Well, this is embarassing. You know that bcc field in the email option? It exists for a good reason. I should have used it last night when I sent an announcement to all my contacts that I started a blog. I was trying to pretend this had not happened. But this morning when we were having our coffee, Jenny said,” You sent me an email last night and it keeps crashing my iPhone.” Ouch.

I like to think of myself as a savvy user of technology. I’ve used that bcc field many times. It’s good because then when you get a mass email you don’t have to scroll down through endless amounts of names to get to the content of the email. And you don’t share peoples email addresses. But, no. I was moving too fast, and before I knew it, I hit that send button, and everyone’s name was in the to field, not the bcc field.

What’s worse is that I have quite a robust contact list. I’m not sure how to get the exact number of people in my contacts, but I think it numbers more than 1,000. Many of these are professional contacts like funders and otherwise important people with whom I work. Not to mention all the listservs I am on. Oh, and did I mention I sent this email from my work account and not my personal account? I’m pretty sure that is inappropriate since this blog is not work-related (note to self: blog about something work-related to cover up inappropriate blog promotion). And, I’m sure my contacts did not appreciate getting a mass email and having to scroll down more than a thousand email addresses to get to my shameless effort at self promotion. Sigh.

To be fair, I am new at this. And the helpful hints on the blogger site do suggest you email all your contacts with the blog link. But they should consider including some advice about using the bcc field.

The good news is that I got some nice responses. And I increased my followers 200 percent  from 2 people to 4 people, or is that 100 percent? Anyway, I’m a bit embarrassed. I will not be publicizing this post, and I think I might have to spend the day lounging on the couch watching Brady Bunch reruns.