World. Hi.
1.) Happy Thanksgiving
2.) Writing a blog is a little harder than I expected....you need to censor yourself, particularly if you are the type that writes in a stream of consciousness sort of way....you have to walk away, come back, read again, and then erase all the stuff you shouldn't have written in the first place that, frankly, you weren't even really aware you wrote in the first place. (hah-I will never tell! Mostly because by tomorrow I will not remember)
For instance, no talk about work. A whole lotta bad can come from that. No talking about family except in the most general way because....Stalkers. Scary. This is G.G.'s influence on me.
3.) So how are you all doing? Stuffed? Funny word within the context, isn't it?
Tonight as we drove home from the TG celebrations I was thinking about "The Secret". I know, I know...but this Secret stuff has been very pervasive in our culture. I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful if positive thoughts got you where you wanted to go? I do think they encourage you to do the work you need to do to get there, so I am somewhat of a believer in that respect. Not to go all woo hoo on you or anything. But I was thinking a few negative thoughts and that is where the scary Secret shit begins. Because according to "The Secret" negative thoughts are just as powerful as positive thoughts. So we are driving along and I am thinking my slightly negative thoughts and then I think to myself: "Self...do not think these bad things because you might make them come true." And then, because SELF has to overthink every little thing, SELF says, "Well what IF your thoughts are all intuitive. What IF your negative thoughts and positive thoughts are all just your intuitive, neglected, sixth sense abilities arising from the sitcom muddled, overworked, stressed out brain that your consciousness calls home to kick you in the butt and say "WAKE UP. This is what is happening so you better come up with a mighty good plan or you better just roll along with your bad self", depending on the message. Maybe it is all about the Non-Secret. All about what you have known all along...
Whoa, that was so not where I thought I was going....
Okay, so blogging. Some people have expressed an interest in the idea of blogging and it is new to them, too. To those people....there are some things I didn't tell you last week. I didn't want to scare you away. Just kidding. Didn't want to scare me away.
So let us review:
1. Set up your blog. This is easy-just google "Start a blog"
2. Get all your friends to read it. Could be easy or hard. That depends, I guess, on your past history. If you are kind and support worthy causes, I am guessing you will have no problem. If you pick your nose at the dinner table and don't respect peoples' personal space, you may want to google "socialization skills" rather than how to start a blog.
3. Get other blogs to link to your blog so that the Google robots will come and deem you worthy.
(by the way, I had a dream about the robots the other night. They were really not like robots. They were more like....lice. Gross, I know. But these little mechanical looking bugs were climbing all OVER my blog and I was saying to them, "please like it please like it please like it". Never thought I'd be so dependent on lice)
Okay, so number three, get other blogs to link...but since that is difficult (especially if you are trying to link to Big Blogger Guy's site who is much too successful and busy to link to your site but is not too busy to offer expert advice as to how you can be a successful blogger...like him) there are sites that you can go onto and log your blog. Google is one, Blogorama is another. If you google it, you will find a whole list. It is labor intensive but it helps to be registered on as many sites as possible.
So number 4.) Log your blog.
Number 5 is using key words. I am still a little unclear on this, but I think the gist is that if you use words that are commonly in the news or searched for, then you increase the chance that your blog will be picked up. So I am thinking that means that if I type, oh, for instance, "Aha Moment"....that I will either show up on someone's search or Oprah's lawyers will be calling me. So type newsworthy words. This probably explains Perez Hilton.
Got it? We're good? Good. I need Pie.
Hope the only secret in your world is a good one. But if it is not....trust your first instinct.
By the way, on You Tube tonight I found Melissa Etheridge's incredible rendition of "Take It". If you need some inspiration, her, bald, singing a song that sets a "F*ck You "Secret" and all bad Mates" tone might be just the sort of "amen sister" moment you are looking for.
Take care.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Hello...Google??? Anybody out there?
So let me lay out the situation for you.....
Middle-aged woman, far too old to be described as naive so we will have to call her woefully underinformed, gets bored on a Saturday morning and decides to start a blog because she's been meaning to do that for a long, long time.
She googles. "Starting a Blog" and lo and beyond it is not that difficult. Who knew? Not MAUW, that is for sure. "Should have done this a long time ago", giggles middle-aged underinformed woman who at this point is still quite pleased with herself and not at all aware that it is NOT THAT EASY.
The MAUW writes her first post and it is not that funny, frankly, but hey, it's the first one and The Funny will follow. Most likely The Funny will follow a bottle of Kendall Jackson. But where were we....so the MAUW has posted her first not that funny post and she is pleased. She reads it fifty times to see if there are any spelling errors and to check for previously undetected funnies. Nope, still not that funny but spelling is accurate. Okay, ready???? Here we go.....and.... POST. OMG OMG OMG I'm a BLOGGER!!!
The first thing MAUW does is email her long-time buddy and co-conspiritor, Green Girl, who could easily be the world's most awesome blogger, more amusing than even Miss Doxie who I'm sure all will agree is currently possibly the world's funniest blogger, but GG has a thing about privacy. You gotta be a personal friend of GG to be the recipient of her heady prose. Sorry world. GG will not be gathering cookies on her PC for the sake of your amusement. But I digress. MAUW emailed GG and I said, "hey I wrote a blog, will you be my first follower?" MAUW still waiting but GG has important things going on in her world that take precedence. And MAUW can't tell you what because, hello, PRIVACY issue.
So GG aside, no one in the www knows about her blog. But, thinks MAUW, that is just a matter of time because now that she is a blogger anyone typing "New England" into the search box will be alerted to her site and will read it and be happy and start following her, right?? And wasn't MAUW so smart to think of using a title that probably a lot of people search for? Particularly during foliage season? MAUW thinks she is so clever but she is not so clever because when she leaves her blog and then tries to find it on Google it does.....not......WAIT! IS THAT IT.......no....it isn't here....oh no why isn't it there???
Okay, a little set back. Apparently it is NOT a matter of setting up a little blog, having a commonly searched title, writing a post, and waiting for the World to write back. Apparently MAUW has to prove her worth or something in order for people to be able to access her site. Apparently right now MAUW's blog is like a secret little club on a side street in Chicago that displays no signage and requires a secret knock to access. Okay that is a little creepy, who wants to enter an unmarked door and traverse a rickety old staircase into a dampened cellar where God knows what all goes on...it could be like that Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman movie only in a dampened cellar and not a secluded mansion. Sorry. Where were we? Mansion, movie, cellar, stairs, unmarked door, secret knock, that's right we are trying to figure out how to get MAUW some readers..
Google worked once so let's try again. MAUW goes back to Google and she types in, "How do I get my blog to show on Google". She is not the first person to have asked that question. Apparently the underinformed are legion. There are roughly 3.653 million sites dealing with this very issue. That is encouraging. MAUW chooses the first suggestion beause it's first so it must be the best, right? She settles in and starts reading. If you have a blog, Google sends little robots to your site and they check it to see if it is worth their attention. If you have no readers and you are not linked to any other blogs then you are not very important. This is SO JUNIOR HIGH like when MAUW's peers were all wearing straight leg jeans from Barefoot Trader and MAUW only had bell bottoms from K-mart and no one would talk to her. Digressing... So what MAUW needs is some readers. (By the way have I said thanks for being here? No? Thanks) First step, tell all friends to go read blog. Second step, get other bloggers to link to your blog but Do NOT go to other people's blogs and ask them to link to your blog. That is not considered very polite in blogworld. That is what the blogger expert man said. Do NOT do that. But then he said it is okay to go on SOME blogs and do that if you are polite. People go to the expert man's blog all the time and make this request. But he does not link to their blogs. Because he is Big Blogger Guy and he does not have time to coddle and nurture the Underinformed. Say what? Do not do this, but you can do it sometimes, just be polite, in fact you can do it on my blog but I will not respond because am very busy BBG.
Glad we cleared that up. MAUW is all set now. She needs some readers (again, thanks) and she needs links. Then and only then will the Google robots grace her site and pronounce it worthy, whereupon the masses hoping to book a bed and breakfast in Vermont or New Hampshire or Maine will trip over it and read it and be wildly (mildly?) amused and tell their friends and MAUW's power will grow and grow and that little unmarked door will be the Atlantis in Dubai of the WWW. That's Right! MAUW has plans, BBG, so watch your back. And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you just maybe be nice and give a tiny little link to a woman old enough to be your mother? I'll be your best friend....
Middle-aged woman, far too old to be described as naive so we will have to call her woefully underinformed, gets bored on a Saturday morning and decides to start a blog because she's been meaning to do that for a long, long time.
She googles. "Starting a Blog" and lo and beyond it is not that difficult. Who knew? Not MAUW, that is for sure. "Should have done this a long time ago", giggles middle-aged underinformed woman who at this point is still quite pleased with herself and not at all aware that it is NOT THAT EASY.
The MAUW writes her first post and it is not that funny, frankly, but hey, it's the first one and The Funny will follow. Most likely The Funny will follow a bottle of Kendall Jackson. But where were we....so the MAUW has posted her first not that funny post and she is pleased. She reads it fifty times to see if there are any spelling errors and to check for previously undetected funnies. Nope, still not that funny but spelling is accurate. Okay, ready???? Here we go.....and.... POST. OMG OMG OMG I'm a BLOGGER!!!
The first thing MAUW does is email her long-time buddy and co-conspiritor, Green Girl, who could easily be the world's most awesome blogger, more amusing than even Miss Doxie who I'm sure all will agree is currently possibly the world's funniest blogger, but GG has a thing about privacy. You gotta be a personal friend of GG to be the recipient of her heady prose. Sorry world. GG will not be gathering cookies on her PC for the sake of your amusement. But I digress. MAUW emailed GG and I said, "hey I wrote a blog, will you be my first follower?" MAUW still waiting but GG has important things going on in her world that take precedence. And MAUW can't tell you what because, hello, PRIVACY issue.
So GG aside, no one in the www knows about her blog. But, thinks MAUW, that is just a matter of time because now that she is a blogger anyone typing "New England" into the search box will be alerted to her site and will read it and be happy and start following her, right?? And wasn't MAUW so smart to think of using a title that probably a lot of people search for? Particularly during foliage season? MAUW thinks she is so clever but she is not so clever because when she leaves her blog and then tries to find it on Google it does.....not......WAIT! IS THAT IT.......no....it isn't here....oh no why isn't it there???
Okay, a little set back. Apparently it is NOT a matter of setting up a little blog, having a commonly searched title, writing a post, and waiting for the World to write back. Apparently MAUW has to prove her worth or something in order for people to be able to access her site. Apparently right now MAUW's blog is like a secret little club on a side street in Chicago that displays no signage and requires a secret knock to access. Okay that is a little creepy, who wants to enter an unmarked door and traverse a rickety old staircase into a dampened cellar where God knows what all goes on...it could be like that Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman movie only in a dampened cellar and not a secluded mansion. Sorry. Where were we? Mansion, movie, cellar, stairs, unmarked door, secret knock, that's right we are trying to figure out how to get MAUW some readers..
Google worked once so let's try again. MAUW goes back to Google and she types in, "How do I get my blog to show on Google". She is not the first person to have asked that question. Apparently the underinformed are legion. There are roughly 3.653 million sites dealing with this very issue. That is encouraging. MAUW chooses the first suggestion beause it's first so it must be the best, right? She settles in and starts reading. If you have a blog, Google sends little robots to your site and they check it to see if it is worth their attention. If you have no readers and you are not linked to any other blogs then you are not very important. This is SO JUNIOR HIGH like when MAUW's peers were all wearing straight leg jeans from Barefoot Trader and MAUW only had bell bottoms from K-mart and no one would talk to her. Digressing... So what MAUW needs is some readers. (By the way have I said thanks for being here? No? Thanks) First step, tell all friends to go read blog. Second step, get other bloggers to link to your blog but Do NOT go to other people's blogs and ask them to link to your blog. That is not considered very polite in blogworld. That is what the blogger expert man said. Do NOT do that. But then he said it is okay to go on SOME blogs and do that if you are polite. People go to the expert man's blog all the time and make this request. But he does not link to their blogs. Because he is Big Blogger Guy and he does not have time to coddle and nurture the Underinformed. Say what? Do not do this, but you can do it sometimes, just be polite, in fact you can do it on my blog but I will not respond because am very busy BBG.
Glad we cleared that up. MAUW is all set now. She needs some readers (again, thanks) and she needs links. Then and only then will the Google robots grace her site and pronounce it worthy, whereupon the masses hoping to book a bed and breakfast in Vermont or New Hampshire or Maine will trip over it and read it and be wildly (mildly?) amused and tell their friends and MAUW's power will grow and grow and that little unmarked door will be the Atlantis in Dubai of the WWW. That's Right! MAUW has plans, BBG, so watch your back. And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you just maybe be nice and give a tiny little link to a woman old enough to be your mother? I'll be your best friend....
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