It's also been through Facebook that I have connected with some childhood friends, one of whom lives in the house across the street from where I grew up. She and her family lived 3 doors down and across the street from us while we were all kids, and her mom still lives there. Her older brother and my youngest were best friends. I have also reconnected with cousins and former in laws and coworkers. It's been quite fun.

I was talking with a friend about all the people from the past resurfacing and she said that would make her really nervous, wondering who would find her online and if she'd remember how she treated them. Old boyfriends coming out of the woodwork, enemies suddenly emailing you. I had to laugh. "What are you saying?" I asked her. "What kind of hoodlum life did you lead that you're worried about all that?"

She laughed, too, when she thought about it. So what if Stevie from accounting back 25 years ago wants to say hi and be your "friend" even though she made your life miserable back then with her complaints and sarcasm? You're an adult. Confirm her friend request and let her say hi and see what she's up to. If you have nothing in common, you can simply ignore her. If she gets weird and stalky, you can always delete her comments, "unfriend" her and she won't be notified.

If former boyfriends contact you, you're an adult. What would you do if you ran into them on the street? Good or bad, see what they have to say. People change. Someone you fought with a decade ago can become one of your closest friends. But as far as fearing who is going to contact you if you have a Facebook account, get over that and stop vibrating there. And clean up your act so you don'thave to worry about stuff like that.

Putting personal details on Facebook and MySpace
I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone that all the info we blog about and put on Facebook and MySpace can be read by anyone. Even if someone is not on your Friends list and you have your privacy features on, it's possible with very little effort to hack into your comments and postings.

I once Googled a friend's email address since I couldn't recall her website URL and came to another pal's Friends Comments on their MySpace page. She had only 3 friends listed and I knew them all. Her privacy settings were set to just the 4 of them. In their comments they were conspiring to put another mutual friend out of business and ruin her reputation, something they had initiated several months earlier.

Had anyone told me this about any of these people I would not have believed it. Two, whom I (and the hapless target) thought disliked and avoided each other, had apparently been friends for years. I learned all this inadvertedly, not even looking for it, going in through Google's back door of their MySpace page, past their privacy settings.

Did I tell my friend, their target? No. It was something she had been warned about but she was not sure was true. She wanted to ignore it and let it pass on its own, if it was true. I saw no need to tell her and re-open the topic. She doesn't go online, so it's unlikely she'll ever see it. I doubt she'll even read this.

The bottom line is - well, what I do is discuss online ONLY anything I want everyone else in the world to know about me. Everyone. For all time.

Oh yeah, and remember that putting personal details like date of birth, hometown, school, pet's names, etc. on Facebook and MySpace is not wise if you use any of that info as online passwords. Just a heads up. We can be open but we don't have to be foolish.

Three Lucky Friday the 13ths in 2009!
We have three Friday the 13ths in 2009. February, March and November. Friday the 13th has always been a lucky day for me. Maybe that's because as a teenager I went through that rebellion stage where I wanted to think and do the opposite of everything I was told. That included making Friday the 13th be a lucky day for me.

I see now that by me doing that, I was each Friday the 13th constantly looking for the positive aspects of the day. I was anticipating days before wondering what king of good things would come my way. So was it really my lucky day, or did it just become my lucky day due to my belief that it was and my expectation that it would continue? Either way, I won.

Oh, Andrea, are you singing that old tune again? "Expectation and belief determine your future experience." Yeah, yeah, yawn, tell me something I don't know."

Well, if you know it, why aren't you acting like it?

If you expect dollars to flow, are you talking about the possibilities of that with friends?

Or are you talking about everyone who's out of work?

Either way, simply take note of what you're saying with friends and what experience you have in the days and weeks to come. Just notice the cause and effect your words and thoughts have.

If you really know that your expectation and belief determine your future experience, is there any reason not to spend time deciding what fun things you'd like to be doing in the next week, the next month, the next year?

Is there any reason not to spend some time daydreaming about that?

Daydreaming is an easy mode of creative visualization. Daydreaming, fantasizing, pretending.

Pretend is a good one, "pre" from "ahead of time, before" and "tend" for "intend". So when you are fantasizing and pretending, you are intending in advance what you'd like your future experience to be. You are vibrating in resonance with it and attracting it to you.

The earliest known documented reference to Friday the 13th in English occurs in an 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini:

"[ Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring and affectionate friends; and if it be true that he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died."

I don't find that remarkable at all. It's a demonstration of the law of attraction at work. Had he feared Mondays at 9:00am, as many heart patients have, he would have died then, as they do.

I prepave that forevermore my Fridays the 13th will be filled full of wonders, new friends and new opportunities. I'll bet yours will be, too.

And to me, that's also the key to a recession proof life.

Just prepave your tomorrows with what you'd like instead.