just give me something to blog about
(Disclaimer; If you aren’t blogger, most of this won’t make any sense to you. So don’t even bother!)
Somehow it’s been two weeks since I last blogged. As so kindly pointed out not only by the lovely folks behind the BlogHer ads, and by a real life friend who I didn’t even know was reading here but apparently is tired of looking at my last soup post. ~ahem~ So this one is for you Jen, such as it is. ;)
Anyway, two weeks. There was a time, for a long time, when I couldn’t go two days without writing, much less two weeks. Heck, there were days when I posted twice! I know! What happened that I no longer feel like posting the exciting events minutiae of my day, every day??
Those were the days when I obsessively checked my stats, hoping for more than a handful of hits. I lived and died by how many comments I got in a day. I pimped my posts on twitter and commented like crazy on every blog in my expansive feed reader.
I got my own domain, and a unique design. I thought hard about branding, and niches. I got ads!! (A year and a half and $45 later…) I even started a second blog! Because one was not enough?!!
I envied those going to all the conferences and meeting each other in person. So I went to a conference, and I hugged people I never thought I would meet. I made real-life completely awesome friends. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,* and I loved every minute of it.
But my life got busier in so many ways, and twitter got boring and celebri-fied. I stopped checking Feedburner, and forgot my password to Google Analytics. I stopped using Stumble or Digg, forgot about Technorati, and I haven’t looked at my Page Rank in forever. Heck, I even forgot how to check my Page Rank. And Alexa, wha?
It’s the typical evolution of a blogger. I’m sure you’ve heard it before. (And don’t we all just love these posts?) I know I have, but I never thought it would happen to me! D’oh. and? Duh.
My kid is growing up, and doesn’t really want me telling stories about him here. Posting family pictures in public is getting awkward. One can only blog about a cat so often. (Unless I become the Crazy Cat Lady, and frankly there are too many doing it better.) Weight loss? Heh. Only if it was happening! I have no idea what to blog about. Or even if I want to bother figuring it out. Meh.
And yet, I’m not thinking about shutting it down. I haven’t lost the will to write, just the impetus; that driving force that can turn the smallest moment of the day into a great post. I’d like to be able to do that again.
* Yes, once-in-a-lifetime. I’m not going to BlogHer ‘10. As much as I would love to go, I just can’t justify the expense. Sorry peeps. :(
Filed Under blogging, writing Tagged blogging, blogging about blogging, meta
dregs
Dudes. My blog is depressing. Maybe that’s why I don’t come here so often anymore.
I seem to go to a lot of funerals. Another one of my Aunts died this week, another of my father’s siblings. And another funeral to attend this coming Tuesday.
I’ve seen so many people do this great “best of 2009″ round up posts so to cheer myself up I thought I would take a look at my archives and see what I could link to as my “best of.” Except all I can find are “not the worst of 2009″ posts.
I wrote far too much about trying to lose weight. I posted far too many pictures of my cat. I became a quintessential mommyblogger, (even though I hate that term.)
My one shining moment of true hilarity was cause I was doped up on pain meds. Honestly, I haven’t written anything humorous since them because I just can’t compete with myself. Ooooo, I last saw my funny at the hospital!! Maybe it’s at the lost and found! ~sigh~
See? My best posts are the pathetic dregs of the blogosphere.
Dear 2010,
Bring back the funny.
xo
Annette
ps. Rest in peace Aunt Lee.
Filed Under blogging Tagged blerg, blogging, blogging about blogging, death, life
I’m not gone, I just have blogger block
My brain is mush. I just can’t think of anything interesting to write about.
I had wonderful company (my friend Teresa while her husband Bill is in Ethiopia!) last weekend but that would be a very long story. I have more company (one of my sisters - yay!) coming this weekend but that story hasn’t happened yet. I have an aunt who is very sick but that’s not my story to tell.
I held a day-old baby on Monday but I had to give her back. ;) I have weigh-in coming this Sunday but I don’t think I’ve lost a pound this month. Josh is going to start t-ball tomorrow so the time suck begins again. I tried to go without wheat for a week, and I keep forgetting.
The rain is keeping me from gardening. Work is slow this week, although I’m sure it will get busy just as soon as my sister arrives. I’m not entertained by anything on tv. Twitter is irritating me - too many retweets, celebrities, and promotions, blech. Whatever happened to original thought and conversation?
I’m more than a little cranky. And worried. Very tired. Not to mention restless, boring, and repetitive. And perhaps whiny? Geez, I really need to get over myself. And I need to find my funny. It seems to have run away from home.
Yeah. I’m all over the freaking place. Give me something to write about would you? An idea, a question, anything you want to know about me? Help. I need to blog through the block.
Filed Under blogging Tagged blogging about blogging, inner workings of my brain, life, random
one year
A year ago today I jumped into the blog pond with this post.
It was short, mostly because I didn’t know what my voice would be or if I even had a voice. I was scared to put myself out there. I didn’t know what to say, if I had anything to say that mattered or that anyone would care about. I stayed anonymous for months even, thinking that if I was terrible at this, no one would ever have to know.
As it turns out, I’m not terrible at this after all. I have a voice and a few people actually listen and have things to say in return. I’ve taken chances and put myself out there for scrutiny like I’ve never done at any other time in my life. I’ve come out of hiding and I’m better off for it.
I may not be popular, or have lots of traffic, or make any money, but none of that really matters. What matters is that I love doing this. I’m a better writer, a better parent, a better photographer, and a better friend, all because of this space.
I’m glad I took the plunge, 235 posts later and I’m still here, and I know I have more to say! I mean really, when have I ever been able to stop talking?! I can’t wait to look back and see what I did in year two. I hope you’re all still here with me. :)
navigation
While I was away over the weekend, my dear husband spend a considerable amount of time fixing some little things here on my site. Some adjustments will just help me in the background, but other changes will make it easier for you all to navigate.
The best change of all is that my SEARCH function now actually works! It is in the upper left hand corner, and it does search all the text of my posts, not just tags. Yay!
You’ll also notice you can see the tags for each post, as well as the categories they are filed under. And squeee (!) look in my left sidebar at my sweet new tag cloud! Go hover your cursor over it, I’ll wait…
Isn’t it the cutest tag cloud ever?!
Btw, if you are using anything other than http://feeds2.feedburner.com/catnipandcoffee (or http://feeds.catnipandcoffee.com/catnipandcoffee) it would be great if you could change it. If you’re using the old atom feed I can’t guarantee it will work in the future. So update, I beg you! :)
so, it looks a little different around here
(Hey all you feed readers - you need to click on over today and see my shockingly different site design!)
Welcome to the new and improved Catnip and Coffee! I designed the header, but my dear husband did all the real work! I’m very luck to have a resident geek, and a cute geek at that. He’s been very good at putting up with my whining about nagging micromanaging of this process.
This look definitely feels more “me” to me! Black, white, red, and touch of pink - that’s definitely my style. I’m super happy to finally have my avatar incorporated into the design here. It just makes more sense.
There’s still some tweaking to do. Like the post titles aren’t quite right, and the photos aren’t working yet. I also lost my entire blogroll. The new blogroll will be in a separate page. If you were on it before, and are not yet, please feel free to remind me to put you back!
Also, the right column, which looks very bare right now, is going to have BlogHer ads soon! I’m very happy to be accepted in the the BlogHer ad network and can’t wait to get it going!
Anyway, I hope you like this as much as I do!
frustrated
I’m trying to work on a few design features here. You’ll notice I added MyBlogLog - it’s just so I can get a better idea of whose coming here (note: you do not show up unless you sign up with MyBlogLog and you don’t have to it you don’t want to.) See, when I started I was too dumb to realize I should have put feedburner in before anyone started adding me to their feed readers. Now I have no idea how many readers I really have and Wordpress doesn’t really have a way to tell me those numbers. I’ve done it now so if you are already subscribed and you find you aren’t getting your feeds anymore PLEASE resubscribe, and I’m sorry for being a pain in the ass.
Note to the feed readers - ignore anything old they may come up again, I’m also editing tags and such!
So I have finally added the tag cloud - I’ve done this a couple of times and unfortunately a couple of the tags bleed out of the sidebar and I always end up deleting it. It’s really annoying me and apparently there’s no way to fix it without editing the css and I’m not about to get into that. Grrr. I’m going to leave it for a few days and see if it grows on me, and I’m going to stop using that dang “inner workings of my brain” tag so it doesn’t get any bigger!
There’s a few other things I’m considering adding so if you see any other changes, it’s just because I’m over here hurting my brain….
updated: Feedburner was irritating me - so it’s gone and I’m back to my normal feed. Stupid changes.