Updates for the last Saturday of May! Royalty soaps, e-zine, health stuff, business hours, and a bit more…

Hi, everyone! Thought I’d share some updates about what’s going on around the blog!

Hello to everyone who arrived here thanks to the link in the video from Royalty Soaps! Wow! I am so honoured that Katie Carson shared my site and e-books about shampoo bars! ? Click here to see her Facebook page with a link to the YouTube video!

The e-zine should be ready for Tuesday, May 28th. I wasn’t sure what the topic would be this month as I have tons and tons of ideas, so I just started writing. The good news is that I have one that’s finally taken shape – it’s all about the idea of “fresh kick” and “quick break” sensory experiences, which was a massive topic at In Cosmetics Global and one I think you’ll love – and the even better news is that I have four other e-zines that are at least half done that I can share with you another time. I’ve been trying to figure out where to start sharing these concepts with you, but it felt like I had to get through 60 pages before I could even share some formulas, but I figured out a way to present it all with loads of starting points and more advanced concepts for making our products.

I’ve been having a few issues with my health, but they’ve abated. Yay! If you’ve been around here long enough, you’ll know that I have some issues with muscle spasms, and if you’ve been around here even longer, you’ll know that I have muscle spasms in my head, neck, and shoulders for which I’ve been getting a ton of Botox every eight weeks since 2010. The Botox is still working well, but something as simple as getting my teeth cleaned, wearing reading glasses for a second longer than I should, or pulling my hair back in a super loose ponytail for a few minutes can set off the spasms, and it feels like the worst tension headache you’ve ever had that only gets worse to the point of feeling like my head, cheekbone, or eye socket is being crushed. I had a tooth removed almost two weeks ago, which required extra Botox in my cheek, and the pain was still here as of this past Thursday. Add to this a brutal cold that left me with a sinus infection that felt like that same crushed eye socket and cheekbone were being stabbed by an icepick, and it’s been hard to get much done once I had to take sleepy-making painkillers and muscle relaxants. I’m all full of antibiotics and feeling better already!

Someone commented to me once that I “always seem to be sick”. I’ve had these pain issues and muscle spasms for more than 20 years: I have been checked for everything, and we’re starting the process again. I have a team of medical professionals helping me figure all this out, and things are going very well right now. I have flare ups that I can manage, and I have those I can’t. This was one that I couldn’t manage very well, but it’s all under control now. I hate sharing this stuff to be honest as I don’t like people thinking I’m looking for sympathy or that I’m making excuses for not getting done what I wanted to get done. (I managed to work full time while going to university, running youth programs, and writing the blog since 2009 with these issues.) This has been an especially trying few weeks, and I had hoped to keep up my usual schedule, but I kinda lost it this time last week.

Part of what we’ve realized this year is that Raymond and I aren’t doing well with our work-life balance, and to keep doing what we’re doing, we have to figure this stuff out.

The hard part for me is that I love what I do so much that there isn’t a line between “work” and life. When I’m having a lazy day and lying on the couch, I’m reading textbooks and articles, creating formulas, scouring the ‘net for ingredients, and more. So really, the issue is about doing things like administrative stuff – answering e-mail, planning courses, talking to suppliers, and such – as “work”.

We are setting business hours for things like administrative stuff, and as of the moment, that’ll be 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, as we need to take weekends and statutory holidays off. If you have have an administrative issue, your email will be answered in the order in which it is received. If it’s received outside of those hours, it’ll go into the queue to be answered as soon as possible. Please be patient: This is a two person operation, and one of them doesn’t know how to help you with your subscriptions and such, and one of them does.

I know you may think this is reasonable and can’t see why I have to say these things out loud, but I have had no less than three people in the last three weeks- each of whom has spent at least two days each on Facebook and Reddit respectively – screaming at me, calling me names, impugning my reputation, and being generally just awful human beings because we dared to not respond to their messages in the middle of the night and after 10 pm on a Saturday night of a long weekend. This brings the number of people attacking and insulting us this month to an almost record breaking number of eight! 

Please realize that we want to help solve your problems so you can access your materials, your account, the blog, and so on. There is no reason for us to deny you your downloads, e-zine, access to the blog. There is absolutely no benefit to us for being withholding and every benefit for us to make sure we provide you with those things we’ve promised you because we want you to enjoy being here! If you can’t get access to something, let’s figure it out together.

Again, this might seem strange, but there are people in the world who start the conversation off by accusing us of all sorts because they subscribed for $1 and can’t access the blog. If this is what you think of us, then this might not be the blog for you. Sadly, this is an almost daily thing now. (And even writing this, someone will use this against us saying that we said that people can’t access the blog daily. What I’m saying here is that being treated very badly is an almost-daily thing now. Sad that I had to write that out, eh?) 

I can’t stress this enough – if you write to me about issues about the blog, logging in, subscriptions, purchases, and more, I cannot help you. You will go into the overstuffed inbox that is my life, and when I arrive at your message, I will forward it to tech support, also known as my. husband, Raymond. As you can see, as of Wednesday I had almost 1,100 messages.

Please please please save yourself the time you’d spend just sitting into my inbox, and write to Raymond instead. 

He’s in an “inbox zero” kind of situation, so if you write to him, you’ll get an answer pretty much right away during our business hours.

If you look at the contact me page, there are all kinds of links to different FAQs and email addresses to help you find information. We have a subscription FAQ that has answers to all kinds of questions, and if that doesn’t help, you can find Raymond’s e-mail address in that post! It might be faster for you to see if you can find the answers to your issues there, but if you can’t, please let us know and we’ll be on the case.

And finally – and I can’t believe I have to say this out loud – but if you think that writing to us swearing, insulting, accusing us of theft or fraud, implying we’re intellectually dishonest, or engaging in other childish, cruel, or bullying behaviour is acceptable, your account will be closed permanently, and you will be banned for life. 

We are all working so hard to create a safe, supportive, fun community for everyone – including Raymond and me – and that kind of toxicity can’t be allowed even the tiniest bit. If there is something that’s happened on this blog somewhere that makes you so angry that you have to write to me in ALL CAPS or have a temper tantrum in an e-mail or on social media, then this really isn’t the place for you and I wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

You will also be removed from any groups, boards, or courses over which I have control without notice because – as my dad always said – it only takes one bugger to spoil it for everyone else, and I won’t let someone who thinks that it’s socially acceptable to spend two days on social media freaking out poison something special.

Edited to add: If you’re banned, you will know. We’ll write to you and make it clear in no uncertain terms that you’ve been ejected from the blog, and we generally refund your subscription if there’s still some time left in the month.

You don’t need to walk on eggshells around here! If you’d think someone was a bully or a jerk for saying that to you, then it’s probably something you might not want to say. When I see something that concerns me, I ask for clarification to see if that person intended to be terrible or if it failed to translate well in text

Okay, that’s kind of a depressing note to end on, so please let me finish with this – I love what we do here! I love my wonderful readers and this community we’ve built! Everything we do here is about sharing our love of formulating, our passion for science, our obsession about getting more awesome hair, and our enthusiasm about monkeys, baby Sasja, and music! We love having you on this journey with us to learn, play, grow, share, and generally have a blast. Thank you for continuing to support us and for spending time with us!

And thank you for reading this post so I can get this out of my system, set some boundaries, and leave all this negativity behind!

Now back to writing the fun stuff, eh?