It's Sunday and we are back from our trip

Before I get into how our trip went, I have to make fun of my husband just a little bit, I have to point out what an idiot my husband is. So he's a Dodgers fan. He was born in Albuquerque and I guess at the time the baseball team in Albuquerque was a like a feeder team to the Dodgers and it's always been quite a treat to explain to my Texan family and Texan neighbors why his office room doesn't have the Rangers or Astros gear hung up, rather its covered in Dodger blue. Not only do I have to admit I strayed and didn't marry a true Texan but he's not even a fan of Texas sports teams which I think is still a hanging offense in some Texas counties. 

The Dodgers are in the World Series against the Yankees. Bubs describes it as every baseball fan's dream World Series. They are two of the oldest and most beloved teams, they both have fans across the country and its East Coast vs West Coast. So you would think that would make him happy.  The way in which the Dodgers won the game on Friday was really incredible. A home run in overtime to win the game was so cool. So with all of that Bubs should be happy right? Nope. He's been moping around since the Dodgers left people stranded on base during the game on Friday and wasn't happy about the game winning home run--he just said it was a relief the Dodgers didn't blow it. Then last night as it looked like the Yankees where going to win in the last inning, my 32 year old genius husband who has everything in the world going for him (including a very cute wife) was laying prone on the floor with a pillow over his head saying he can't handle the stress. I've seen that boy/man do some very stupid shit over the years, but dear god, him crying over his favorite boys  in tight pants potentially losing was...sad. Had the Dodgers not pulled it out, I think he would have thrown himself into traffic. God give me strength to deal with my husband for the next two games. 

So we are back from our short trip to meet with the management company that got in contact about having us start up a "real" social media presence. We flew out on Thursday afternoon to a major city I'd never been to before. We were picked up from the airport and put in a really nice hotel. "Bonnie," the lady who owns the company met us in the lobby. She was very nice and genuine and pretty much exactly who I was expecting after talking to her on the phone. She offered to take us to dinner but we politely declined as the kids would have killed each other had we forced them to be in a contained space for any longer so we were just going to pizza to the room. We said our goodbyes and she said that she would send an assistant to walk us over to her office building at about 9 the following morning.  Of course as soon as our kids got food in them, they were best friends and embarrassed the crap out of me for the next 15 minutes as they chased each other up and down the glass elevators. Finally I told Bubs that he needed to get them to the pool and I needed some chill time where I wasn't worrying about the cops arresting us for child neglect. We were off to a great start but thank god I have an energetic husband who can still wear out two kids because they passed out as soon as I got them out of the shower. 

So as far as the meeting goes, I don't want to close any doors so I think I'm just going to list off the things I did and didn't like about her idea of making us into a social media family. I really liked Bonnie as a person, I think she's very genuine and I think she has our best interests at heart. I also liked that they aren't some fly by night social media management company. Bonnie inherited the business from her family where they have managed the careers of people in sports, theater and TV actors etc.. for decades. So it's not a fly by night venture and social media management is something relatively new to them. 

The potential good things: 

My son and I are natural extroverts and I think he and I would love making content and silly little videos for an audience. His cousins recently showed him the Costco Guys and I've heard "Double Chunk Chocolate Cookie" come out of my son's mouth 1000 times a day and now he wants to be "The Rizzler." I think it could be really fun to film silly TikTok dances and trends with my nieces and sisters (we do all the dances anyways, we just don't post them) and I would love to write little minute long "scripts" to play out with my family. 

We could be making money (more on this in a bit) for what seems like having fun and spending time together as a family. 

If we find an audience (and she said it's almost a guarantee--though I question this when I see my grown ass man of husband crying with a pillow over his head because his favorite cute boys are losing a game) then we could get free stuff and potentially travel. 

I could set my own schedule while still making an income because I do plan on staying at home full time when the baby comes in April. 

I could potentially make new friends and meet new people all over the world. 

The potential bad things: 

My husband and daughter are extreme introverts and their social batteries ran out when Bonnie was showing us videos that some of her other clients have made. I can absolutely see my son mugging for the camera as we make brownies on camera but I can also see my daughter never forgiving me for making her take part. Bubs is also dead set against even mentioning his military stuff--which as Bonnie said, is one of the reasons we could find an audience, people are genuinely curious about it.

I don't really like how they would introduce (or reintroduce) us. Basically, some of her other families would slowly start to talk about us as being friends and tagging us in videos which would drive people to our accounts. One of the things I've always strived for is being authentic and that just doesn't seem authentic. I understand it and I'm not questioning why it would need to happen but I just didn't like it. 

Everyone reading this knows that Bubs and I love to annoy and make fun of each other. It's one of my favorite things about us actually. But I would hate for that to go away because we had to either "too cute" or "too mean" in order to find an audience. I think some of the couples pranks and skits that are on social media are cute and funny but it's not how we are. I'll give an example that happened last week and why I think it would change us. On Wednesday evening, we went to HEB together. I knew something was up when he parked the passenger side really close to the cart corral--so close that I couldn't open the door. And then he let out the loudest and stinkiest fart that he's had in his professional farting career (and trust me, he's an all-star) and  jumped out the driver side and then pressed himself against the door so I was trapped.. I seriously felt like I was going to throw up, it was so disgusting. But it was genuine and he did it because he thought it was funny. It would probably funny to an audience that chose to follow us. But how do we do that and still make it genuine? Does he prop his phone up on the way? Obviously I would know something is coming. Do we repeat it for the camera? Well that's no longer genuine and not nearly as fun. So having to film that stuff wouldn't be authentic and it may take away from how we are together. 

At least at first, it's not that much money. I must have misunderstood her when she said "more than your teacher's salary" because she said the first year or two we could expect to make about  $20 to $25 thousand. Now that's very easy money (I guess), it has a lot of perks and there's a lot of potential upside. But it's also not life changing money. And as Bubs pointed out, that if the company can afford to fly the four of us out on short notice, put us up in a hotel and take us to a nice dinner (which they did on Friday), then they are making a lot more on the back end. I don't begrudge them of that at all, they are doing most of the hard work of building our "brand" and without them it's something that would take years, if it ever happened at all. 

I've also kept myself very private and guarded for the last four months while people have genuinely supported me on reddit and this blog. It just doesn't seem right to all of the sudden allow everything to become public for a little bit of money and small amount of notoriety. 

I will also never be able to get past how negative the reaction was towards me when my story got popular on reddit and YouTube.  As I exist now, I can walk down any street and no one will know who I am. If I get even a small-medium sized following on social media, eventually someone will recognize me as the woman who willingly went into a hotel room with "Wal Mart Tony Soprano." I don't know if anything is worth that. 

I really liked that Bonnie was willing to hear all my apprehensions and didn't put on a hard sales pitch to convince us that we needed to sign something because they had paid for us to come visit. She took us out to a very nice dinner on Friday night and it was fascinating to talk to her about how her Dad started the business in the 70s because he could never find success as a stage actor. And then how she grew up knowing all these very talented people who would never be famous but kept on working at their dreams anyways and that's why she's loves her job.  As we were leaving to walk back to our hotel she just asked that we think about it which I really appreciated.

So I don't know what we are going to do. We've got so much going on anyways that I don't know if this is the right time. But this opportunity probably won't present itself again. I just don't know.