Even More Additions to the Blogroll

The blogroll was becoming too male-dominated.  It needed some thinking women for perspective.

With no further ado:

The Retriever--"Pictures and writing by a Christian mom about faith in everyday life, plain living and high thinking. Well, not that plain...too many tech toys. ."

maggidawn--a chaplain in the UK at the University of Cambridge

still looking for new additions...

More Additions to the Blogroll

The latest additions to my blogroll all have one thing in common, they have each fought, or are now fighting cancer.

Wander Linda  has finished treatment for breast cancer and looks poised to start some new adventures with the cutest four-legged friend imagineable...well except for mine, of course!  She has great photos from Arizona posted from time to time.

JollyBlogger is in treatment with stage 4 colon cancer and has written some great posts on how it has changed him.  Pray for him as he continues treatment.

Glenn Penner works for Voice of the Martyrs, Canada division.  He is having a rough go of things right now and prayers for him and his family would be appropriate also.

Additions to the Blogroll

I'm trying to shake things up a bit.  I went for a long period of time not reading many blogs and not commenting very often. I've deleted some of the blogs I haven't read in quite some time, or blogs that became inactive. Over the next few days I'm going to add a few more blogs to the blogroll.  I'm adding two today:

Exploring Our Matrix....interesting mix of religion and sci-fi. Plus, he watches Lost!

Confessing Evangelical...Thoughtful British guy who tends to be both sensible and genuine in his faith.

I'm open to suggestions and discovering some new blogs, so drop me a comment if you have a favorite blog you think I should check out.

Laugh Instead of Cry

This is funny and sad all at the same time.  If only there were no original screed to parody.

Blogging Blahs

Inigo DeLeon "The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block."

To Blog......or Not To Blog, that is the question.

There are a million ideas I have that I'd like to write about, so it's not for lack of subjects that I have abandoned my blog to the mundane. Quite simply, I am wondering about whether my blog has any viable purpose for me right now. When I delve into things more deeply, I enjoy it, but it also makes me a little obsessive. I check to see if anyone has commented. I think about what I wrote and wish I had said it better. I ponder things while driving around and doing errands. All this over my little square of cyberspace.

Commenting on other blogs does the same thing. I check back to see if anyone has replied,then reply to their reply. Back and forth it goes and all of a sudden I've "wasted" a good chunk of time.

I don't always see it as a waste. I've had a number of good conversations. The question is, in the long run, is blogging beneficial to me as a person, and to the few brave souls who weather through my mundane posts with me?

Who knows?

So...I might blog more. I might not. I might revamp my blog or start a completely new one that has more focus. I might wake up one day and delete the whole thing. Probably not, there are too many anecdotes and pics of my kids for me to jettison them into the nether regions.

Either way I'm in the process of figuring it out.

Blog Envy

Have you ever visited a blog and wondered why it's so popular? Every post will have dozens of comments, the hit counter will display hundreds of thousands of visits, and there will be hundreds of links to it, yet you scratch your head and wonder...."What's so special about this blog?"

It might not be horrible. It might have good posts from time to time. But, the popularity seems greater than the sum of the blog's parts.

I used to feel bad about that. I would wonder why no one would comment on my posts. Was I doing something wrong? Was I so boring that merely glancing at my blog induced a coma in my potential readership? Was I a legend in my own mind?

Feeling like the high school freshman not invited to the party, I would suck it up and remind myself that I didn't really care about whether or not I was popular. That was fine for a while, though I still wondered about my viability as a blogger. Some bloggers seemed to have a knack for building traffic. They were incredible writers and very skilled at getting their points across and "branding" themselves. I definitely didn't view myself as being on the same plane. But what about those other bloggers?

I realized a few things.

Some blogs with lots of comments are relying on the visits of family and friends. After a few posts, it becomes obvious that many of the comments are back and forth conversations between old friends...not that there's anything wrong with that. It did, however, change my perspective about the numerical count of comments. Take away previous friendships and how many commenters would that particular blog have?

Other blogs rely on the tried and true method of the controversial post. If it's a mommy blog the title will read, "Are Working Mothers The Devil's Spawn?" Political blogs--"Bush's Hot Air Contributes to Global Warming!" Religious blogs--"Why Jesus Hates Those Other People." Crackpots, trolls and anyone with an axe to grind will be sure to show up to comment vociferously on these topics, which in turn will lead others to try and reason with them. Bingo! That post will have at least 50 comments.

Of course, an easy way to get comments is to stay slightly superficial and post things that everybody agrees with. "Hitler Was A Pig!", "Injustice Blows!", "Abusing Animals Is Sick!"; posts like these lead to the inevitable "great post!" comment. Everyone falls all over themselves to say how incredible you are for addressing such a timely topic.

The most valid way to have a prominent blog is to craft a very specialized, focused topic. Post after post about underwater basket weaving, or sumo wrestling, will build your relevant search results transforming your blog into the first stop for many web surfers.

After realizing that 80% of popular blogs fall into these categories, I don't feel quite as bad when my stats are low and my commenters are nonexistent. I know that I haven't stooped to posting articles about Britney Spears just to steer a few wayward surfers my way. I know that I don't want to resort to mud-slinging just to get a conversation going. I know that at least I can count on my husband to comment...he's a captive audience.

Don't feel bad if your blog isn't "successful". I still have a long way to go with mine and am hoping to one day have the time to improve on it and draw commenters who want to stop by.

I've had a few this week, and let me just say--Thank You!

Anonymity

I blog anonymously.

My husband is the only person, from my personal life, who knows of and/or reads my blog. Initially, I didn't even tell him about it. I didn't try to hide it or pretend I was shopping online for hours on end; I just kept it to myself. However, keeping that type of thing secret requires more time, effort, and emotional investment than I wanted to give. So, I made the big reveal. The only qualification was that he was not allowed to tell anybody else about it. EVER.

Once, about five years ago, I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper...a very large paper with a wide circulation. It was my first and last letter to the editor. I was pleased that they had deigned to print my words and I even saved a copy of it, though that seems very silly to me now. That was enough self-satisfaction for me, to see my name in the paper....by choice, not because I was arrested, part of a pyramid scheme, or had died from some horribly freakish accident worthy of YouTube.

The day my letter was printed was like any other...that is until my husband came home. He walked through the door, and I showed him my meager newspaper clipping with my name at the bottom of it. He smiled, said he was proud of me--which is funny, because it was a letter to the editor, not the Declaration of Independence, but he's sweet like that---then proceeded to tell me how he had sent an e-mail to everyone in his address book along with the text of my letter.

I think I had a mini-stroke. I distinctly remember my heart stopping and all the blood draining from my face.

"You did WHAT!!" I said calmly, while reaching out to strangle him.

"What? It was a good letter. I was proud of you and wanted everyone to know about it," he said, while I chased him with a butter knife.

"I can't believe you did that! Why didn't you ask me first?!! Oh my gosh, that is so embarrassing! Are you trying to kill me with humiliation?" I asked in a reasonable fashion while throwing shoes in his general direction.

Of course, to someone who doesn't know me, there seems to be some cognitive dissonance here. I willingly sent a letter to a large paper with my full name at the bottom of it, and here I was upset that he had told more people about it. I wanted everybody to know my name, didn't I?

Not really.

The truth is that I wanted to express something that I felt was in need of being pointed out. I had a desire to make a point, not a name for myself. I also knew that despite much of our immediate family living in Florida, they were all far enough away that they would never see the paper in which my letter was printed....and I had no plans to tell them about it. Because that's how I am.

I don't want to have to answer questions posed by relatives who are not really interested in my religious, political, and social ideas. I don't want to have to cringe at a family reunion if I think something I wrote might have upset someone. Upsetting strangers...no problem...upsetting my mother, brothers, or in-laws.....HUGE problem.

So, I set up my little corner here in cyberspace under the strict guidelines that nobody I know, will ever know about it. Even so, I always keep in my mind that there is a 29,855,211 to 1 chance that I could be found out one day.....which is why I don't have gossipy, tell-all stories on my blog. There is a way that someone could find me, but they would have to already know what they were looking for to figure it out.

Part of my anonymity lies in not wanting to rock the boat in my personal life, but the largest portion is due to my behind-the-scenes nature. I am not afraid to speak out or be in front of people. I do, however, hate to be unduly scrutinized. Armchair analyzation is not for me.

We own two cars; one is a shiny, bright blue, convertible Miata, the other a silver/gray Corolla. One is flashy, fun, and zippy; the other is nondescript, cookie-cutter, and completely boring. That's the one I like to drive. I want to blend into traffic, not turn heads and be stared at while waiting for a light to change. Shiny convertibles attract attention; gray Corollas disappear into the background....which is just how I like it. In the background you can be who you are and want to be without having to justify every little thing you do. You can make more U-turns, just barely make it through the yellow light before it turns red, and speed a little faster...all without being noticed. It's great.

Shiny convertibles will get you ticketed every time.

Who needs that?

Too Funny!

Surfing blogs can lead to some interesting finds. Usually the "next blog" button leads to psychotic, mundane, or pornography-laden blogs. Every once in a while I come across something that amuses me.

I came across miriam's ideas through random surfing and followed a link to ScrappleFace.

Too funny. I love it!