What to do When You Screw Up?

Hello everyone! Wow, it’s been forever since I sat down and wrote out a blog post and actually posted it!! I feel so out of base with everyone! Now that school is out for the summer maybe I can get back into writing and blogging!

Today I want to share a life lesson I just learned the hard way. I am a member of several blogs and one I designed myself. I love playing on the computer, designing and goofing off. I searched for a while on the standard buy out right photo websites like IStock and others for a header. I never found anything that just struck me. I took a chance on searching images outside of those sites. While doing so I ran across a website from a woman claiming to own all the photos she’d posted and because of her love of them she just wanted to share them and pass them along. So what did I do? Yep, I screwed up. I took her at her word and used an image from that site as a header.

I have had all of my books pirated and let me just say, it effing sucks!! I get pissed each time an alert goes off saying another site has pirated my book that took my time away from my family and in many ways drove me insane while writing. All of my books were ones I spent lots of time and energy on writing and worked really hard to get published. The thought of someone stealing my work sends me into a rage each time I think about it, yet I stole someone’s work!

Turns out the website and the woman claiming to own those pictures was a complete fraud. This woman had stolen a bunch of copyrighted photos from various artist and claimed them as her own. How do I know this? The artist of the header I used took legal action against the blog I’m on. Yep, I totally screwed up!

Just to be clear though, I in no way blame this artist for being pissed! I get mad every time I see my work stolen too!

So what do you do when you screw up? Well for me, I take the hard-earned lesson and store it for future use. I also apologize for my wrong doing and in this case need to apologize to all the authors on The Wild and Wicked Cowboy blog as well as artist and author, Megan Oteri.

So the lesson here: life throws things your way sometimes that are unexpected and can be disastrous. Breathe in deep, admit if your wrong, try to make amends and smile through it because it will get better. No matter how  inadvertently something was done, if you were wrong, and I was, make sure you do whats right in the end. The ladies on WWCowboys are fantastic. I in no way expected anyone to have my back and understand how I had let this happen but those ladies did. They realized everyone makes mistakes and backed me 100% in understanding. Thank you to all of them. And to artist, Megan Oteri, I truly am sorry this whole thing has happened and wish you the absolute best in your artistic career and writing career.

So take my lesson and store it for your future use. Remember what happened to me and let it never happen to you! Be responsible for your actions and breathe through it! Always admit when you’re wrong even if you meant no harm. Do whats right because it’s the right thing to do and in the end smile because all things will get better with time.

Sayde