Dear Blogosphere, Give Me Some Bloglovin!

Image via CrunchBase

You may or may not know it but this is my first successful* blog.  Since becoming *successful with this one I branched off and started approximately 6 other blogs that I continue to update.  There are others I’ve started that I didn’t continue to work on.  Each blog means something in particular to me and I don’t intend on letting go of any for awhile. 

I feel that having this many blogs has really helped me to have an outlet for almost* everything I want to share on the interwebz world-wide web.  Which begs the question…what’s the point of social media?  Well the point seems to be that everyone won’t always be plugged into everything you’re posting elsewhere and every chance you have to bling your name in front of their screen should be taken advantage of, only if they’re actually signing up for screen-blingage of course*. 

I’m not that great at social media.  I’m not that great at blogging.  I have a lot to say and I love to write, but I’m not super fond of the fact that if I take a break I have to build up a readership from scratch*.   I’ve tried to schedule my blog posts a week in advance like good bloggers do, but I’m naughty and nice.  I need to be spontaneous from time to time.  I need to write a bit and leave it for awhile and come back to it later. 

You may have witnessed this past week or two that I was trying my best to be on my p’s and q’s.  I actually scheduled my blog posts 2 weeks in advance, on several blogs(not just this one).  Unfortunately, the blogs that were scheduled weren’t actually finished.   I was able to catch some of them up before they were published, but some were published in the hall of shame.  They were blog titles with no content or half-finished* content.  I had a busy week and I’d get online after putting my kids to bed to check if anything published to my embarrassment.

I’m going to try this again.  I’m going to separate my blogs into parts more often if I don’t finish them by a certain date and make sure that anything scheduled at least 3 days in advance is completely ready to go.  Another thing I’m going to do is figure out what happened to the blog post I published last night.  I admit I was tired, but I know I published a blog and now it is nowhere to be found.  I searched the drafts, published and trash on all 6 (or so) of my blogs.  This is the first time I’ve ever had a problem like this…what’s going on wordpress?

I’m also going to ask you to Follow my blog with Bloglovin*.  Why?  Because Bloglovin is really awesome.  If you have a lot going on(like me) if you have several blogs or unjobs or what-have-you.  You might be lost in a flux of emails and unable to keep up with the blogs you love the most(hopefully this one…who am I kidding…).  So you put those blogs in Bloglovin and you can keep up with the blogs you want to keep up with.  You can get a weekly*email to show you the updates or you can just go to the website when you feel like geeking out in the blogosphere and not need to search for “what’s that blog…” (It’s called the Aniweda Dream, featheraniweda.wordpress.com).

Do you like my stars?  They represent:

*Success as in still alive and regularly updated and holding onto a few supportive readers(u.r.so.beeyoutiful.2me).

*Becoming meaning feeling validated in continuing with my blogging habits and goals.

*I think I need to regularly post private blogs here or start a tumblr to round out my internet over-shareability.

*Begone pop-ups…you may look a little less snotty than you did in the 9o‘s but you’re still overwhelmingly immature and annoying.

*Or that’s how I feel when I look at my stats and compare them to times past.

*Or less(much, much, less) than half-finished but could be construed as half-finished if you don’t exist in my brain.

*Where the most popular blogs are almost 100% fashion/style related.  Does this depict the real popularity of blogs or just on this site, because if this is the case across the board…I’m just gonna shake my head at the shallow end of humanity.*  ((star within a star::or the segment of humanity that uses the internet enough to follow blogs, ya know.))

*Or daily if you can keep up with your web usage like that, or possibly something in between, I don’t really know, sign up and check it out.

~~Still Dreaming, Of Course

One Year Ago Today I Committed To Me…

It would’ve been my 7 year anniversary of being with my former mate. Last year, this time, though we were still together, something really changed in me. I can’t say exactly what it was, but I have the distinct memory of thinking “I’m going to commit to this blog thing and see where it takes me”.

And I did.

I haven’t been 100% consistent…hellz no, not at all.

But I’ve tried… I’ve challenged myself…I’ve connected to some of you…I figured some things out…

I figured that things I couldn’t blog about I probably shouldn’t be about.

I mean at my deepest. I’m a writer. Since I was a tiny one, with neon colored Lisa Frank notebooks, I’ve written and written and written.

The other thing about me…I LOVE sharing my shit! I laugh at myself and share my struggles and insights and I’m rarely embarrassed or ashamed. That is my nature…I mean, I never felt like my life was private. I always felt that it was public. I always felt the buzz of the internet, long before I knew what it was. (universal consciousness and all) I also felt the buzz of the ancestars and have felt a connection to the future as well, as if I have always been living for them… I’m going back to that Aniweda Dream ya’ll…the one I met in childhood.  I guess you could call it TRIBE.

Magyar: Forrás: http://www.bukhara-carpets.com/img/yurt/DSCN5853.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m one of those introverted people written about at the http://www.carlkingdom.com/10-myths-about-introverts. I need to talk to people about real shit, and share scars and wounds and ecstatic goofiness and geekiness as well.  I need to feel deeply accepted and trusted.  I like to connect deeply…too deeply for lots of people.  I’m intense I’ve been told.

Anyway, time has been a thread for me…I never felt like “old people” were old, or the turn of the century was a long time ago, or a disconnect from the beginning of time. What I’m trying to explain is that I’ve never felt like anything ends, everything is a part of the same story. That’s why I can’t check those cute little boxes on government forms. I am…I am…I am…

Me. And when these little questions started popping up for me, about what I could write about…which parts of me I couldn’t share, I started wondering if maybe these parts of me, weren’t. To quote J.Lo(;)) “I’m Real”… and I was connecting myself with beliefs and conditions that were false.

There’s a reason that catch-phrase persisted. It is all too easy to attach to, claim and blend into the falsehood. It could be because of persuasion, trauma, embarrassment, confusion, loneliness, even excitement. It could be something that slowly sank into you or something that you spontaneously swerved into. It could be something you can’t pinpoint, haven’t even noticed, can’t escape or don’t dare to acknowledge.

I don’t know what it is(or was) for you. But I can practically guarantee everyone will or has (and probably at many points) head in a direction of being who they are not. For me it was a bipolar tug-of-war. I was constantly pulling myself out of the pit, building myself back up and carrying on, only to be pulled back in, over and over again. Finally, I realized I needed to untie myself from the ropes.

Fire Ropes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This blog helped me to do that. Not with the things I published, not really even with my famous backlog of drafts. It was in the things that I struggled to even write, that I struggled to even wrap my head around how to write or if I could. These things gave me the impetus to write what I could, make connections, learn from other bloggers, and commit to me, the real me.

I am grateful for all the readers, bloggers, businesses and supporters who helped me stick with this, and finally define my vision. I had a dream, when I first started this blog. But when I started this blog, that vision was a barely flickering flame lit in a closet that I was afraid to open. I knew it was a part of me, I knew it was my soul in there, but so much death in my life was fearing me away from it, telling me I couldn’t have it, telling me to be someone else. But I gave hope to that vision, I protected it’s source, I fed that flame, and it has grown into a blazing inferno, just like it was when I lived it many years ago.  But now… it is ALL MINE! (mwahahaha)  To have and to hold and to never lose sight of again.

That’s what community and commitment are for.  Setting up that foundation for reality to expand and still fit in where it started.  (Don’t forget where you came from, ya’ll.  It’s your key to getting back to you.  Your heart…your real home.)

My partner’s grandmother said something to me before I left.  Okay she said a lot of things and I have an awesome draft about it, that I’ll publish someday, but she said “I felt the same way about my first love.”  It dawned on me…damn.  I never thought of it as my first love.  It was intense and I thought it was forever, but now I see why I needed those years to know my capacity to love.  Now I know.

How did your first romantic love teach you about yourself?  I’m mad curious, yo. 😉

Blogger Attention-Deficit-Disorder

 

I believe I have this unfortunate illness of the mind. I seem to have it B.A.A.D.

 

Symptoms are the urge to constantly redefine the guidelines of your blog(s), a dashboard full of half-complete drafts, fully complete drafts and drafts that include nothing but a title and an idea of awesome…

 

If unchecked this disease could lead to full on blogger-dementia or Blogzheimer’s. If you recognize these thoughts in yourself or if you’ve heard the under-the-breath mumblings of the blogger in your life, please seek help:

 

• What happened to that blog I wrote last week?

 

• I don’t remember if I blogged last week or not…

 

• Someone searched ______, I don’t know what that is, but I need to write a blog about it.

 

• When should I post all these drafts, I can’t post them all in one day can I?

 

• I just wrote an awesome blog and posted it right away, but I feel guilty for all the blogs I have on the back-burner.

 

• Should I capitalize on my bravery and post whenever I’m feeling inclined to do so?

 

• After working on it for half a year I still don’t think this blog post is perfect yet, I should make sure no one else on the internet has ever posted this blog before.

 

• What is this blog about anyway?

 

• I thought this blog would be about _____ but I don’t seem to have any posts about that topic.

 

• This blog is a perfect mix of all the things that are important to me, but I don’t have anything else to write that fits my current interests.

 

• Why do I include questions at the end of my blog if no one ever answers?

 

• What kinds of questions should I ask to get my readers to comment?

 

• Should I write directly to my followers?

 

• What? I only have 1 view today? What can I do to get a few more?

 

• Oh no! I have so many views today, what can I do to get them to come back?

 

If you recognize any of these signs please step away from your blog for a day.  Don’t check your stats.  Realize and acknowledge that you have it B.A.D.D.  The first step is awareness.  I will return tomorrow(if my bravery allows it) with the treatment options for this strange malady.

 

P.S. Thanks to Kathy for helping me to realize my blogger status.

 

Introducing Work Wednesday

When it comes to work I’ve spent most of my life doing two things. Taking care of children and writing. I always thought I’d be a writer, but my first interest was childcare. Not that I wanted to do that long term, but during my teenage years I knew that I liked the feeling of being useful and having a purpose in the eyes of a child.

Now, I have two children. I continue to make writing a priority for me but I really want to have more regular work. I knew at the age of 17 that it would take some time to build a career as a writer.  I had an idea coming out of high school of a business idea I wanted to try and my dad said he would help me with it.  I wanted at that point to start a business.  I took a semester off from school to focus on my writing career before starting college.

It was a miserable fail.  Or at least that was how I felt about it.  I submitted poetry to several markets, most that I paid a reading fee to and got lots of rejections.  I waited for my dad to bring up helping me with my business and I listened to everyone tell me what I needed to do to apply for college.  I felt like I spent most of my time doing that.  I wrote a lot, I journaled a lot and I tried to find online writing communities that would help me.  I joined http://www.authorsden.com and found a site called http://www.espressofiction.com.  Author’s Den didn’t help me at all, and neither did espresso fiction.  I wasn’t a fiction writer.  At that point I was really a poet who was also into playwriting and creative nonfiction.

I didn’t know that I had a poem accepted in an anthology I’d entered as part of my creative writing class the following semester.  I entered college and majored in English, then Journalism, then my school offered Writing/Linguistics so of course I was one of the first to declare that major.  However, I knew before I started college I was only doing it because I was “supposed to”.  I quit after about 5 semesters to move in with my husband completely on the other side of the U.S.

Upon moving in we both started a Kundalini Yoga Teacher training.  I’d been doing yoga for awhile, but Kundalini Yoga was so much more than I knew yoga could be.  I did this yoga with my husband awhile before we started the training and this has changed my life, my direction and focus in life.  Since then I’ve done lots of life coaching(spiritual, weight management, parenting), psychic work, music/creativity, gardening, caregiving, dance/yoga, and running a vegan restaurant.  I also did doula training and became a breastfeeding counselor.

In my work I want to incorporate Kundalini Yoga and writing and domestic care.  I love helping people and I find that helping with domestic tasks to be a very bonding experience and a great way to show support and empower people to improve their lives, their health, their attitudes.  I especially love working with kids and now that I’m one I love working with parents!  When I was a nanny I always used to say the thing I love most about my job is working with kids, the thing I hate about my job is working with parents…I had a couple really great parents I worked with and they ended up being my friends after the job ended.   With all my other experiences in life I see a really great way to make working with parents a better experience for them and myself.

A little while after my daughter was born my husband and I actually came up with a really great business idea incorporating the aforementioned topics, to include creativity, health and nutrition.  We’ve been on quite a journey in our lives since that time.  We’ve moved across the country, and the whole of our lives has changed several times.  My husband was very much into personal development and now he doesn’t seem to vibe with that at all.

I always thought we would work together, since we’ve been together we almost always have.  However, right now, I have years worth of perfecting this idea, and a drive and urge to actually take action on it.  I’m using the blogosphere to get me on track and accustomed to writing all the time and for an audience again.  I’m also using it to bring me focus, accountability and a record of my progress.  Just as importantly I want to use it to find my audience or supporters.  Blogging is a great beginning and confidence booster for me to take the chance and go after my dream work with a huge dream catcher…

From now on I’ll be posting what I do for work on Wednesdays.  A couple weeks ago I started journaling my work related activities in a file on my computer.  I have a document that details what I want to do with my blogs.  It is a 30 day plan and I have several pages that I use just to quickly journal what I’ve done during the week that I will write about later, such as my meal plans.

Right now I’m still not 100% sure about what direction I want to take with my blogs, since I have several.  But I realized, watching a video from Frederic Patenaude of http://www.dowhatyoulove.com/ that I’m going in the right direction by just taking action and readjusting later.  I write on my file my inspirations, plans and goals for each blog and I think they all create their own direction. This topic might include work I’m doing with my children since my most important work in my opinion is being a mother. Eventually it will all be exactly what it needs to be.