| | So, a friend of Dave’s from college
has awarded me a Rockin’ Girl Blogger Award.
About a hundred years ago, more or less.
Now, the woman who gave me this award is an obviously Rockin’ Girl
Blogger. She has lived a nomadic
existence for a several years as they try to figure out where exactly God wants
them. Right now, it’s plunked down in Texas,
via a long road trip from Virginia
and through California. Any mom with three small children who can
make this sound like an adventure deserves, at the very least, the title
Rockin’ Girl.
I’m not exactly sure how I qualify. It obviously isn’t because of the frequency
of my posts. And I’m pretty sure
it’s.not my rockin’ clean house, unless you mean that feeling you get as you
stumble over toys and dog en route from one uncluttered seat to the next (which
is usually not too nearby). That is
pretty rockin’. Or maybe someone told
her that I still rock my baby to sleep (my three-almost four-year-old baby). That must be it because we have been rockin’
babies to sleep for a good ten years around here. We are so rockin’!
But if I had to pick Rockin’ Girl Bloggers, these are my
picks:
1) Duckabush
Blog: My roommate from college, a mom of
five kids who homeschools and manages to find humor and wisdom in her daily
existence. Just the sheer volume of
blogs/week is Rockin’!
2) The
Gang’s All Here: A friend who used to
attend our church a long while ago with four kids and an adoption in process
who can still find the humor in life.
And just to make sure you don’t get off scot-free, also
consider yourselves tagged for this meme (if you can make time for it) with
which an old neighbor friend (by which I mean that I used to live her
neighborhood, not of course, that she is aged) tagged me. Here is the meme:
Your mission: Give one or more
these questions a stab in a post (or series of posts), and then tag three more
writers. If you don't mind, please link back to this original entry—we'd LOVE
to track the progress of this meme with trackbacks.
1. Go back to first or early post. How would you describe your voice back in
those early days? Who were you writing to? What was your sense of audience (if
any) back then?
2. Do you remember when you received your first comment? What was it like?
3. Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be
part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a larger community of
interacting writers?
4. Do you think that this sense of audience or community might have affected
the way you began to write?
Okay, so here goes:
Well, here’s my first blog. Beautiful, isn't it? I definitely started blogging to
connect to my family and friends who are scattered in far-flung places and
because I loved reading my cousin’s blog and hearing her everyday
thoughts. I think I followed the lead
and vein of the bloggers I was reading from her blog, which were mostly
lighthearted portrayals of life with a few heavy thoughts thrown in (or maybe
they were mostly deep and Aristotle-worthy but I just ended up being petty because the
reality of my life often feels heavy enough and I was craving an outlet to find
the humor in it all). And I don’t think
that’s changed much--my pettiness, I mean. My frequent
commenters did change, though, as family wearied or couldn’t spare time to
comment, so I ended up with my faithful few.
I deliberately avoided joining the many blogging groups out
there because frankly the thought of being read by the world and feeling
responsible to correspondingly read the millions of bloggers in the world was
too much for an introvert like me. And I
was reading some phenomenal writers with whom I didn’t feel I could
compare. That's me, the big wimp. But I’m a bit more settled into
blogging now (after 1.5 years, I should hope so!), and the bloggers I now read
regularly—sorry, I can’t figure out how to do a blog roll in xanga—feel like
friends now. And I love those friends of
mine who regularly read my blog but aren’t into the whole blogosphere.
I think I always felt like part of a conversation, though,
because of the comments, and because I was commenting on other blogs. But there are definitely some discussions I
read on other blogs that still create a feeling of me just looking in. Ones I wish I had the time and energy to be a
part of but I just don’t. Still, I enjoy
having something stimulating to think about and picking up book tips and
throwing in my two cents when I have time.
I definitely became part of a larger community of bloggers
when I finally hooked into the bloggers at my church through MIA. And that was a scary change, one that I dealt
with my usual over-analyzing angst because …oh, too many reasons to list
(Christians are sometimes scary that way).
But I’ve been grateful for the women I’ve started corresponding with
through that group as well.
Hmmm. Does that at
all answer the questions? At least some? Or any?
**Lynette, I liked this book, but it's a little crass so I don't know if you'd like it, but it had some really interesting ideas. The last book I read, 'The Kite Runner', was an incredible look into Afghanistan, but I think it's a bit too gruesome. Read 'Three Cups of Tea' if you're looking for something. Or 'Divine Nobodies'. They were both great. Kent might like 'Divine Nobodies', too--it's by an emergent church pastor. Did I already recommend 'The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency' books? They are pretty light, fun reads.
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