Tag: social media

An Old Dog, A New Couch, and Social Media: Learning New Tricks

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I challenge that saying.
Our dogs were always allowed on the couches—until this past week. After 23 years, we finally bought a new one. We sure needed it. The old one was ratty, my Sagey girl had dug holes in it, and my other half used duct tape to try and fix those holes.

For the past couple of years, my better half kept saying, “Once the dog dies, we’ll get a new sofa.” Well, sadly, my Sagey girl passed away very unexpectedly, and yes, I’m still crying. Yes, she was just a dog, but my heart is still filled with grief daily.

With Sage gone and the sofa looking worse for wear, it was truly time to get a new one. My very choosy partner went to his favorite store’s website and found a sofa he liked—an L-shaped, leather, greenish-blue one.

Sage is gone, but my two grand-dogs are very much alive, very lively, and they love to jump on sofas. So the question became: How do we make sure they don’t climb on the new one? Apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks, because after a few days, Benjito the schnauzer and Cedar the Australian Shepherd got the message (mostly).

I’m not a huge fan of social media. Sure, I can spend time scrolling through reels and other people’s posts, but I’ve never been particularly invested in it. That is, until my kids challenged me to try it. I opened a TikTok account for Sagey, and to my surprise, it took off—well, not wildly, but good for a mid-century modern-aged woman.

The past year has been a bit difficult. My country is at war, my husband was laid off, and my dog died. It really sounds like a country song, doesn’t it? My brain pretty much shut down. But over the last couple of months, my mind has started to function again. Creativity is flowing, and I decided to dive into learning about social media. I’m learning a lot—watching tutorials, signing up for every class I can find on the subject, and, of course, posting. Not everything I post is great, but I’m learning and improving with every post.

Will I quit my full-time job? No. Am I making money from anything I post? Not yet, but maybe one day. Is it nice to see the “insights” area under my posts say “earned,” even if the number is zero? Absolutely. So, this old dog is learning new tricks, too.

My Facebook was hacked this week

My Facebook was hacked this week, there is nothing special about it. I hardly use my Facebook and I very rarely post on it, if anything I only post stuff that is related to my blog.  I lost control over my account for several hours, mostly because I don’t go on my Facebook often and because the email I used for the account was my trash email that I rarely check. I would I would have seen the notification that my email and contact information was changed. Definitely an oversight on my side and will not happen again. I spent several late night hours recovering my account successfully and then changing all passwords on all my other accounts and adding as many layers of security that are available now.

I was done with all this at 1am and then took several hours to calm down and decompress as I was extremely angry and that created even more anger and aggravation in me.  This anger woke up my internal Liam Neeson as in the Taken movie series, and I am filled with fury and obsession. Or as my husband says there is nothing more worrisome than me with a vendetta. 

Despite being a middle aged woman with liberal arts degrees I figured out how to get my account back, find the hackers email (which I assume to be their junk email), track their IP address and block their devices. I have not decided on what to do with this information yet. But I have become a little neurotic, I check everything many times a week and too many during the day now,

Add the extra security to all your accounts, create your recovery codes, make sure your email that is connected to the account is updated and stay vigilante.