Let the Royal Rumpus Start

Well, here we are. In just seven short days it will be my second bloggiversary. Two whole years blogging. I know, it’s a little mind-blowing, right? I have trouble wrapping my brain around it myself. Two years! Seven hundred and thirty days! 8 seasons! Many life changes! Coming and going! This, that and the other! Callooh callay!

Last year, for those of you that were around and remember such things, we did a whole week-long celebration. This year things are a little different and I’m in another place (mentally, emotionally, physically, take that as you will) so things will be a little less traditionally-Amy-hyper and a little more low-key. But hopefully still awesome. I mean, when you’re this awesome, how can you just erase that? You can’t, is the answer. I’ve tried. It’s still there. It never fully disappears.

So this week, we’ll talk about some things I’ve learned from blogging, and we’ll talk about my top seven posts over the past two years, with some behind-the-scenes goings-on, and maybe do some other things. I fly by the seat of my pants here. It’s just the way I am. Very pants-seat-flying. It’s either dangerous or fun; I haven’t decided yet.

Without further ado…

Today’s thing I’ve learned from blogging:

You cannot blog in a bubble.

Not even if you’re Jake Gyllenhaal in a very ill-advised early-life role choice.

So when I started blogging many and many a moon ago, I just kind of did my thing. I wrote, and a few people would comment, and I thought that’s all that blogging was, because I didn’t know any better. I read a few other blogs – mainly the big ones – but was too afraid to comment, both because I thought what I had to say was probably idiotic, and that if I commented, and put a link to my blog with my Gravatar, the fancy blogging people would read my blog and would be SO DISGUSTED WITH HOW DORKY I WAS and was I ready to have fancy people read my blog? Was I really?

After a while, I connected with other bloggers (mainly through Twitter) and since I had talked to them on Twitter, I wasn’t as afraid to comment on their blogs. And huzzah! They reciprocated! And we had conversations in the comments! And they told people they knew to read my blog! And I started getting more readers! Some of whom had blogs of their own, and therefore, more blogs to read and comment on and more readers and on and on and on and so it goes!

It’s the CIRCLE of LIIIIIIIFE!

And sometimes, you make friends with the bloggers! Not just casual friends, but real friends, the kind that check on you when you’re down and send you things they saw online that made them think of you and that you have real, true friendships with. My closest online friends are all bloggers; I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think I’d find it hard to relate to someone who didn’t use words as their primary attack on life online.

(And we’ve talked about this before, but I don’t think there’s much delineation between online friends and face-area friends, not really. If you talk to someone almost daily, if you share in their lives, if they share in yours, if you love them, if they love you? You’re friends. It doesn’t matter if you’ve met face-to-face or not. It’s wonderful when you CAN, but it’s still a friendship, and it’s still just as valid.)

Yeah, kind of like this, only less clinical. If I love you to distraction and would willingly jump in front of a speeding locomotive to save your life? Doesn’t matter if you live in my computer or not. You’re my people.

Also, teaming up with other bloggers, be it guest-posting or actually collaborating with them on a blog, is another excellent way to make the blogosphere work for you. My guest-posting has brought me new readers and introduced me to new blogs to read and has also taught me how to work well with others (something I did NOT get good marks for in kindergarten, I can tell you that right now.) It’s also pushed me to create some of the work I’m most proud of that I’ve done since I started blogging.

So, yes. You can blog without getting engaged with other bloggers and/or your commenters, but why would you want to? Engaging with the internet is over half the fun of blogging. Sincerely. Bloggers that cut themselves off from that perplex the hell out of me.

Now…drumroll please…for my seventh most popular post of ALL TIME…all time being TWO WHOLE YEARS…

…from March 2012…

…with 538 total views in the past 15 months…

…which I realize to you fancy high-profile blogger types is like CHUMP CHANGE, don’t be snotty, I’ll smack you with a rolled-up newspaper…

To Dad, on his birthday (since I can’t be there to say it in person)

OK, here’s what’s weird about this one being in the top seven posts of all time. (And, actually, except for one or two, all of the top posts fall under this umbrella of weirdness.)

This post is not popular because of the subject matter or because of the awesome photo of young-Amy and young-Amy’s-Dad with killer 70’s facial hair going on.

No, this post is popular because I get searches EVERY MONTH for people who want to know what to say to THEIR dads on his birthday.

Listen, this utterly kills me. I can’t tell you this. If you copy/paste what I said to my dad? You’re doing it wrong. WRONG.

This cat disapproves of you not speaking from the heart.

Only you can decide what’s right to say to your dad on his birthday. Only you can make this decision. My relationship with my father is not YOUR relationship with YOUR father. That’s what’s beautiful about us as the human race, my little strawberry shortcakes. We’re all different, and no one has the same relationship with anyone in their lives.

I appreciate the clicks and the reads, sure I do. I like this post, even if Dad never read it because “you tell the internet too much of your personal life on there and you’re going to be murdered, Amy.” But it makes me sad you can’t just be honest with yourself, and your father, and just say to him what’s in your heart to say.

And if you can’t think of anything else? How about telling him you love him? And you appreciate him?

Stay tuned, jellybeans. Much more to come. More sage blogging advice. Or at least blogging advice, I can’t promise sagacity. More perplexing “really? This is the post you guys like most? OK, then.” More bloggiversary week antics. ALL FOR YOU, DAMIEN!