Work and Stuff

It is almost the end of September and I’m sitting here wondering where it went.  I cannot believe that my kids have been back in school for a month now.  It kind of feels like I’ve slept through the entire month.

I’m sure part of that is because I’ve been sick.  Again.  The kids hadn’t even been in school for a whole week when my daughter brought something home.  For her, it was very short lived, barely lasting the night.  For me, I had something flu like for a week before it settled into my chest and turned into a cough that won’t go away.

The rest is probably due to being really busy with getting Pagan Journeys up and running.  We have been really pleased with how smoothly that has been going.  It is still pretty small, but we are getting new members every day so we are growing pretty quickly.

There hasn’t been much going on on the work front.  I just haven’t had much time to sit down and create anything lately.  There also hasn’t been time to continue the product features I’d been posting here.  Between getting settled back into the school routine with the kids, being sick and  Pagan Journeys there hasn’t been much time left for anything else.

I did run into a work issue the other day.  I discovered that someone had taken several of my stone associations and posted them on their blog.  That in itself wouldn’t have bothered me if the poster had given me credit and linked back to my site, but they didn’t.  They had posted the material without any citations and gave the appearance that they’d written the associations themselves.

It came as a bit of a shock to see my work posted somewhere else like that.  I have spent the last year and a half or better getting all of that written.  I didn’t copy anyone elses work.  What was written was done from my own research and experience.  Some of the stones that I’ve written associations for were for stones that I couldn’t find elsewhere, so had nothing to go on but my own intuition and experience.

After finding that post, I discussed the issue with several friends.  One pointed out the fact that a lot of people just don’t think about the fact that someone actually put work into material that is copyrighted.  It is easy enough to see that and understand it, but it really didn’t make me feel any better about it.

I ended up having to send them an email asking them to either post credit for the material or remove it.  It was hard.  I don’t like being difficult, but at the same time, I have to protect what I’ve worked so hard to create.  Yes, it was created in an effort to help others, but having it posted on my website is really no different than having it published in a book.  Just as I would expect it to be wrong for someone to republish a book under a different author, it is wrong to republish what I’ve written.   Ah, the joys of being a business owner.