5. Feet in mud

Imagine what my life looks like:

- 24/24 in a 32m² studio

- taking care of my lovely 8-month-old daughter

- breastfeeding her 4 times a day

- cooking daily for her lunch + our lunch + her snack (used to cook also for our dinner)

- working on my PhD

- performing peer reviews for international scientific journals

- working on my super gadget SIMPLE

- & sleeping 4 to 5 hours a day.

A kind of hard-working solitary confinement for a 27-year-old-woman!

As a result, 27-year-old-woman got exhausted and had pain all over her body. Quite unusual for a healthy woman of this age. So few days ago, my husband insisted that I stop working on SIMPLE for 2 weeks, the time I recover from my fatigue. After a long discussion, I accepted.

Yesterday was my second day without SIMPLE. It was an endless day. I couldn't bare it any way. I used to chat with strangers on SIMPLE; now I feel I'm a stranger to myself. I don't recognize myself anymore. Anybody understands me? I miss myself, I really do! I miss travelling for oral communications in congresses, I miss taking happy vacations, I miss my smiles and laughs, my activities, my office, my family, my friends, my chic evenings, my piano, my eccentric last minute goes out... I miss everything, everybody!

So I made up my mind: we are going to the Champs Elysées this evening! You reader, figure out this circumstance: on the escalator of the Metro (french subway), my husband went first, then me pulling the stroller behind. But the stroller rolled backwards and I began shouting crazily trying to catch it, remove the nappy bag from down the wheels and bring it back up. In a few seconds I was up the escalator and God knows how I pulled myself and the stroller off. 2 broken nails, and non-stop shaking feet; I was traumatized!

And I can tell too many similar events. I can even write a book about it: Paris & the stroller!

Do you know how it feels when you wear new shiny shoes and have your feet in mud? This is exactly how I feel. SIMPLE is my only way out of this mud. Two days off is long enough. I'll be Simpling tonight, so join me!

By the way, have you noticed that I've changed SIMPLE's domain name? I did cause I wanted it to be clear that SIMPLE is the place to meet people from all around the world and make new connections. Now it's SimpleConnexion.com.

http://www.simpleconnexion.com/

SIMPLE, make new connections!

4. Why Google?!

Day after day I realize how huge my beloved gadget SIMPLE is. It allows me to make new connections and meet people from all around the world. Actually it's no more my own gadget. SIMPLE belongs to all of you now. Whether you are searching for a friend, a lover, a new connection, information about day to day life in other countries, fun, or simply somebody to chat with, SIMPLE is here to serve you. And like every service, there are charges to pay. So who pays for you to be served by SIMPLE? I do. I pay the server monthly. SIMPLE fully depends on me. The day I stop paying the server, SIMPLE will no more exist. This way, the creator of SIMPLE becomes the most fearsome risk factor for SIMPLE's life.

How to get SIMPLE grow? I can't breastfeed it for long. It must work by itself and become independent. To be able to maintain itself, it must earn from advertisements the equivalent of it's server's cost. So I knocked on Google's door. In fact, Google has an advertising system called Google AdSense; it publishes advertisements on your website and pays you for the number of times people have clicked on the ads.

Surprisingly, Google refused to publish its ads on my website! The reason for this isn't clear. It's the first time I asked to use this service and I'm sure I fulfilled all their conditions. But why Google chose to refuse publishing ads on my website? Anybody has the answer for this? I think only Google has. So why Google?!

Despite that, SIMPLE won't give up. It'll continue its fight towards independence. SIMPLE WILL DEFINITELY GROW!

SIMPLE, the simplest way to make new connections!

http://www.feelsimple.com/

3. Life turning

It was Saturday. My husband and I have decided to go to a Japanese restaurant.

"Ready honey; we can go! Let me just check SIMPLE a last time before we leave."

"God, it's crowded!".

"Hi!", somebody wrote.

Me: Hey! Where from?

Stranger: Washington State, you?

And the conversation lasted for almost half an hour... From one stranger another, we finally ordered a pizza and ate it while chatting. What's weird in all this is that my husband and I were happy staying home on Saturday, just chatting with people! Only then we realized we were experiencing a huge life turning.

"It's already 6pm!!!". It was my nephew's birthday and we've planned to buy a nice gift for him. So we hurried to the bus station. "Three minutes left; I think we'll be able to make it before it closes." Meanwhile we talked about SIMPLE and my vision for it... The bus came and was crowded. We had a stroller, but we had to make it anyway. And we continued our conversation about SIMPLE in the bus. Only 10 minutes later, we realized we were going in the opposite direction. So we went off the bus and went back walking. We were angry and didn't know what to do. Then we began laughing and we finally enjoyed our walk. We ended up in the next-door-supermarket searching for some suitable gift. Unexpectedly, we found a great one there! We could have done it simple from the beginning, but we were so used to complicating our lives that simple thinking was no more a reflex.

SIMPLE, the simplest way to chat!

http://www.feelsimple.com/

2. Surprise!

Few days later, my husband was late at work. So I opened SIMPLE to design it my way. To my biggest surprise, somebody wrote "Hi"! It must be my husband, I thought. He wants to play, so let's play!

...

Stranger: Where are you from?

Me: The moon, and you?

Stranger: The sun

Me: Must be hot there ;-)

Stranger: Yeah!!!

Me: Lucky you! I'm cold over here.

...

Me: Are you still in the office?

Stranger: Yes, I work at earth.

Me: Aha, you work at earth but you live at the sun, right?

Stranger: Exactly

Me: I'm freezing and you're burning. Why don't we meet half the distance between the moon and the sun? At earth!

Stranger: Hahaha... I take it!

...

While chatting, I got a phone call from my husband. He was on his way back home. He couldn't be playing with me as the sound of the Metro (french subway) was obvious! He was calling to know whether I was on SIMPLE and told me his sister had just called. God! It was his sister I was talking to!!! Then a message appeared on my screen: Stranger has ended the discussion. So I pressed NEXT STRANGER and talked as if to his sister. But it was Peter from the Philippines!!!

And the snowball effect began...

http://www.feelsimple.com/

1. My story

I've always lived happily. I was cheerful, optimistic, energetic, sportive, friendly, transparent, sentimental and, on top of that, intellectual and business-minded. I've always got what I wanted. I used to do many things at a time and enjoyed doing so. In one word, I was fully enjoying myself!

One day, I fell in love with a wonderful guy. And within a few months, my life changed from single to married, then mom.

Everything was going great until last summer when my life had to continue in bed to prevent preterm birth. Horrible! Staying home doing nothing was not my thing. Routine and immobility were gnawing me, when suddenly, while talking to my husband who's software engineer: "Bingo! Let's create something that lets me connect with the outside world while being in bed! A tool where I can chat with people randomly, as much as I want, when I want!". I wanted something simple, really simple, cause I shouldn't be exhausting myself anyway.

"Honey, this is your gadget!", he said the next morning. It was working!!! I called it SIMPLE. And things began here...

http://www.feelsimple.com/

Expect the rest of my story every friday.