Posts Tagged ‘Born to Blog’

  • Getting Back to Basics

    Friday, January 15th, 2010

    Ever since I started blogging a jillion years ago, I’ve noticed that there are times when it seems like everyone whose blog I read is writing about the same thing. I don’t mean like when we all get home from BlogHer and post our photos and tell our stories, I mean, times when we all seem to be thinking along the same lines regarding our blogging.  I’ll explain what I mean in a minute, first let me backtrack a bit.

    Last month, I was chatting with Amy on Facebook and somehow we got on the topic of blog comments. I told her I missed the days when I had 13 readers, and how exciting it was every time any one of them left me a comment on a post.  We talked about Twitter, and Facebook updates, and how it’s so much easier to just post there than come up with a whole blog post. We talked about how there are so many blogs to read that it’s hard to stop and leave a comment when there are 100 more posts in the reader to get through.

    Today, Mr. Lady posted about Community on her blog Whiskey in My Sippy Cup (don’t read it? you should).  This is the part that jumped off the page for me:

    This month, I am reinventing my own wheel. I’m changing my outlook on blogging, on my blog, on my role as a blogger and my attitude towards it. There are changes a’coming in my little corner of the internet, starting today. Today, I re-instate the blogroll (that I don’t have to code myself anymore, thank you sweet, pink baby Jesus.) You read my blog? You’re on the blogroll. Leave your url in the comments and I’ll take it from there. (Please be patient) Today, I also start clicking through that blogroll. Fuck the reader, screw Twitter…it’s time to visit blogs. It’s time to delurk, for good. It’s time to help the people who take the time to read this blog earn that extra dollar with their ads. It’s time to remind myself why the hell I do this on the internet and not on a cocktail napkin in the first place, which is honestly way more tactile-y satisfying and significantly easier to roll my chewed gum up in.

    Well said. I don’t know about the rest of you, but 2009 left me feeling wrung out to dry. I finished 2009 absolutely and completely exhausted. I realize that it’s mostly my fault, I said yes to way too many things, and didn’t schedule my time well, and that’s something I’ll probably have to continue to work on forever. But there was also this pressure that I felt, whether I was putting it on myself or not, to TWEET MORE and UPDATE FACEBOOK MORE and keep running more giveaways so I didn’t lose my feed subscribers and keep reviewing more products so companies would stay interested in me and GO GO GO GO GO GO GO.

    And the fact is, I have stopped reading blogs for the most part.  There are a handful of blogs that I check every day, but there are so many more that I haven’t read in months. And then I wonder why those people never comment on my blog posts any more! Well, DUH.  The truth is that blogging is very much a reciprocal thing.  You read them, they read you. You leave comments, they leave comments. 

    So, like Mr. Lady, I’m putting back the blogroll.  I used to have one that linked to everyone who linked to me, I deleted it when an “SEO Expert” told me I had “too many links” on my blog. Well, too bad. Too many for whom?  I’m going to try to recreate it, if you leave a comment on this post telling me you link to me, I’ll start making the list.  And then I am going to click through that list as often as I can, read, and comment.  I’m going to try to find my Community again, and I hope those of you who want to be part of it with me will let me know.

    Let’s make 2010 the year we bring back the importance of using our blogs to make connections with each other. Let’s not let “Social Media” (ugh) ruin what made us all start blogging in the first place. We can do it. We can get our blogs back.  Who’s with me?

    14 Comments » Filed under: Born to Blog

  • So This Is What Calm Feels Like

    Monday, December 21st, 2009
    Little People Christmas Toys
    Image by Elizabeth/Table4Five via Flickr

    Sometime last month, around the same time I mustered the courage to call my doctor and say HELP, I’M LOST IN A BLACK FOG, GET ME OUT, I made a decision. All I had to do to convince myself that it was the right decision was think back to Christmas 2008, when I was an anxious, nervous ball of stress every single day. Christmas is always stressful for me anyway, so the last thing I need to do is make it harder for myself.

    So I decided this year that after a certain point in December, I would allow myself to stop worrying about my blogs all the time.  I saw how I had been living more of an online life than a real life, and I saw everything I was missing. I decided that I was going to make my husband and kids the number one priority. I began choosing to close my laptop and actually LOOK at my kids when they talked to me, instead of listening halfway while continuing to type. I started actually watching TV with Chris instead of half-watching while continuing to type, then looking up every couple of minutes saying “wait a minute, what did that guy say?” and making Chris rewind, which drives him nuts.

    I’m a lot happier this year, my friends. The combination of the Effexor plus turning off the panic switch in my mind has made such a huge difference in my life, I can hardly explain it. I feel like I’m HERE, like I’m really being a wife and mother.

    I’m still feeling a little bit of stress, mostly related to the fact that I STILL didn’t get cards sent out before Christmas, or do the baking I had planned to do, or get any presents wrapped yet at all, but I don’t lay awake for hours every night composing lists of posts I have to write. I don’t jump out of bed in the morning in a panic about the state of my email inboxes (which is pretty major since it used to be a daily source of stress for me). I don’t feel overwhelmed, I feel…calm.  I just wanted to share that with all of you. Thanks for reading!

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    6 Comments » Filed under: Personal