by kristendom on May 16, 2012
About once every two – three months (depending on other priorities), I look at my blog statistics and get completely and utterly frustrated. This is why I don’t look at them more often. I feel like a write on here a LOT. And I feel like my writing is entertaining – at least, those are the responses I get. And when I look at the broad range of people that post comments – either here, on Facebook, or on Twitter – I think to myself, hey, I’m reaching a heck of a lot of people with my blog. Go me! I could totally make a career of this.
But then I go look at the statistics. And they tell another story – one I choose not to repeat. It can be very frustrating to put this much time and effort into something and have it go (at least partially) unrewarded. And while my purpose for blogging is not to make money or become an internet celebrity – at least more of one than I already am – I have to admit that a small part of me wants this blog to happen. I want to be acknowledged for my writing and spending so much time working on this. I want to “hit it big” someday. I want people to respond, to comment, to let me know that yes, we are reading your blog, and we love it! (Okay, I’d settle for, yes,we are reading your blog, and it’s not so bad).
No, this is not why I write this blog – I love writing, I love sharing stories about myself, I love the connections that I do make through it – small though those numbers may be. I love having this written record of my life, of Aedan’s childhood, and my random thoughts. I love being able to discover the humor in whatever situation has presented itself because I’m writing about it for an audience instead of wallowing in it by myself.
And so I only check my numbers once every couple of months. Because really, who wants to hear me whine about nobody reading my blog when you’re already reading it, and you’re certainly not nobody?
Did I mention I had a long day today?
On the plus side, tomorrow is Friday-eve, and I have a book about the Titanic awaiting me when I finish posting this. And now I’ll go have some cheese with this whine.
by kristendom on May 14, 2012
I am not an extrovert by any means. I know, I know, I should have warned you to sit down before dropping that bombshell. But seriously – having lots and lots of friends? Not my deal.
What is my deal is having a few friends I hold very near and dear to my heart. Friends whom I can tell anything and for whom I’d do anything. (No, really, I tend to get all Mama Bear when someone does them wrong. Just ask…well, just ask about any of them. It can get very un-pretty). I love this about my life for the most part. I love having people I’m this close to – they know just about everything about me. They can read my face and know what I’m going to say even before I say it (generally that goes something like this: Before you start freaking out/stressing out/taking the world on your shoulders, let’s talk… or something along those lines. Apparently my “freak out” face is easy to read). If you don’t have people like this in your life, you should really work on it. It’s pretty damn awesome.
However. This also means when something pisses you off, frustrates you, or generally annoys the crap out of you, your options for bitching about it are limited. While most of the time this doesn’t seem to be a problem for me, occasionally, my main ventees have other things going on in their lives. I know – the nerve. Seriously, though, part of being good friends with people means that even though you want to call and spout off about that one thing that is driving you bat shit crazy, you don’t when you know they’ve got bigger and badder things on their mind.
So it is helpful to have another network of friends – those you have met through the interwebs (or otherwise, but who you keep in touch with over the interwebs). Tonight was one of those nights when I randomly reached out to someone with whom I’d had some brief face-to-face interactions but through our blogs and Twitter felt like I could share the thing that was bugging me and get the feedback I needed. And not only did that work, that got my mind racing in other directions, and then I reached out to another virtual friend and got just the sort of response you’d expect – any time, Kristen, any time. These people are pretty freaking awesome.
I’m feeling pretty dang lucky tonight – not only for my tight network of friends here, but the (also tight) but broader network I’ve managed to build online. For those people who say face to face is more important and the only way to have a meaningful relationship? They can suck it. They’ve obviously never had friends like mine.
Virtual Friends
by kristendom on May 14, 2012
I am not an extrovert by any means. I know, I know, I should have warned you to sit down before dropping that bombshell. But seriously – having lots and lots of friends? Not my deal.
What is my deal is having a few friends I hold very near and dear to my heart. Friends whom I can tell anything and for whom I’d do anything. (No, really, I tend to get all Mama Bear when someone does them wrong. Just ask…well, just ask about any of them. It can get very un-pretty). I love this about my life for the most part. I love having people I’m this close to – they know just about everything about me. They can read my face and know what I’m going to say even before I say it (generally that goes something like this: Before you start freaking out/stressing out/taking the world on your shoulders, let’s talk… or something along those lines. Apparently my “freak out” face is easy to read). If you don’t have people like this in your life, you should really work on it. It’s pretty damn awesome.
However. This also means when something pisses you off, frustrates you, or generally annoys the crap out of you, your options for bitching about it are limited. While most of the time this doesn’t seem to be a problem for me, occasionally, my main ventees have other things going on in their lives. I know – the nerve. Seriously, though, part of being good friends with people means that even though you want to call and spout off about that one thing that is driving you bat shit crazy, you don’t when you know they’ve got bigger and badder things on their mind.
So it is helpful to have another network of friends – those you have met through the interwebs (or otherwise, but who you keep in touch with over the interwebs). Tonight was one of those nights when I randomly reached out to someone with whom I’d had some brief face-to-face interactions but through our blogs and Twitter felt like I could share the thing that was bugging me and get the feedback I needed. And not only did that work, that got my mind racing in other directions, and then I reached out to another virtual friend and got just the sort of response you’d expect – any time, Kristen, any time. These people are pretty freaking awesome.
I’m feeling pretty dang lucky tonight – not only for my tight network of friends here, but the (also tight) but broader network I’ve managed to build online. For those people who say face to face is more important and the only way to have a meaningful relationship? They can suck it. They’ve obviously never had friends like mine.
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