The annual Blogher conference features something now called Voices of the Year. It's an event that originated as the Community Keynote, the brainchild of the awesome Eden Kennedy. One of the keynote speech time slots for the conference features a lineup of members reading an important post from the past year of their blog publishing. Since the beginning of this tradition, before I'd ever been to a Blogher conference, I wanted to be part of it. It has been one of the highlights of my experience at the three Bloghers I have attended and I'm very much looking forward to it again this year.
The process is that you can nominate a post by you or someone else and there is a combination of voting by the community and by a jury of our peers that decides the final slate of readers. I am late in the game as submissions close on May 15th but, spurred by the excitement of Listen To Your Mother, I decided to see if I could choose something to submit. The allowable time period runs from, I believe, March of last year to present so I got myself back to March of last year in these here archives and I began to skim and read and remember. This turned out to be pretty humbling.
You know me, I love a good routine. There are plenty of lists and links and now even poems on this blog. The photo challenge, which I wouldn't change for the world, is prominent and the sight of it kept me from abandoning my search all together because at least I know I'm doing something of which I'm proud. There are far too many Treats For Everyone posts, and I don't mean that I wish I hadn't written them, I mean that we've lost far too many in our world. There are a few quick jokes or vignettes that are sweet and spot on but they do not stand alone. They cry out "I AM BLOG" in the same way that parachute pants scream, "I AM THE EIGHTIES." I am seeing very little proof that a practiced, polished, capable writer lives here.
The irony of this is that it's been a year in which I've worked very hard on my writing and seen it bear sweet fruit. My cabaret, Back Where I Belong, is some of the best comedy writing I've done in a while and it has stood the test of several audiences (one tiny joke notwithstanding). Since the first of the year I've been writing 15 minutes a day on two long form projects that are coming along nicely in a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race sort of way. My participation in Listen To Your Mother has to underscore this point in my development, too, doesn't it? Yet finding a piece to offer to VOTY is proving to be a blog-altering experience.
I suspect things around here are going to change a bit. I don't think you'll see 10 Things Tuesday every week. I don't know that you'll see posts every day, or even the 4-5 days per week I've been managing lately. (But what if people forget about me? AUGH!) Maybe the answer is 15 minutes a day on my long form projects and 15 minutes a day on my blog-focused projects. Maybe it's one essay a week but spending the time to craft it well. Maybe I won't change a thing.
Just don't be surprised if I do.
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I think it's good to do some self assessment and then follow your instinct on things. Maybe it IS shake things up a bit. Maybe that's where you're going. But here's the deal kiddo...NO ONE is going to forget you. We've been hanging out at 117 for YEARS. That won't stop.
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