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Blog Envy

14 Oct posted by
Drops of dew

It Started With A Funk…

Yes, I’ve noticed the funk came back a few days ago. If you are a blogger you might not be a stranger with these feelings. You know moments where you questioned just about everything about the blogosphere and wondering out loud in your head if it’s worth it to put yourself out there.

I thought I was going to jump right back in the blogosphere wagon when I had my 30 days break from work. I tried…but I feel like since my niche has changed, since I have changed…things are now different.

No wait, I have a confession…I have some blogging envy.

When I started Tatter Scoops I didn’t know the secrets, the magic formulas to be a successful blogger. All I know is just writing. Read here for a great recipe by Alison from Mama Wants This for blogging.

Back then I got to ‘connect’ with many great bloggers out there. Some were newbie’s much like me. We learned about each other through our posts. We promote each others’ posts. It was good times. I invested so much times burying my self in blogging.

Then my world changed…

Devoting my time to blogging fell off priorities list. Times I spend commenting on other blogs decreased. My days were just too chock full of work – home – work. Rinse and repeat. Even when I have domestic helper, after nearly 12 hours day of staring into computer screen…getting online sometimes is the last thing I wanted to do.

So now when I see these other bloggers who were newbies – just like me – have thousands of followers, thousands of readers, they went to conferences, they have lots of sponsors. They are now famous, I can’t help but feeling a bit envy…jealous even.

Yes, I am happy for their success, I honestly do but part of me is a bit jealous so don’t stone me for being brutally honest here.

These are the bloggers that truly has been doing everything ‘right’ to climb up the blogosphere ladder of success and I salute them. It takes a lot of commitment to take blogging seriously and kick it up a notch. Some conquer that spot in just mere months, some after a year or so.

Seeing their success made me see where I’m lacking…time to commenting, time to visit, time to be actively involves in bloggers community. Time to be fully committed to blogging. That, I don’t have much since I started working a year ago.

Maybe Being Ordinary is OKAY

Accepting that I might not have thousands of followers on this blog – while I do thanks my followers on Twitter – or I might never go to any of the prestigious blogging conferences is actually liberating in a way.

I am thankful enough for those of you who do read and commenting here. Really, it means a lot.

Maybe being ordinary in this vast blogosphere is actually OK. Nothing wrong with it, for the fuel that keeps this blog running is my love for written words, for expressing views, to channels these thoughts that sometimes would just be swept under the rug without this platform.

I’d like to think that this blog is indeed different…my stories are uniquely mine but to fully accept that I don’t have to try so hard to catch up with the big hot shots bloggers is actually a nice feeling. That it is OK to be where my blog is today.

Of course we all dreams to be big and honestly, who wouldn’t love that? But realistically we can’t all be Dooce or The Pioneer Woman, right?

So, I guess I’m fine with the small circle I have right now and knowing that these funks will come and goes and it is perfectly OK.

Do you feel your blog is growing in a rate you wanted it to be? Have you ever felt this blogging envy? How do deal with it?

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How Do You Handle Criticism?

7 Oct posted by
Criticizing

“I try to remember that there is a person behind a written text on my computer screen…” said one of my friends.

After reading the comment from a reader on my post about 4 Biggest Misconceptions About Secretaries, my first reaction was “What??! WOW!” Then followed by self doubts like “Maybe writing/blogging really isn’t my forte…”

“Going to be difficult to convince people you are more intelligent than they give you credit for when the title of your post is grammatically incorrect.” – Peter in UK.

That short sentence taken me by surprise left me with a bad feeling inside about my whole blogging endeavors. “What if I really do royally suck?”

Again, I hate hate hate using the “English is my second language” defense because I want to be a good writer/blogger. I don’t want to blame every single mistake on that fact alone.

Having English as my second language, it is a continuous learning process in which I am bound to make mistakes, typos here and there. Aren’t they just part of the process? No one can reach that perfection without practice. There are native English speakers out there who can’t even spell, believe me I work with some of them.

I can accept constructive criticism on my writing and I actually love that because it makes me want to do better. I even have a native English speaker friend who offered to be my ‘editor’ and read my blog posts first but I’d rather try to do it myself.

To just drop a criticism out loud and belittle me did hurt but I can move past that. In all seriousness, if you see my typos, sentences drenched in grammatical mistakes then by all means, do let me know so I can fix it…so I can learn. Just because I wrote a wrong title doesn’t mean I am not intelligent.

Sure I’ve made mistakes/typos before and there were friends who graciously let me know about it so I can get around fixing it and learned. Did it upset me? No, I was thankful they noticed what I had missed.

Two dear friends (Maria from Bicultural Mama and Aubrey from Way Too Much Aubrey – thanks, ladies!) came forward to replied to my new friend Peter – which I am grateful for because they believe in me. They didn’t see my typos or grammar as a big deal although I would love to be a flawless writer like lots of my favorite bloggers out there.

Criticism can be difficult to digest but maybe just maybe if you wrap it up in a good way then the people on your receiving end can actually accept it with a big heart and use it to better themselves.

So no, I’m not going to let one comment (and what followed thereafter) stop me from doing what I love, which is writing/blogging. Besides, I put my self out here on the blogosphere so I should toughen up and deal with criticism or the advise for me to seek refuge from hell-fire. Copyblogger had a really good piece about How to Handle Criticism.

What’s the worst comment anyone’s ever left you? Has anyone ever left a comment on your blog that made you go “What???” or “WOW that’s harsh!”? How did you handle it?

 

 

Image from: Dreamstime

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Awesome Twosome

5 Oct posted by
The Parent Du Jour

Just as I’ve been feeling a bit ‘down’ about my blogging journey, yesterday gave me reasons to smile.

Why?

Because I was in two places at the same time.

Where?

First, I did warned you that the team at World Moms Blog has graciously accepted me as one of their contributors, right? They published my first writing yesterday. Where I talked about motherhood from my point of views after it was being altered with different cultures and backgrounds.

A little about World Moms Blog from their About page:

Join us on a journey of motherhood around the globe!  World Moms Blog came about from the idea of merging what it’s like to be a mother, writing, anthropology and all things international.  It is written in English and is a volunteer effort.

As busy mothers we often find ourselves without the time to be jet-setting around the planet.  So, we invite you to come travel the world with us, through our global writers.  We will read about how women across the planet are mothering, how their lives are similar or different from ours, what’s on their minds and expand our horizons into corners of daily life around the world.

To be brutally honest, I was nervous about my writing. Worried that it might not be good enough. Go and see it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Then here comes The Parent Du Jour…

Maria from Bicultural Mama was kind enough to introduced me to Lisa Duggan, the brilliant mind behind this website. It was this post that Maria referred me to. Intrigued by the idea, Lisa and I soon got in contact with one another.

A little about The Parent Du Jour:

365 moms and dads, served fresh daily!

Our goal is to feature 365 moms and dads from around the world.  We want to feature at least one parent from every country inthe world—195 at last count.

Moms, Dads, Grandparents, Guardians, Aunts and Uncles— all are welcome to participate

It doesn’t matter how young or old, seasoned or inexperienced, or whether a parent is single, married, civil-unioned, separated, widowed, divorced or re-married, or if their children are babies or completely grown, with children of their own.  We consider anyone taking an active part in the raising of a child a candidate for this project. Grandparents, aunts, uncles—consider yourself invited.

Each day we’ll serve up a different parent telling us, in their own words, how they combine work, family, and life. Dads will be featured in our “A Dad a Day” series, moms in “Once Upon a Mom”.

The result? Well, you just have to check it out yourself. I am just so excited to be their first international mom – outside of Canada. If you are interested, please do get in touch with Lisa by their Twitter or Facebook, they are looking for more international parents.

It’s been an exciting day here at Tatter Scoops, that’s for sure.

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World Moms Blog Interview

23 Sep posted by

Can’t you tell how excited I am to join the wonderful women behind the World Moms Blog?

Today my first post – which is like a short interview with them goes live on WMB. I would love you if you would take a look at it.

Thank you!

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Welcoming Your First Commenter

15 Sep posted by


Creative Commons Licensephoto credit: Melissakis, H.

Are you a blogger? Chances are if you are reading this then you are.

What we love – if not more than writing – is to get comments on our post. We are networking online. We participate in memes, blog hops and whatever else is out there that connects one blogger to another.

When you link up on a meme, usually you will ‘meet’ many new bloggers. You read their stuffs and you left a well meaning comment that include a trackback to your own blog. You grain traffic to your site and that is part of networking, right?

A nice welcoming touch for these new people that come and read – and hopefully commenting – on your blog is what I called a “Welcome” page. Like mine here.

I use a Comment Redirect  plug-in to redirect first time commenter, it’s a great quickie and relatively easy to set up page where you can show your first time commenter what your blog is all about. Please note that you are ‘sending’ your first time guests to this page in hope they will read more and come back.

Here are the steps by steps:

  1. Download and Install Comment Redirect  plug-in from your wordpress deskop and activate it.
  2. Create a new Page and name it whatever you want and pimp the heck out of it to charm your new readers/commenters, hit publish, you can choose to assign this new page anywhere you want or ‘hide’ it like me.
  3. Go to Comment Redirect (it’s on the left hand corner under the Plugins)
  4. From there you can pick where you want your commenter to land – it could be your Welcome page or even your About page.

Voila! Pretty simple to give your commenter a warm welcome and thanking them for leaving their comments.

 

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Keep on Writing

12 Sep posted by
Keep on Writing

(Uhm yeah, I lost a key there on my laptop)

Incase you don’t realize it, English is not my first language…

It just happens that I love to write in them and to use them on a daily basis with Lil’ A. He is growing up between the two languages, English and Indonesian just as Mr. X and I had agreed on.

Maybe it’s a matter of personal taste but I.love.writing.in.English.

I’ve been blogging in a language that I learn from childhood for years now yet lately I’ve been feeling like I’m not good enough. Reading other blogs who can push out beautifully written and crafted words makes me envy and makes me feel little.

I suck with grammar.

Yes, I can spell and pretty good at it but grammatically I am challenged.

Even when my Indonesian friends said my writing is good I still feel like I’m not good enough. One of my friends think my English is on a native level and she asked how I learned, where I learned. I had no definite answers. I grew up a miner’s daughter – or so I lovingly prefer my father’s job as – I was surrounded and exposed with English language since early on. English course? What course? Tried that many moons ago but I never got to finish it because I was bored.

Even when people at my office had ‘nominated’ me as an unofficial translator – I still feel that I’m not good enough.

Even when some of our projects managers who are Australians had asked before “Why do you sounds so American, Maureen?” – I still feel I’m not good enough.

That no matter how hard I try, I will never write as good as everyone else and this thought has been weighing me down lately.

Feeling like I am not good enough in this whole blogsphere. Maybe I lost my mojo?

Then last month, I got my first ever fan e-mail. Well maybe it’s not even one but it came from someone I didn’t know who was pointed in the direction of my blog. He commented about my ‘bravery’ to blog about my divorce journey so openly and I told him that despite of how open it may looks like, what I blog about only covers the outer layers. Blogging through my divorce helps me cope and most definitely cheaper than seeing my therapist! Reading my reader’s comments – especially those who had been through the same painful journey of ending a marriage truly help.

My writing has got me through some of my most hellish time, it’s my therapy because as it allows me to bear my soul, my pains, my joys, my hopes, my dreams. So I shall continue writing, continue blogging, continue forming sentences with simple words to express what’s inside me.

If it could inspire others who was or still is in the same/similar situations as mine then I would be honored.

I may not be the most popular blogger or snag a book deal but for now I am good enough to have my own little corner here in the blogsphere to be me and make new connections with others.

I am good enough in this sea of many great bloggers with all my grammatically challenged sentences, I am my own person, I am me…unique and different.


This post is inspired by Just.Be.Enough. A powerful group of women pioneered by Elena to empower, to inspire and to celebrate ourselves.

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