A Day in the Life of Matilda OR Um, you've got a thing there...

This is a little story about a friend of mine.  Let's call her Matilda.  Yea, Matilda.  That's her name.

Now Matilda has a full life.  Lately, maybe it's a little too full.  She working full time, she's got a little freelance gig on the side filling in some extra hours, and she's rarely seen sitting down, what with all the kids running around, and that shoe she lives in to keep clean.  How does a busy mom, do it?

Anyway, she's somehow figured out how to keep it all together.  So she wakes up one morning during this crazy week, and checks her calendar.  A meeting at a client's office, followed by two phone interviews and a face-to-face (she's looking to hire some help at the full time job).  She's also volunteered to head up an auction at one child's school and needs to make some related calls, work on a client project, and finish up a company blog post.

A busy day.  But first...what to wear?  Matilda feels good when she looks good - don't we all?  So she goes through the morning routine and chooses a great outfit.  Great skirt, white tailored blouse, tall boots and tops it off with a great new shawl she bought a few weeks ago but hasn't worn yet.

But I digress.  Matilda gets all those kids out the shoe and to their respective schools, and heads to the client's office.  Arrives five minutes early (great start!) and hops out of her car, grabs her briefcase and struts, heels clicking importantly, towards the front door.  She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirrored walls of the building and smiles (not bad!), before throwing the door wide and heading inside.  She's greeted warmly by the receptionist and notices two gentlemen in the lobby, who glance her way.  One of them does a double take, his eyes lingering.  Matilda ignores this, of course, signs in at the front desk and turns to take a seat.
"Excuse me," the man with the eyes says to her.
She stops and turns, smiling.
He gestures with his right hand behind his neck, "you've got a, ah, a thing..." he trails off.
A thing?
"Oh?" she says, unsure.
"Um, a price tag," he explains, tapping his neck again, "um, it's hanging out."

Now, Matilda's self-importance comes to a screeching halt as she reaches behind her neck and feels the tag, with the sale sticker, hanging proudly in full view.
The receptionist smiles and offers scissors.

As it turns out, these two gentlemen are there for the same meeting.  Matilda can't quite remember what she said to them once the tag was removed, but it was, of course, very clever.

As it turns out, this was one of the best moments of this very busy, sometimes difficult, oftentimes stressful week.  For Matilda, that is.

Ever had a moment like Matilda's?  Go ahead...share it, it'll make me, um, I mean her, feel better.

Tweeting for Two

I’ve been looking into an iPhone app that will allow me to tweet to two different twitter accounts. I’m tired of logging into one, tweeting, maybe copying a tweet, then logging out, logging back in under my second account, etc. I can’t be the only one with this dilemma.

Certainly not. I have a personal twitter account. And I manage my company’s twitter account. I also have a blog, geared towards my own freelance writing. In this post-recession world, it’s par for the course to have an employer, work for yourself and manage a social network or two on a personal level. If I can speak from a woman’s perspective for a moment: It’s something we have known for many years. We are mothers, we are employees, we are employers, students, teachers. We are talented and driven, insisting that we can (still) have it all. Hell, many of us need to have it all, lest we can’t afford the rent now that we’ve been laid off, or our hours have been cut, or we are finding ourselves in a one-income household (read: divorced) with kids heading towards college (read: tuition).

So, we’ve created a brand for ourselves. A personal brand on Facebook, where we post comments about our kids, our social lives, our weekends, our hobbies. Then when the economy started to tank, we put our skills to work. For me, that meant writing resumes and cover letters for friends and family. It also meant the small freelance writing career I’d started on the side years ago was suddenly booming, as corporations let go of entire departments to save overhead and turned to folks like me to help them get things done. Compared to a full-time employee with a full-time salary and benefits, I am the perfect solution. An hourly rate paid on a project-by-project basis, no overhead, no bennies.

This blog overlaps my personal and freelance professional worlds: I write journal-style about my life as a mom and a writer. I don’t, however, crossover into marketing territory, preferring to leave that to my full-time career as an Account Manager with a small marketing agency. Not only do I manage clients and projects, but I also handle our agency’s social media footprint, recently adding a Twitter account to the repertoire.

Hence, the search for a Twitter app that will allow me to kill two birds (I can't help it, these puns just write themselves) with one stone.

Is it important that I keep these worlds separate? Or does my name become synonymous with both my agency life and my freelance life? The marketer in me is not as well known as the writer, the mom. Can these worlds combine? Do I begin blogging on communication, not only as it relates to parenting and writing, but as it relates to marketers and brands? Or is it time to start a new, third blog?

But I digress...I did find the app I was looking for in Twitbird. Two accounts simultaneously – and free! Looks like I might need to upgrade to Twitbird Pro – that should hold me…until I reach the 16 accounts limit. Yes, I am a marketer. I am a writer. I am a mom. I love each of these parts, each of these personas, and just like a good brand can not market using one format (read: facebook) alone, neither can (or should) I. Because all of these parts of me add up to one person with a great deal to offer. And if I can do it all with a little bit of grace and style, and not too much stress overload, then why not?