myself. For now, you can check out our latest Mum Life Success Stories here and if you’d like to apply to be one of our success stories, then please see our T & C’s page.

Thank you for reading this blog. It’s all of you who give me the motivation to keep writing!

Get your FREE Ebook

How To Accomplish More In A Fraction Of The Time eCOVER WHITE

The pace and intensity of our lives, both at work and at home, leave many of us feeling like a person riding a frantically galloping horse. Our day-to-day incessant busyness — too much to do and not enough time.

With this ebook you will learn to approach your days in another way, reducing stress and getting results through prioritizing, leveraging and focus!

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Featured Photo Credit: Photo by Crew on Unsplash.com

 

 

Are we too dependant on technology?

Jo Caddy

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I used to pride myself on the fact that I was ‘not’ a cliche or a statistic. As a teen I would avoid famous people if they happened to be somewhere I was going because I didn’t want to be seen as a ‘groupie’, drooling over someone just because they occasionally appeared on the little box in my lounge room and I’d roll my eyes at screaming teenage girls mobbing the music concerts, happy not to be so ‘superficial’ or ‘shallow’. Yes, I judged harshly, don’t judge me!

I wanted to be seen as mature, deep and unimpressed by fame, money or status. I was never into the latest fad or fashion (probably because I couldn’t afford to be) and was very modest and conservative (being shy and self conscious may have played a part but I’ll claim high moral ground for the purposes of this article). All in all I was not vain or materialistic and so thought I’d escaped the stereotypical western mindset of ‘more is better’ and the addiction to technology that seems to go hand in hand. I ‘thought’ I had remained unsuccomed (if that’s a word) to the pressure’s of society and refused to surrender my brain to the techno Gods known as Apple & Android, but an incident last week had me reassessing the situation.


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Easy like a Sunday morning

It all began one Sunday morning. With hubby and the two year old away in another state, I was down to 4 kids in the house. Two of those kids had secured themselves sleepovers the night before, in a town half an hour away, which was conveniently the same town we attended church in. So one of them (let’s call him the 15-year-old) had agreed to meet us at church at 10am and the other (let’s call her the 13-year-old) was to be picked up by me on the way to church. Now the 13-year-old had sent the address and phone number to my mobile (which I always took with me when I left the house) but it occurred to me halfway there, that I’d forgotten it on this rare occasion. It was still resting on the couch with my bottle of water where I’d put them both in order to pick up the baby, the nappy bag and my handbag before leaving the house.

Upon said realization, I thought momentarily about turning the car around and driving ten minutes back to get my phone, but I was concerned about being late. Besides, my other 15-year-old son was sitting right next to me, head buried in his phone which we could obviously use to contact the 13-year-old to retrieve pick up details right? Wrong! We drove into town and became suddenly aware that his last credit recharge was just that, credit and no data and he had not yet saved to his phone, his sister’s number, nor his brothers for that matter.

So off to the church car park we went, to wait for the 15-year-old (who had promised to meet us at church at 10am) and whom also had a phone with both credit and data. By this time we were 15 minutes late to pick up the 13-year-old and the humour of the situation was starting to wane. After sending the ‘no data’ 15-year-old into the building on a twin finding expedition which bore no results, we waited for another 5 minutes before frustration and panic started to make an appearance. It was then that the ‘no data’ 15-year-old realized he had his brothers last known location via Facebook’s ‘find a friend’, downloaded via the Wifi at home the night before. A ray of hope pierced through my diminishing faith in the communication capabilities of modern technology and we set off for the location.

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House Stalking

So began the stalking of the random house as we waited outside said location for a sign of the ‘unpunctual’ (not a word, I know) 15-year-old. The little map with my son’s short-legged avatar was not very detailed so it was very difficult to tell the exact house he was in, hence I was reluctant to go door-knocking and explaining the complicated situation to a dozen strange sleepy faces, probably judging me for ‘losing’ my two teenagers. So, we waited. We waited for 10 minutes with no luck, just curious looks from an elderly gentleman walking his dog past our car. The 9-month-old in the back was now starting to stir from his morning nap and the calm can-do attitude I’d forced myself to adopt was quickly sinking in a pool of anxiety. I had no idea if these houses had rear access points that exited onto back streets, alleyways or paths through parks, etc and if my ‘unpunctual’ 15-year-old had already slipped out the back and taken a shortcut to church.

It was at this point that I marveled at how reliant I was on my mobile phone. I’d barely even glanced at the address my daughter had sent me before allowing her to go with people I’d never even met. I simply planned to look at it when I got to town, input it into my GPS and let the lady tell me where to go. Easy! It never even occurred to me that I might forget my phone and have no other way of contacting her. I couldn’t believe how much chaos could ensue from one forgetful moment, from leaving one little piece of technology at home. What could I do now?

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Enlisting Help

“Ok” I said to the ‘no data’ 15-year-old “we need to find someone else with a phone and contact details”. We had friends at church with teenage sons who were friends with our kids on social media and so returned to the church in search of help. I waited in the car with the now grizzly 9-month-old while the ‘no data’ 15-year-old ran inside, returning a few minutes later with our friends 13-year-old in tow. Apparently he was connected with ‘our’ 13-year-old through SnapChat but he ‘low and behold’ also had no data and his 15-year-old brother who did have data was feeling unwell and was therefore at home in bed. The ‘unpunctual’ 15-year-old was still a no-show at this point.

Soooooo, we all drove down the street and around the corner to their home where the ‘helpful’ 13-year-old was finally able to use his parents wi-fi to contact our ‘unlocatable’ (I know, I know, not a word) 13-year-old and obtain an address. We dropped the ‘helpful’ 13-year-old back at church and discovered the ‘unpunctual’ 15-year-old had finally turned up (lateness being his only excuse for his lateness) and all piled into the car to finally set a course for the now ‘locatable’ (please tell me that’s a word) 13-year-old’s location.

That’s the bare bones of the story anyhow. There are many more little details that made up the comedy of errors that was our Sunday morning but no-one has time to read the ‘novel’ that would be. We ended up missing church all together because by the time we picked up the 13-year-old, the service was half over and we needed to be home soon for visitors anyway. Ironically enough, we had actually been running on time that morning for the first time in a long time.

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Technologically Dependent

I’ve been very careful since then, not to leave the house without making sure I have my mobile phone, but more importantly I’ve had to take stock of how much dependency I place on it. I’ve been inspired to think about all those times over the last few years when I’ve been unable to remember someone’s name, even people I have known for months or when I’ve missed an appointment that I booked the day before and blamed it on ‘placenta brain’ or ‘baby brain or ‘getting old’. I’ve reflected back to before mobile phones were so ‘smart’ and were used simply to make phone calls and take really bad photos.

In those days I never missed an appointment, even if I hadn’t written it down or signed up for an sms reminder. I could memorize phone numbers and directions, becoming familiar with new areas after driving through only a couple of times. Was it because I was younger then and between pregnancies or was it because I was exercising my brain and memory more often because I had to? Because there was nothing else to do the thinking for me?

I think it is the latter. Am I crazy to believe the advancement in technology is creating people who can’t think for themselves? Will we soon have a generation where the phones, computers, etc are smarter than we are? Sure, we have access to so much more information and knowledge now, but can we retain it without saving it to a digital hard drive? Can we problem solve, create & improvise without turning to Google, Pinterest & YouTube? Am I the first to come to this realization? I don’t think so, and will this realization force me to throw away my mobile phone, my laptop, my ipad? Probably not!

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Choose Your Own Boxes, Wooden Desk Organiser

Bittersweet

I admit, I love the convenience that mobile phones afford us and the way they make life easier. I remember only being able to do online banking on my laptop at home and wishing they would come up with a way to do it on the mobile so I could transfer money on the run, and hello ANZ GoMoney! I remember wishing they would combine mobiles with the GPS Navman because I couldn’t afford a Navman and I hated reading the street directory because I could never figure out where I was, due to really bad signage in my local town. I love having a calendar right there on my phone, even though I forget to look at it most of the time. I love having everything in the one spot and not spread across a thousand different platforms but I hate how chaotic life suddenly gets when that spot goes missing or gets misplaced or broken etc.

I hate how my life is wrapped up in something that’s not even real. Because everything is condensed into that one thing, I’m constantly holding it, like it’s an extension of who I am. I touch my phone more than I talk to my friends, more than I hug my kids, more than I spend time with my spouse, more than I sleep, think or pray. It’s a never ending bittersweet cycle of Love and Hate.

Balance

These realizations may not make me ditch the phone in favour of a more primal way of life but they do make me more aware of the time I spend on my phone, or the ways in which I use it. Instead of reaching for my phone now, I’m sometimes reaching for the paper and pen instead or practicing memorizing numbers, names and addresses. I don’t want to be senile before I’m 50 so I’m exercising and utilizing my brain while I still have it. I refuse to let technology be smarter than I am. I’m probably fighting a losing battle there, but the benefit is in the trying right?

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Christmas Atonement: A Flash Fiction Story

Jo Caddy

We’d like to thank Geraldine Nicole from Minnesota, USA for her Flash Fiction submission ‘Christmas Atonement’. A dramatic micro tale about a tragedy that inspires a generous new holiday tradition. Keep the stories coming guys, we are feeling blessed by your contributions!

Read the story below or click here to go to the story page! 😊

 

Christmas Atonement

If it wasn’t for the little porcelain statue of Mary and Joseph cradling their infant son, taking up a place in the middle of the mantle, one wouldn’t even know that it was Christmas day in our house.

The excited squeals and pounding of little feet on the wooden floorboards early Christmas morning were long since over and not for the same reasons as most households. Our two bright, happy little blessings, one with a crew cut and one in pigtails, had not grown up big and tall one day and left the nest in search of their own adventures, they had not met their soul mates and moved on to start their own families. No, our children, our reasons for living, had dragged our sleepy heads out of bed at an ungodly hour for the last time, 7 christmas’ ago.

We had no idea that morning, as we watched the tearing open of gifts contentedly from the couch, sipping our mugs of coffee, that by midnight that night, it would be just the two of us again. We were oblivious to the gale force of devastation heading our way. It was a perfect day, gifts were exchanged, gratitude expressed, food indulged in, family reacquainted, including our children with their 14 yr old cousin, who would later stay to babysit while we parents and grandparents attended a Christmas party at the bar 6 blocks away.

Nothing in this world could ever wipe away the incredible guilt we felt for leaving them all alone that night. What kind of parents were we to go out drinking on Christmas night, while our children were at home suffocating from the thick cloud of smoke that filled the house after they’d fallen asleep?

My husband, beat himself up for years because he wasn’t there to protect them and I, consumed by my guilt, could no longer call myself a Mother, for in my eyes a Mother (if she was paying attention) should always have a kind of intuition about disastrous events on the horizon and do everything she can to keep her babies safe.

It didn’t matter how many people tried to console us that it wasn’t our fault, how could we know the 12 year old tree lights we’d picked up at a yard sale would short out that night, turning our 7 foot Christmas tree into a towering inferno. How could we know that by the time the kids were woken from their sleep by the fire alarm downstairs, the entire ground floor of the house would be engulfed and their bedrooms upstairs full of deadly lung collapsing smoke. No, it didn’t matter how many people told us we weren’t to blame, we blamed ourselves every single day since.

Our Christmas’ were no longer full of excited laughter and family get togethers. We no longer stayed up late on Christmas eve drinking eggnog while putting together toy kitchens or bicycles with a hundred parts, reminiscing about Christmas eve’s gone by. Christmas had a whole new meaning for us now. The first few years were hard and dark and we spent the majority of Christmas day in mourning for what we’d lost but we soon tired of this painful tradition and recognised it’s unproductiveness in our lives.

We now have a new tradition. See we have two houses now. We rent a small apartment where the two of us live with our 2 dashhounds, Mary and Joseph residing on the mantle, and we have another large home that we purchased with our insurance money, were we provide shelter to families who’ve lost their homes to fires or flooding.

Every Christmas we decorate the stately home and put on a lavish feast for our residents. Although not a replacement for our lost children, it provides us with a welcome distraction and an atonement of sorts for our tormented souls.