When I started the Surviving the Lien Years series, I anticipated posting each installment every week day until I was finished with the series. I have even written each installment. I have not formatted and proofed them.

What I did not know or anticipate when I started the series was how incredibly huge the Tea Party Movement would become or that it would literally take over every aspect of my life.

The following is not about whether or not you agree with the politics of the Tea Party Movement but more about what I have been doing the past 8 weeks in relation to the Tea Party Movement. When I was on the first nationwide conference call for the Tea Party Movement on February 20th, there were about 22 of us on the call. When we hung up we thought there would be 5 or 6 Tea Parties across the nation the following Friday. Instead there were 48. In that one week, I put in many hours and had a conference call every single night.

Since then in the second wave of Tea Parties, there are now over 700 Tea Parties planned nationwide for today. I have continued to be involved at both a national level and here in Atlanta. The movement has taken over every single aspect of my life. I am working on it literally 18 – 20 hours a day. Over the last 3 weeks, I can think of 3 nights when I have had over 6 hours of sleep. Most nights I am going to bed around 2 – 3 in the morning. There have been conference calls that stretch into the wee hours of the morning. Even with all the work that has been involved in volunteering for this movement, it has been a joy to do.

The Atlanta Tea Party is the biggest event I have ever managed. I am so lucky and blessed to have 3 other women Co-Coordinating the event with me. I am also lucky and blessed to have an even larger volunteer team who has stepped up to help out and been able to run with their expertise and experience to make the event a success.

I am learning so much from this experience. I am making so many new contacts, acquaintances, and friends. The use of tools to make these connections possible is incredible. We have used social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others), blogging, Skpe, and conference calls. The ability to keep costs low and plan a nationwide event on a shoestring budgets is amazing. When this wave of Tea Parties is over today, I am really going to have to sit down and think about the things I have learned and how they can be applied to other parts of my life and to business life.

My brief tweets updating what I am doing that are pushed both here and to Facebook have given me the opportunity to reconnect with friends from earlier parts of my life (high school and even elementary school) in a way that I never would have before. Several of my friends from high school who I literally have not talked to in over 16 years have sent me the kindest messages on Facebook and through my cell phone. I know without a doubt that some of them do not even agree with my politics but they have still been supportive of my efforts as friends.

I have had experiences that I never imagined I would have. I have been interviewed on live tv, live internet tv, and live radio. Yesterday I was on the Montel Williams radio show on Air America. Air America?!! Going in I knew it was going to be a tough interview and it was. But I learned so much from it. The opportunities and experiences are incredible.

I do intend to finish posting my Surviving the Lien Years series. I plan and hope to begin that again next week. It is a series that I have internalized for months and have worked hard to put all my thoughts down on paper. Those thoughts deserve to be proofed and edited appropriately and not rushed. Thank you for bearing with me and putting up with my slack blogging habits. Obviously, as I continue to be involved in the Tea Party movement, I am going to have to develop a better plan of action to keep my blog up to date and to keep up with my fellow bloggers who I have come to consider my online friends.

If you have heard about the Tea Party Movement and have any thoughts on it, feel free to leave them here. I cannot promise that I will reply to them in the next few days but I will read all of them. Feel free to leave comments saying you do not like what the movement stand for as well. As long as the comments are polite and family friends (as is the theme of this blog), then they will remain posted here.

Have a great day! All my regular readers, thank you for putting up with my slack blog habits over the last few weeks!!

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