Category — Blogoversary

This is the second part of a two-part blog post.  As I said before, one post simply grew too long to contain everything I wanted to say.  The first part can be found here (containing Takes One, Two, and Three).

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Take Four:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  The twins were still babies.  I was so confident that we’d have another child.  I didn’t know how we’d pay the bills.  I wanted to be a writer, but the only thing I thought I knew how to do is be a teacher.  I had a small circle of friends.

The twins are turning seven this summer.  We don’t have that third child and I don’t know if we ever will.  I’m able to work out of the house and be a full-time parent.  I have two books published.  I miss teaching from time to time, but it doesn’t feel like the only thing I could do with myself.  I know people around the world and my friendship circles are like rings, many deep.

There is a saying in DC that if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.

(Yes, I’m aware that other cities also have this saying, but it actually originated in The Washington Post on March 4, 1934.  So there.)

The same can be said about life.  Whether or not you like the figurative weather, it’s going to change.  That can be bittersweet when life is good.  And it can be a huge relief when things are bad.  It will not always be like this.

The same can be said about blogs, which is why I rarely unsubscribe from reading one.  Even if I don’t like the post I’m reading today, I may like the one the person writes tomorrow.  Chances are, if I took the time in the first place to subscribe to the blog, that more interesting things will percolate to the screen at some point in the future.

The same can be said about writing a blog — the stats of today, the comments of today, the readership of today — it will all be different tomorrow.  That can be a bad thing if you’re enjoying a creative period and the posts are flowing.  The readers are coming and the comments are being left.  Because that will dry up, sad to say.  It won’t dry up entirely, but we all have our good blogging days and our bad ones.

But it can also be a good thing if your blog or your readership or your comment levels aren’t where you want them to be today.  There is always the chance for a change in the future.

That is what makes life — and writing — interesting.

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Take Five:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  Every year on my blogoversary, I give myself a word to concentrate on for the year.

Year One (which ended up describing my first year of blogging): Connections
Year Two (set on my first blogoversary): Action
Year Three (set on my second blogoversary): Listening
Year Four (set on my third blogoversary): Tune
Year Five (set on my fourth blogoversary): Own

This year, I thought the word would have something to do with the Prompt-ly list since it is absolutely the project I’m concentrating on this year.

But I had to write a letter this week to someone who means a great deal to me to explain why she means a great deal to me.  I had to take this very emotional thing — love — and put it into words.

In trying to pinpoint it, the best way I could explain why she means a great deal to me is that she recognizes that the world is inadvertently a cold place.  That while we may do caring acts from time to time — helping an old lady cross the street or listening to a friend for an hour — our day is mostly spent in bubbles where we focus solely on ourselves even as we perform tasks for others.

We don’t mean to shut each other out, but we do it (and sociologists could probably explain why it’s actually necessary for humans to do this in order to survive and thrive).  Someone asks us for a favour, and we ignore them.  Someone admits they’re lonely, and we don’t reach out to let them know we’re listening.

So we shut each other out — albeit inadvertently (most likely due to the constraints of time).  At the same time, it is our relationships that make the difference in this world, that heat this cold world.  We notice those moments that people leave their bubble to enter our own because those moments are what makes the difference between people feeling supported and people feeling alone.

Humans are not meant to be alone.

Think about the emails you’ve saved because someone said something that meant the world for you to hear.  Or the times when we’ve gushed about how someone took the time to converse with us or read our blog.  We have such gratitude for human interactions — even the small ones.

Yet even knowing how good it makes us feel to have someone interact with us; to reach their hand into our life and let us know that we’re not alone, we don’t spend nearly enough time doing this.  Perhaps out of survival — we need to focus on ourselves in order to keep moving forward — though I can’t help but think this is counterintuitive.  Wouldn’t we go so much farther if we all spent more time focused on interacting with others since it could come full circle and have people interact with us.  Don’t we accomplish more together than we ever do on our own?

So, my word for this year, for year six (on my fifth blogoversary):

Pop.

As in, I’m going to take this year to try to pop my bubble each day.  To be conscious of reaching out to others and making that connection count.  To engage in conversations.  To help where I can help.

Even if I only increase my time outside by bubble by five minutes a day, that’s amounts to 1825 or over 30 hours of time each year that I am engaged in community by actively interacting.

Will I be able to always pop my bubble for everyone else who needs me to pop my bubble and focus on them?  Of course not.  I’m a human being who needs to practice guitar for at least a half hour each night, do my job and volunteer work, and spend countless hours trying to come up with new and interesting ways to annoy Josh and the twins (please, that takes A LOT of brain power).  So in advance, I’m sorry if you slip through the cracks and my bubble doesn’t pop.  It isn’t on purpose, though I know that’s cold comfort.

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Five takes for my fifth blogoversary.  Five years ago, I started this blog.  And I am so happy that I did.  And so grateful that you are here.

And you better not leave this post bare of comments just because you used up your blogoversary wishes on this first one!  Pop that bubble!

This is the first part of a two-part blog post.  One post simply grew too long to contain everything I wanted to say.

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Take One:

Five years ago, I started this blog.

The end.

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Take Two:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  When I read about blogoversaries back when I first started this blog, I couldn’t fathom celebrating my own.  Certainly not my five-year one.  And while you eight- or ten-year bloggers may scoff at my piddly five-year marker, those who are just starting out are probably looking at this number the way I did five years ago.  How the hell does it happen?

How does someone open a post box and write a new post, day after day after day?  I have never stepped away from the blog for longer than a few days.  How do you blog the same holidays year after year?  Life keeps revolving — years are circular — but blogs are linear.  They keep moving in a straight line of events while life circles back around, the same themes constantly surfacing, the same foibles revealed, the same struggles fought.

You feel love, you feel love, you feel love.

And you need to keep writing this linear project, keeping it fresh and interesting to yourself because if you’re bored, then what is the point?

You reach a five-year anniversary, you write several thousand posts, simply by doing it.  By falling in love with your blog and taking all that comes with that relationship.  The sweet moments when the comments are high, the dry moments where you can’t think about what to write.  The blog posts that bring you nothing but tears.  The blog posts that you would cry about if you ever lost.

Because love is never easy.  Love is messy; and it’s wonderful in its messiness.  And if you love your blog, you too will one day look at the calendar and realize that you are celebrating a five-year blogoversary.

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Take Three:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  People have asked me before if I’ve ever thought about walking away from it.  Of course I have thought about it.  I think it is natural to be in a mood and take out that mood on something or someone you love.  You know who will be forgiving and who won’t be.

You probably just made a face and thought to yourself, but a blog is an inanimate object.  It’s like saying that you’ve taken out your mood on a dish.

But you’re not inanimate, are you?  Every reader is a living, breathing human.

(You are human, right?  The aliens haven’t arrived yet, right?  I am a little freaked out from the Falling Skies opening episode.)

Therefore, you take a chance when you take out your mood on a blog because it’s like coral — you think you are standing on a rock, something that can’t feel pain or react to the pressure of your foot, and then you discover that coral is actually a living organism, capable of dying.

A blog is quite similar.  If you think of it as an inanimate object, you’re being careless.  Blogs are living organisms with very real people attached to the word core.  People who are affected by what you choose to place on the screen.  They will laugh or they will cry or they will think; but they can also walk away angry, frustrated, or filled with grief.

I am human, and I lash out just like every other human from time to time.  I take out my mood on this blog, and I think about walking away from it.  But like all good relationships, this blog has the elasticity to bend without breaking.  You pull away.  I pull away.  And then we regroup and come back together.  And I write yet again.

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Takes Four and Five coming soon.

Four years ago, Josh told me to find a new outlet for the feelings I was sharing with him (always beginning at 11 p.m.) and a blog was born.

It is my four-year blogoversary.

I usually like to take this post to reflect on the year and look ahead.  In the early years, the growth and change was remarkable, with dozens of new projects popping up monthly.  Now, the blog is more like a four-year-old–still learning and moving forward, but more consistent.  It sleeps from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  It has mastered the toilet.  By which I mean that we’re nearing the 300th Roundup and I’m still writing a response every time Salon tackles the topic of infertility.

Two years ago, I started giving each year a single word to use as a goal. The overall word defining my blog is “community.” But then each year received a word that defined the overarching theme for the year:

• Year One: Connections
• Year Two: Action
• Year Three: Listening
• Year Four: Tune

You can read the lengthy description of how I interpreted “tune,” but at its core, I stated, “delurking is more for the writer to know who is reading her blog than it is for the silent person to speak their mind. So my point is not to get people delurking. My point is to get more points-of-view heard.”  And hopefully I did that, perhaps not on the grandest level, but in a minute way.

I then usually give one more word, looking ahead, to help focus me during the upcoming year.  And this year, my word is “own.”

This will be my first full year of self-hosting, so that obviously plays into the word “own,” but the idea is much larger than that.  I think we need to own our words, own our actions, both when we’re proud of them and when we’re remorseful.  I think we need to own our place in community–look at which niche of the ALI community we’re standing in and look at ways to improve our interactions with fellow bloggers.  I think those crazy kids in Rent were on to something when they implied the difference between renting and owning in their opening number.

I feel like this fourth year, I am more rooted, this blog feels sturdier.  The stability affords me the ability to take chances.  Expect more visual mediums this year such as photograph and video since I now own the equipment.  And expect that very little will change.  The Creme de la Creme will roll around again next winter, the Roundup will continue to be posted on Fridays, and I will continue to try to convince you that there is nothing wrong with 70-year-olds having babies.

I need to thank two entities: my blog and you.

To my blog, thank you for being here for four years.  You are my white space, my blank canvas, the receptacle for my ideas.  You have given me my work and my friends.  You have given me opportunities I never thought would be mine to have.  I love you, little blog.

To you, thank you for listening to me.  Thank you for wiping my virtual tears.  Thank you for allowing me to blow my nose on your virtual sleeve.  Thank you for laughing at my jokes (even if you were just pitying me and it was a fake laugh).  Thank you for linking to me and participating in my projects and for reading me and for hugging me when we meet in the face-to-face world.  I get very teary when I talk about the friends I have made through my blog because just as I never imagined the opportunities that would come my way from writing in this space, I never knew that I would meet such a diverse, interesting, beautiful, wonderful group of people.  Thank you for being here, for reaching out, for hugging back.  As I have said before, “A good hug is like finding an unopened pack of m&ms in your purse right before a movie begins.”  And you guys are the m&ms in the purse.

I know Andy Samberg and T-Pain have got a motherfucking boat, but I have a blog, I have a blog, take a good hard look at the motherfucking blog. Er…and by motherfucking, I don’t actually mean “mother” fucking since our sex does not actually result in parenthood…hence that whole problem with the mother connection…er…

But what better way is there to celebrate the eve before the eve of my third blogoversary than by writing a post that is sure to elicit several emails asking me why I feel the need to use such foul language. Honestly, Melissa.

Happy third blogoversary to me–I’m having a virtual gluttony of blogger loving this week between seeing Chez Perky, Family Beginnings, Baby Smiling in Back Seat, and A Little Pregnant. It’s just like candles in a cake…with one to grow on.

Get your towels ready, it’s about to go down…

I promised that the whole delurking thing would become clear but I feel like it will be a huge disappointment now to discover that the dog feces and ice cream questions were inadvertently placed next to each other and are unrelated. While I’m glad that almost everyone is willing to slap on some latex gloves and root around in a dog’s excrement, the ice cream question was just a throw away–I was trying to make it simple for people to delurk who didn’t want to think too hard about a dog’s anus. The Weekly What If is always there and then, on top of that, I was asking for people to delurk too. But all of this needs a larger explanation. We’ll start here:

It’s my blogoversary this week.

It comes around every year, doesn’t it? And while, yes, it isn’t until Thursday of this week (I started this blog on June 25, 2006), having Show and Tell go up on Wednesday night leaves me with a conundrum–either post early and not have the blogoversary day be special or post late and miss my blogoversary. So I hope you’ll indulge me on my third anniversary in celebrating it now, within this post, and with my Show and Tell this week.

I like to make my blogoversary a big deal. If it were realistic to set off fireworks, I would, environment be damned. I would ride elephants through the streets, tossing sapphire necklaces to everyone in the crowd. I would commission Cirque du Soliel to create a performance art piece called Le Blog with acrobats hanging from ropes constructed out of old posts.

But barring all that, I’ll just reflect on the past year and set a goal for the future one.

First and foremost, my blog visually got a revamp this year, making it more user-friendly. Actually, a lot of things got a revamp including the Lost and Found and the blogroll. The forums were started, giving people an extra space to post and reach out of the community when they didn’t want to use their blog. We started Bridges, which never quite took off and started doing collective Kirtsying instead to get our stories out to the general public on the front page of the social media site.

It wasn’t really a year of starting new things because, as I stated last year, my focus was on listening. Instead, projects continued. IComLeavWe happened every month, Show and Tell happened every week, Barren Advice continued whenever there were questions to answer. The Blogging Name Registry to mark the two year milestone kept adding names, the collective Shop Mom or Pop went through another holiday season, and the Creme de la Creme rolled around again. We kept meeting at the Virtual Lushary each month. The Barren Bitches read a lot of books. Entries were added to Operation Heads Up. Every week, I continued to pull together the Roundup.

It was a busy year of hearing words and then figuring out how to get them out to the general public. Because it is one thing to preach to the choir–it certainly makes a person feel less alone to hear that someone else is going through similar emotions–but it is also important to get those words out to other people. I am sad that I couldn’t keep Bridges afloat, but I think the community Kirtsying (and everyone should participate with that and submit great posts) fills the same goal. I hope to keep that growing and expanding, doing everything I can to get our words out there to people who need to hear them (either because they need to find this community or because they need their eyes opened).

Last year, I started giving each year a single word to use as a goal. The overall word defining my blog is “community.” But then each year received a word that defined the overarching theme for the year:

• Year One: Connections
• Year Two: Action
• Year Three: Listening

I think I did a decent job listening this year. I wrote about this idea of setting forth a guide word:

My defining term from now until next June is “listen.” It’s a hard thing to do–to truly listen to another person. To set aside the time to concentrate on someone else’s thoughts without simultaneously considering your own. To practice a form of verbal relativism, listening while trying to place yourself in the other person’s point of view rather than your own. Talking is easy. I have about 850 posts on this blog. Being silent. Reading. Actually hearing; internalizing someone else’s words, tossing them around inside your head, allowing them to change your world. That is hard.

So I did a lot of reading this year. A lot of commenting via IComLeavWe. A lot of hearing and sending forth the words I was hearing. So I do think it was helpful to set a guiding word. We’ll see how successful I am at following this year’s word.

Oh…you want to know what it is?

• Year Four: Tune

Tune is obviously a word with multiple meanings. Tune can be a “pleasing succession of musical tones” which I think is a term that speaks largely of community. I want the people I interact with in tune with one another. Which does not mean that every song needs to be a syrupy waltz–even DC hardcore punk songs sometimes have a tune–but that X leads to Y leads to Z. In blogging terms, keeping a tune would mean setting a blogging standard of courtesy so the song continues. There have been too many times that people have stepped away from community because they don’t feel welcome or are harassed. And finding a tune means agreeing to both our role as a contributor and a taker from community. I think this code of standards can be set over time with multiple contributors–a huge group project–but I do think that having a list of standards, a list of what we’ll accept or rail against–is important.

Tuning can also refer to an adjustment. I think projects will continue to be fine-tuned and streamlined to be more user-friendly. I can get pretty stuck in rut and not want to change things out of fear of change. But I do think that it is a good thing to keep tinkering with existing projects, making them better, rather than solely starting new ones. I am considering (gasp!) self-hosting in order to take advantage of more software out there. But adjustments in baby steps…

Lastly, the thing I want the most for this upcoming year in terms of “tune” is to give sound to the silent. I think we often times focus on the musical piece (the blog post) or even the music critics (the commenters) that write about the performance, but my thought is on how
to bring those in the audience–those who are listening and thinking and internally reacting–into the conversation.

I asked people to delurk last Friday. 2161 people “read” the post (it’s impossible to know how many people actually scanned their eyes over the content, but 2161 clicked on the blog that day). Even if we said only 1000 people read it, it still is interesting to look at the fact that 86 people left a comment. The majority of those were people who have commented in the past. A small handful were people who delurked for the first time. So about 1 in 25 people left a note.

I have been thinking about those 24 out of 25 ever since Lori from Weebles Wobblog pointed out the silent majority of blog readers during an email exchange. And by silent, I am taking into account a multitude of ways to get your voice heard from leaving a comment to writing your own post to sending an email…speaking your mind at all. Look at your own stats–I’m sure that you’ll see that you have many more readers/subscribers than people you know reading your blog.

Which is not a problem on one hand–I mean, there has been a fine tradition of blog lurking and I am just as guilty as the next person of reading and running (there are people who probably have no clue that I’ve read every word they’ve written…creepy)–but is on the group project end of things. When we’re talking about community and we’re presenting voices from community, it’s hard to know that such a large portion of people are silent.

Plus, delurking is more for the writer to know who is reading her blog than it is for the silent person to speak their mind. So my point is not to get people delurking. My point is to get more points-of-view heard.

So many people start their email when adding themselves to the blogroll: “I’ve been a lurker for years and I’ve finally been inspired to start my own.” Which, of course, is fantastic, but what about all of the people who don’t have the time or inclination to start their own blog. I think there have been projects in the past–100 Words and the Blilts–that helped bring in new voices. And I am playing with more ideas that will unfold during the year to bring in more of the silent voices.

What would be most helpful? I would love to hear your ideas/reaction to the concept of ensuring more people have a voice without having to do a lot of work on their own end as well as hearing from those who are blogless on what they would like to see happen to ensure that they are a recorded member of the community–noted, known, and while still blogless, with an important voice.

The first step I’ve taken is to include a new feature on the blog. If you look up at the navigation bar at the top of the blog, you will see a little crown towards the right side with the words “Your Thoughts.” It is a place to leave private comments. The only person who can see them is me. My wish, if you don’t feel comfortable leaving a comment even anonymously on the blog, is that you’ll use this feature to speak your mind. Politely, respectfully, not use it as a space for hate, but it is a private space. I may ask you if I could share your words anonymously within a blog post, but I will never use what is respectfully written in that space without permission.

Technically, it could even be used to submit a short blog post that I could upload on the Annex and Kirtsy in order to get out a point-of-view. But I think it is a valuable place to speak your mind when you don’t want to leave it as a public comment.

So, tune. And all the incarnations of the word “tune.” It will be interesting to see how many people we can bring into the harmony and make sure the silent ones are noted and as important as those who of us who like to talk and talk and talk and fill up the blogosphere with hundreds of posts per year.

Happy anniversary, little blog. You continue to be this huge source of comfort for me and I often jump to you mentally. I am so glad I started you, so glad I continued you, so glad that I’ve met so many amazing people through this space, been affected by their story as they have been affected by mine. I am so proud of the work we all do to take the stigma out of infertility, adoption, and loss. I am grateful to be a member of the ALI community. Thank you for joining in this enormous, three-year-long version of Kumbaya.