The Daily Grind of a Work @ Home Mom...

Research Shows Women Would Sacrifice Almost Anything But Chocolate For Blogging

Ok, I like to blog too but come on ladies!!  A study done on 6000 women by BlogHer shows that 36.2 million women are activiely part of the blogosphere.  15.1 million are writing, and 21.1 million are reading. 

Holy crap.

But it gets better.  According to this study, many women bloggers are so keen on blogging they say they would be willing to give something up in order to keep it up.  Examples are:

55% would give up alcohol

50% would give up their PDAs

42% would give up their i-Pod

43% would give up reading the newspaper or magazines

only 20% would give up chocolate

The other numbers show that women spend less time doing things like reading newspapers and magazines and watching television due to spending more time in front of their computers but that doesn't surprise me.  What does shock me is that these women would give up some integral parts of their lives so they can blog!!  PDAs and i-Pods? 

More than half of the group surveyed said they consider blogs to be a reliable source of info and that blogs are influential in their purchasing decisions.  I definitely believe in the latter.  If I didn't, I wouldn't be contributing tons of free samples to bloggers I consider to be "relevant."  But as a source of news, well, I take what I read with a grain of salt.

Don't get me wrong.  I am definitely a fan of blogging.  I love that fellow mommy-bloggers have recently been recognized by major mainstream media and I adore how much blogging has done for my store alone.  But these statistics are truly eyebrow raising!

And for the record, I wouldn't give up chocolate for anything... 

The Thank-You Note Stiff

It's an infrequent but not unheard of phenomenon.  Your friend/associate/family member has a wedding/baby/party.  You go all out, figuring out what he/she/they might like and find just the right thing.  You pay for it, wrap it up, send it off, and then anxiously await their response.  Did they like it?  LOVE it?  Have a use for it?  Think it's as great as you did?  You wait, and wait, and wait.  Nothing.

You think, did they ever receive it?  Maybe it got lost in transit?  But the tracking number provided to you confirms that it landed in the right hands.  Hmm.  How strange.

Sounds like a resounding case of the thank-you note stiff.  And as a person who has had a bridal shower, wedding, and two babies, nothing irritates me more.

The thank-you note is a basic concept - you get a gift, you send a note to say thank you.  It doesn't have to be long, it doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to be.  Was it a case of thank-you note anxiety?  Is it the intimidation associated with writing something personal?  All I know is when I give a gift, I expect a bit of appreciation.  It's not a matter of giving to receive something in return - I love shopping for others and I adore making someone else smile!  It's a fundamental bit of manners.  Simple as that.

There are a few exceptions to this rule.  One occurred the other day.  I personally handed my friend a gift for her twins.  She thanked me during a visit a few days later.  I then told her not to write me a thank-you note since I'd rather she use the 3 minutes it takes to scribble something out, address, stamp and mail it, doing something for herself.  She replied by telling me she wasn't writing thank-you's.  And this is the inspiration for today's post.  While I got a personal acknowledgment of the gift painstakingly chosen, personalized, wrapped and delivered, my co-gift giver did not.  How would she know the gift was so well received and appreciated?

Bottom line is, she won't.  Chances are in the craziness of the daily grind, our gift recipient will forget to mention it and as a gift giver, the giver might feel under-appreciated.  And rightly so.  After all, we teach our babies to say thank-you for even the small things.  We should follow our own example.