I'm tempted to let it sit on the couch with its feet curled up under a blanket, a hot cup of coffee in hand, a block of cherry almond bark Chocolove within reach, and An Affair to Remember spinning in the DVD player.
I'm one of those obsessive bloggers, the kind who checks her sitemeter as often as possible throughout the day, the kind who gauges the quality of her writing by the number of readers who regularly stop by. I've become less interested in the overall number of hits and more interested in the number of repeat hits. The return visitors are the ones I long for. When my sitemeter reads forty at the end of the day, and the majority of those hits are webpals who have conversed, I'm happy. Forty may seem low to many of you, but I've only been at this since August. To me, forty is a jackpot.
A few days ago, I sat down at my laptop and discovered a number somewhere in the eighties. Eighties! Yippee! Yeeha! Hoo-rah! I've been discovered by the webworld, or I'm on my way at least, and people are reading my blabber, spellbound and possibly linking and possibly leaving pins in my map--which is the true gauge of my self-worth. The more pins in the map, the more value I have as a human being.
After a day of revelling, I stopped by the site that is hosting the NaBloPoMo and discovered something I must have missed during my last visit--The Randomizer. Similar to the "next blog" button provided by Blogger, The Randomizer takes you through a random cycle of blogs participating in the NaBloPoMo.
The Randomizer can be captivating, actually holding you captive. It can pull that trigger in my brain that thinks the Next One will be a winner. The next blog will be someone who I can connect with and relate to or at least be amused by. It's that same trigger in my brain that believes the next channel on the TV will feature the perfect show or movie. The next token in the slot machine will yield a payoff. The next page of photos at corbis.com will have the one single image I've been searching for all day long. The next one. Just one more. Oh, one more blog. Yes, Randomizer, make...me...a...WINNER!
Evidently, others in the NaBloPoMo program have the same compulsion and have been gripped by The Randomizer. They have cycled through and watched my site go by on their screen with their eyes blurred and their mouths slack jawed, a thin strand of drool dripping from their lower lips in a state of visual delirium, a puddle forming beside their keyboard.
For the month of November, or for the first several days anyway until the participants have had enough of The Randomizer, my sitemeter will deceive me. My sitemeter, with its inflated tally, suggests a popularity that is a fiction, a false sense of blogger success. So, I will put this otherwise handy tool to rest and wait for its bloated and uncomfortable state to pass.
But I wouldn't mind if a few passersby were to pin the map.
I'm one of those obsessive bloggers, the kind who checks her sitemeter as often as possible throughout the day, the kind who gauges the quality of her writing by the number of readers who regularly stop by. I've become less interested in the overall number of hits and more interested in the number of repeat hits. The return visitors are the ones I long for. When my sitemeter reads forty at the end of the day, and the majority of those hits are webpals who have conversed, I'm happy. Forty may seem low to many of you, but I've only been at this since August. To me, forty is a jackpot.
A few days ago, I sat down at my laptop and discovered a number somewhere in the eighties. Eighties! Yippee! Yeeha! Hoo-rah! I've been discovered by the webworld, or I'm on my way at least, and people are reading my blabber, spellbound and possibly linking and possibly leaving pins in my map--which is the true gauge of my self-worth. The more pins in the map, the more value I have as a human being.
After a day of revelling, I stopped by the site that is hosting the NaBloPoMo and discovered something I must have missed during my last visit--The Randomizer. Similar to the "next blog" button provided by Blogger, The Randomizer takes you through a random cycle of blogs participating in the NaBloPoMo.The Randomizer can be captivating, actually holding you captive. It can pull that trigger in my brain that thinks the Next One will be a winner. The next blog will be someone who I can connect with and relate to or at least be amused by. It's that same trigger in my brain that believes the next channel on the TV will feature the perfect show or movie. The next token in the slot machine will yield a payoff. The next page of photos at corbis.com will have the one single image I've been searching for all day long. The next one. Just one more. Oh, one more blog. Yes, Randomizer, make...me...a...WINNER!
Evidently, others in the NaBloPoMo program have the same compulsion and have been gripped by The Randomizer. They have cycled through and watched my site go by on their screen with their eyes blurred and their mouths slack jawed, a thin strand of drool dripping from their lower lips in a state of visual delirium, a puddle forming beside their keyboard.
For the month of November, or for the first several days anyway until the participants have had enough of The Randomizer, my sitemeter will deceive me. My sitemeter, with its inflated tally, suggests a popularity that is a fiction, a false sense of blogger success. So, I will put this otherwise handy tool to rest and wait for its bloated and uncomfortable state to pass.
But I wouldn't mind if a few passersby were to pin the map.
Comments
Now how am I supposed to get any work done?
I can't do the Nablahblah thing, as I'll be out of town on business the weekend before Thanksgiving and will then be at the parents'. Otherwise, I'd have probably done the same thing.
Just think---you'll get new fans!
Sassy, Thanksgiving will cause a problem for me too, but if I plan ahead and borrow my in-laws' computer, I think I can pull it off.
A very satisfactory outcome in that one, but I dare say it doesn't reflect real life (more's the pity).
Anyone care to tell me what it's all about and what you fine colonial folk get up to? It's more of a mystery to me than Guy Fawkes night is to Robyn (by the way, big centre spread in the Guardian today of the parade at Lewes on bonfire night, where they burned Condi Rice in effigy. Oh, us Brits are such wags …).
In 1621, the colonists in Plymouth worked with the Wampanoag Indians to hunt and harvest after a long and trying year of barely surviving. That all met together for a fall harvest, and sometime in the 1700s it became an official a holiday, a day to be thankful for our bounty. The US has plenty of people who are lacking, but in contrast to the rest of the world, we are rich.
So Thanksgiving is a day to get together with family and have the traditional meal--turkey, bread stuffing, corn, cranberries in some form (I have a killer cranberry chutney recipe I'll share later), and green beans with cream of mushroom soup and crunchy onions on the top. I'm kind of kidding about the beans, but they do seem to show up at a lot of Thanksgiving tables. Also, sweet potatoes, which I hate.
It does sound very much like the Addams Family version (except without burning whitey out) …
I love cranberries; please post your recipe soon as it's chutney-making time of year. I love the smell of chutney-making, pervading the whole house on a cold, crisp day.
And send any unwanted sweet potatoes over here, where they'll find a very good home in my tum …
Yum!
Having spent far too much of today crawling around inside the Randomizer, I have come to conclusion that a good fifty percent of nablopomo people are mothers who want to hold their babies in my face and expect me to love them.
Followed by people with no sense of design or colour, most of whose blogs are totally unreadable.
I shan't go on … (I CAN'T go on … sob)…
Suffice to say it's like random blogging only mostly in English.
I now realise how lucky I am to have found my little group of blogmates. It is SERIOUSLY SCARY out there!
It is scary out there, though, and it makes me like our little group that much more.