Tag Archives: blogging

Tsk Tsk Bloggy To-Do

4 Replies

The Liebert.

The Zero to Hero.

Items on my bloggy to-do list, haunting my days and my nights. Keeping me awake…tossing…turning…rolling on my bed in the wee hours then staring back up at me from my coffee cup come morning.

Well okay, not really.

But there is this slight little pressure between my shoulder blades. That’s what happens to a wanna-be Type A when crucial bloggy tasks such as these remain undone.

So this is what I’m gonna do.

I’m going to follow along on the Zero to Hero only as I can. I’m kinda happy with how this thing is shaking out so far. I’m not out to have hundreds of followers. Heck, truth be known, I’m just happy to see real, live people who are not spammers down on my sweet little visitor’s list. Seriously.  Give me a few writers, a few Mamas, some folks who love Jesus too, add my high school English teacher into the mix and BAM, I’m in bloggy Heaven. What more’s a gal need?

So I’ll just poke along the Z2H path as I can but really, having this pretty little corner to tuck my writing into is the perfect amount of fun for now. Having a few friends and some new blog pals actually read it…that there is just yummy icing.

Now. Liebert.

Liebert, Liebert, Liebert.

What am I gonna do about you Liebert?

I’ve been doing some research.

There are two camps. People who LOVE blog awards. People who {{squeallll}} in delight when someone lays one on their blog. That’s what I did. Squeeeall. Like it was the Emmys squeal.

Not everyone squeals. There there are folks who are polite and gracious and kind with their words and say: Yeah. Thanks. But NO thanks!

And I kinda get that a little…there’s a few stips to this award thingy.

So what’s a new-to-blogging gal to do? Especially when she doesn’t really have many blog friends yet, and those she does either 1) have thousands of followers (literally thousands), 2) have already been hit with at least 8 Liebert nominations and are working their way through the legwork or 3) have sweetly and respectfully tucked and rolled their way out of a dozen nominations in their comment log?

Really. What’s a gal to do?

This is what this gal is gonna do:

I’m going to nominate two of the blogs I’ve read that do not fall into one of those three abovementioned criteria and call it good. I have read some uh-may-zing blogs…and I know there are gajillions more here on the Word Press. I just haven’t been able to explore that many yet. My reader list is small and I’m kinda slow, so rather than let the slow take the lead, I’ll let the small go first 🙂

Here’s my two. I hope I don’t kicked off Word Press for not following the rules. I especially hope I won’t have to give my purty and shiny OscarImeanLiebert back.

Without further ado, I nominate:

Rachel over at At the Corner of 14th and Oak. She’s got an adorable little blog, all full of nostalgia and history, which I totally dig and she talks about seeking and searching, all in an open, honest way, which I also totally dig.

Heidi over at His Will, His Way. She’s got a great thing going and honors the Lord with her precious new blog. Love it.

So gals, here’s how it goes:

liebster

The rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link to their blog.

2. You must answer the 10 questions given to you by the nominee before you.

3. You must nominate 10 of your favorite blogs with fewer than 200 followers and notify them of their nomination.

4. You must come up with 10 questions for your nominees to answer.

Here are my ten questions for my not-quite ten bloggers:

1) What made you decide to start your blog?

2) What are your goals for your blog?

3) If you are a writer? An artist? A blogger? All of the above?…How much of your life to you devote to these talents?

4) If you were able to visit anywhere in the world, where would it be?

5) Dogs or cats?

6) Introvert or extrovert?

7) City or country?

8) Write then post, edit a little before hitting enter or obsess over a piece for days before any eyes see it?

9) Summer or winter?

10) What’s your biggest blogging/writing/online challenge?

Phew. That was kinda hard.

Now I’m off to let them know I’ve nominated them.

And maybe I’ll finally get a good night’s sleep tonight.

🙂

Up in the Hood

Day 4: Explore the Neighborhood

“Blogging is a communal experience; if you didn’t want anyone to read your posts or interact with you, you’d keep a private diary… Today, you begin the process of engaging with the blogging community, a key step of building an audience.”

Today’s assignment: follow five new topics in the Reader, and begin finding blogs (and bloggers) you love.

I’ve been here a little over a week I think.

Found some AWESOME blogs to follow already! My blogging friend gave me that assignment on my very first day here.

Check. Day 4 done.

So I thought I’d “explore the neighborhood” some in the folks that have found me here on my crazy little farm.

Anddd…soo..yeahhh..ummm…

About that.

I guess it makes sense that stepping onto the worldwide web would bring out opportunistic internet salespeople and make them glom on just like they do when you make a ton of online orders right before Christmas and then notice that your email is getting an extraordinarily high number of spam mail come January.

I get it.

But I guess there was an itty bitty part of my tender writer’s heart that thought this was going to be a cozy little place where all of us author wanna-be folks sat around with our doodled up notebooks and our skinny lattes and oohed and aahhed as we read each others brilliant words and passages and pieces.

Yeah. Not so much.

Where do these folks come from anyway?

And why do I have to have them taking up space around our little writing table with their internet sales pitches and their fake profiles that hide their pornographic websites?

You know the ones….they don’t even bring a coffee to the table.

No profile or website other than either a) a grainy pic that looks like it was snapped in someone’s basement or b) a “studio” pic that could be taken off a local real estate agent’s business card or c) a high adventure photo that includes white sand, snowboarding, coastal resorts or tan people in bikinis.

I’m fixin to cry here. I thought this gig would be me, some of my bffs, and a few new friends I’d make on blogosphere. And my high school English teacher of course.

Not single men looking for women or single women looking for love or photos of people who supposedly travel the world and do all the amazing-incredible-you’ve-not-lived-life-until-you’ve-lived-like-me sorts of jobs that us normal everyday boring in the dark schmucks like me are just waiting to sign up for so we can give up the drab nothingness we’ve lived so far and FINALLY have the life we’ve always dreamed of.

Puh-leeze.

Sigh.

{{Sip the latte}}

This must make me a Pollyanna amateur writer wanna-be, thinking this would be a great place to network, write, grow, sharpen my skills and learn how to start giving a little more time to the writer side of me.

Is this really how it is now?

Everyone after an easy buck?

Everyone glomming onto the coattails of other people so they can tout their get-rich-quick bs?

Ah, the bitter taste of disillusionment.

I’ll stick to my coffee thank you very much.

How funny is it that my husband tells me “if you want people to read your writing you have to put it in a place where people can read it.”

And by putting it in a place where folks can read it, I’m sitting among folks who have no interest in reading it.

This makes me mad. Mad for me, who gives darn good time to stringing these here words out, and mad for all the folks here who do the same. Flamin mad I tell ya.

But then I go peek through my itty bitty list. And not everyone’s a Take Advantage Of kind of follower.

There are some here in this place who LOVE writing.

Who LOVE catching up on the world via blogs.

Who LOVE sharing their words and honing their skill.

Who LOVE encouraging others.

Who LOVE me.

And THAT right there is why I’ll stay.

That right there is why I’ll  continue to blog and if you want to bring your nasty and your schemes and your sales pitch I will let you sit here because I have to, it’s a public blog after all, but I don’t have to listen to your attempts to take advantage of me, or anyone else here in this community. While I understand you need to make a living, the rest of us are here for the reasons of wanting to write, wanting to share, wanting to learn, wanting to grow and wanting to read what others have to say.

There’s no coat tails in them there reasons.

So.

Go on and jump off your ski slopes in British Columbia, and go on and bed the woman of your dreams in Bali.

But me?

Me and my friends, well we’ll be right here, writing our little  hearts out and living this boring old writer’s blogging life just like everybody else.

And we’ll be loving it.

medium_9994605475 (2)

© Cassandra Rankin, This Crazy Little Farm

{{photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/explainthatstuff/9994605475/”>explainthatstuff</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>cc</a>}}

Day 3 – Heaven Came Down, Crazy Little Farms, and Words that Come Forth

Leave a reply

Zero to Hero Blogger

Day 3: What’s on your mind? When you thought about starting a blog… Today, you’ll write it.

Today’s assignment: write the post that was on your mind when you decided to start a blog.

The post that was on my mind when I started to blog and the post I posted were two totally different things.

This blog was initially going to be Heaven Came Down. Because Heaven did come down.

But that name was already taken.

So I changed directions and used a piece I’d recently written as the inspiration for the name and feel of my little nook here on the net.

You can read it here: Life is Messy and Things Aren’t Always Little on This Crazy Little Farm

That really is who we are and what we’re all about on this crazy little farm.

And it’s funny how, with a family and kids and a farm and animals…they kinda all roll into everything you do and you’re learning always and even when it’s not about the farm it’s still about the farm ya know?

I don’t know if that makes sense to you.

But it does to me and that’s why my posts aren’t always specifically about farming.

It’s a guarantee though that they’re usually all about growing.

And maybe that there is where the farming comes in.

{{The piece that made me start my own blog}}