Thinking on Thursday - Pondering with a Purpose 2/17/11

Brenda Youngerman has just started a new blog hop on her blog.  Since I am always pondering, I thought I would join in, although I am not a writer.

Each week she will give a prompt.  This week's prompt is word association and we are to choose 3 words from her list to write about.

Click her button at the bottom of my post to join in, or just hop around to see what others are writing.

I am choosing these 3 words:  expectation, struggle and ability.

This is all about me....my expectations, struggles, and feeling that I do have the ability to make a living online. 
I first got online in 1996.  I had been doing refund conventions for a few years.  I was hearing all these gals that came to my conventions rave about the internet and how you could go to the company websites and requests coupons.  At that time, my life was all about coupons and refunds.

When we got the internet at home my first search was for Kellogg's.  Somehow my search ended me up, not at Kellogg's, but at a website where you did trivia to earn points to redeem for prizes.  I don't remember the name of the website now, but when I realized you could do this type of thing online, the rest is history.

Back in the day, it was fairly easy to earn online, both money and gift cards.  I even did several programs in the names of several family members.  Unfortunately, that's changed.

Here is where my expectations came in.  My first goal was to take my family on a vacation to Florida.  Circumstances changed before I saved up enough for the motel, food, etc.  Here is a part of my life that not many know about.  My daughter we 3 years old at the time, and her father molested her.  He's been in prison now for 11 years, and has 9 more years to serve (on good time).  There went my trip to Florida with the kids.

Now for the struggle......oh no!  I had to re-think our entire lives.  How was I going to continue to raise my children?    The Lord works in mysterious way, as they say, and he really does.  I had final paychecks from her father from his work.  I ended up winning a dishwasher that I was able to sell for $250, and he had been getting savings bonds from work that I was able to cash in.  These things kept us going.  I had my same job as a lunch aide, but I started spending a lot more time online earning!

I joined a website called piepoints (to which I still belong).  There I found that I was able to become a sponsor.  I put together a little website with some crafts for sale.  I only started out with about 5 different things for sale.   This eventually grew.  I am still a sponsor today with the site.  Being a sponsor means that some of my crafts I offer in trade for points from members.  Being a sponsor means that my URL's are always in the traffic exchange etc.  Piepoints has recently been taken over by some of the members, and I am anxious to see what they do with it.  (I'm getting off base here, see why I'm not a writer?)

Anyway...I know that I do have the ability to earn a living online.  The definition of that living for me is the ability to earn enough to buy the groceries for the house, put gas in my own car, and take us out to eat on occasion.  I do not think that my expectations are too high. It's been a struggle, and is still a struggle, but I'm enjoying it all the same. :)

P.S.  I did end up taking my children on that trip to Florida.  It wasn't the way I wanted, but we found an online friend that we stayed with while we were there, and he took us to some of the sights.  We drove my mom's old rickety station wagon (which used 15 quarts of oil each way) (It was a 33 hour drive each way).    I had sold the motel gift cards I had earned, but had kept the fast food ones, so we used those for most of our eating on the trip.  We had a great time, and now we can all say we've been to Florida.