I never really gave much thought to the FTC until this year. Then all the talk began about the FTC cracking down on bloggers who don’t properly disclose items received for free or paid advertising, and I thought to myself, “Well, that’s nice. But that doesn’t affect me, as I’ve always been transparent on my blogs in terms of whether or not I’ve been given free stuff, and besides that, I’ve never taken product in exchange for promotion because it squicks me out to do so.” I was already cheering on the folks at Blog With Integrity and figured this crackdown was meant for bloggers who—unlike me—had murky ethics and were passing off paid promotions as something else. I would be unaffected. I passed the time shining my halo while everyone else ran around complaining that the sky was falling.

And then we were told that by the way? The guidelines also stipulated disclosure of affiliate linking. “No problem!” I smugly thought. “I already do that!” Oh, and one more thing, they said. You have to disclose those affiliate links in every single post.
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There are many perks to the various jobs I do, including (but not limited to): Getting to work from home, getting to work in my pajamas, sometimes getting to do great things for charity as part of my job, having a fair amount of creative freedom, and sometimes getting free stuff.

Yeah, I said it. Sometimes I get free stuff. And that’s definitely a perk, I’m not going to lie.

Free stuff is tricky, of course, if you have concerns about maintaining integrity, which I do. There are bloggers who make poor decisions in the face of free stuff, and I never want to be among them. (Side note: Go read Susan Getgood’s excellent recap of the recent FTC guideline changes for bloggers, if you haven’t. Go. Now. I’ll wait.)

I’ve had a lot of fun with the various free things I’ve been lucky enough to receive, right up until I was selected to be a Frigidaire Super Influencer.
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When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow up and be an actress. There was nothing I loved better than being on stage, no feeling headier than transforming into someone else and performing.

Now’s the part where I’m supposed to tell you that then I turned six (or ten or eighteen) and grew up and realized that was dumb, but that’s not how it went, for me. I actually got a degree in theater performance in college, and it wasn’t until my senior year that I realized I was just not cut out for a life in performance. For one thing, although there’s certainly nothing wrong with the way I look, when surrounded by so many truly stunning actresses, I came to realize that even if I was the better performer, I would be passed over for someone more attractive most of the time. For another, the life of an actor isn’t terribly conducive to what I’d consider “family life.” And so… I found other dreams. More specifically, I started working on the eternal juggle of personal vs. career goals.
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Literally. Dammit.

Over a dozen years ago, I came down with an inner ear infection at work. At the time, I was working at a giant IBM site, and when I was struck with a sudden intense dizziness in the ladies’ bathroom, one of my colleagues called our on-site paramedics. I was terribly embarrassed by the whole thing; they started checking me for things like signs of a stroke, and I was in my early 20s. It turned out to be an inner ear thing, though, which pretty much just disturbs equilibrium and is annoying.

I’d totally forgotten about that until yesterday, when the same thing happened again. Fortunately, now I work at home, alone, with no one to ask me if I can stick out my tongue straight except the dog, and come to think of it, she doesn’t talk no matter how dizzy I get.
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