Hello, my name is Heather...

...and I'm a blogaholic.
(your cue: Hello, Heather...)

Seriously, y'all, blogging is so much more than a passing fancy to me now. Back in March, when I staked my claim on this little corner of the blogosphere, I thought it would be a fun, occasional thing with which to occupy my time. I'd been regularly following a handful of blogs - some for years now, mostly belonging to friends with whom I had a preexisting relationship. You know, people I already knew who had started blogs of their own. I thought it would be fun to start my own blog, maybe share some laughs or thoughts or ramblings (as we all know, I'm really good at rambling) with my friends the way they'd been sharing with me. I've belonged to some message boards and private internet groups for years now, going back to when Hubby and I were starting the adoption process, and blogging seemed a natural extension of my online "life" (I feel the need to use quotes there to distinguish from my REAL life....) And narcissistically speaking, doesn't the world want to know my most navel-gazing of thoughts? My feelings on parenting, current events, life and George Clooney? Hmmmm?

I should've realized right away how very dangerous this blogging thing would be for me. It started, innocently enough, with the addition of a site meter to my blog. 'Cause, if you blog and no one is reading, did the post happen? (You know, like if a tree falls in the woods....) Then, I became a wee bit obsessed with the number of hits daily to my site. If it went over ten, I flipped out. MORE THAN TEN PEOPLE checked out my blog? Woot! I started checking out my site meter info first thing each morning when I turned on my computer. I tried not to "sully" the number of hits by actually visiting my page, because *I* don't count. Yes, I was avoiding my own blog, just lurking about in the background, working through my Dashboard.

That validation was enough at first, that simple knowledge that somewhere out there, someone was stopping by my blog. At first. Soon, I wanted more. "If I'm getting twelve or thirteen (or on a good day, TWENTY *faint*) hits a day, why am I only getting one or two comments (usually from my established friends)?" I thought to myself. "Why aren't more people commenting?" And there it is, the warning sign I think my fellow bloggers recognize: I was becoming a comment junkie. I'd pore over my site meter's stats, looking for repeat visitors - lurkers who'd never left a comment. I agonized over my posts, editing and tweaking them, polishing them 'til they shone, hoping that if I wrote just the right thing in just the right way, my comments section would fill up. I created a favicon and a button for my page that folks could add to theirs if they so desired (and I don't think anyone has yet!) I added widgets to dress my blog up. I changed my layout. I scanned the referral site info on my site meter - what places were bringing eyeballs to my page? Where were my viewers coming from and did they come back again?

It was around this time that I came across a web community called The Secret is in the Sauce. That is the point at which my blogging addiction become life threatening. Okay, not life threatening, but definitely housework threatening. I mean, who has time for such things as scrubbing soap scum off the shower walls when there are blogs to be read? (And it isn't just SITS, either, there are other sites out there, like Blog Around the World, and communities like BlogCatalog and Blogher. Whew.) SITS led me to blog after wonderful blog. My bookmarks menu (yes, I was a blog reading Luddite - I had no blog reader) was longer than Rapunzel's hair. Not only was I finding a new blog each morning via their daily Featured Blog, but I'd read all the roll call comments, click on the profiles of commenters who'd written funny or witty or meaningful comments, then browse their blogs. Of course, then I wasn't just reading blog posts, but the comments on those blog posts, and then continuing with the clicking through to profiles of commenters, going to their blogs, reading their posts and their comments and so on and so on and so on.

You know this vicious circle, right? I know some of you out there do...

There is yet another level to this, sort of like the chaser to the blogging. Twitter. A whole new place to post and read. Twitter is like a mini-blog or like Facebook's status updates on speed. There is the added challenge of only having 140 characters per Tweet, too - kills extra time when you have to edit creatively to get your thought into 140 characters! Of course, Twitter just feeds into the ultimate (at least, as far as I've sunk as of now) level of blogging obsession:

The followers.

Oh, how I long to go back to the day when getting a comment or three was enough. When seeing that I had more than 10 hits on my blog after a new post went up. Because now, I want it ALL. I have followers, but not that many. I see some blogs with dozens and even hundreds of followers. And Twitter is even crazier - there are people with thousands of followers. I can barely keep up with the dozen or so I follow! And yes, I admit, I want more followers. Right now, I have seven. Seven lovely folks out there who admit to publicly following my blog. What I wouldn't give for twenty, or fifty, or even a THREE-FIGURE number of followers!

Will it ever be enough?

So, to sum up, the dangers of blogging include:

- an unhealthy obsession with your site meter/counter
- Blogger Envy: when you discover a new blog that you adore, but at the same time, are more than a teensy bit jealous that this blogger writes wittier, funnier, deeper or just plain better posts than you do. Also extends to those with better blog layouts (in my case, likely because they have actually spent real money to have a professional design their blog layout) and those who are competent with Photoshop and post hilarious illustrations along with their writing.
- a Commenting Addiction, which can happen both ways: not only can you become easily addicted to bloggers' crack (aka comments) and not only feel the rush of elation when you have many, many new comments (like those glorious days when my blog was featured on SITS and BATW), but the subsequent crash when you have no new comments. This ties into
- New Post Despair, when you publish a new post and it garners few or no comments. You begin to second-guess yourself, to worry - am I not smart enough? Funny enough? Meaningful enough? Too self-absorbed? Too rambly?
and finally:
-Follower Addiction: when it just isn't enough to watch your site counter climb, but you want actual, true, professed followers and that number can't ever be high enough either!

There are those Mythical Ones, those bloggers who either get paid to blog (well enough to make a living at it, even) or who get the fabled Book Offer (with decently sized advance) to gather their bloggings into an actual book. I try not to think about them, because that will just lead me to crawl into bed and cry, and if I were hiding in bed, I wouldn't be able to blog! Well, at least not unless I had a laptop, anyhow...

Oh, and I ought to mention, I finally did start a blog reader. I just did the one through Blogger, so it isn't fancy, but at least it is streamlining my blog reading. Also, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get Google Analytics to work for my blog. I need to hit Hubby up for help with that one - or else just content myself with my free site meter. And, to show you the ultimate evidence that I'm a blogaholic? Blogger was being funky yesterday for a while, not allowing comments to publish. This occurred during my morning blogsurfing, and I got so frustrated with not being able to post comments on the blogs I was reading that I created a Word document and SAVED the comments so I could go back and post them on the appropriate blog later. Yep, like I said, my name is Heather and I'm a blogaholic!

Life away from the blogosphere

Whew, what a whirlwind week it's been for me! Being lucky enough to be a featured blog at both SITS and BATW (and thanks again to everyone who dropped by on my featured days!) has kept me glued to my computer screen, reading and returning comments (still working on that, too) and getting sucked into everyone else's wonderful blogs.

But in my "real" life (you know, the one that doesn't involve a keyboard and cable modem), there's been big stuff going on, too. For example, on Tuesday Kiddo had her "special day" in kindergarten. She was the Special Helper and line leader all day (and everyone who knows a kindergartner knows what a Big Deal that is!), and in the afternoon, she did her carefully prepared All About Me presentation. Hubby, one of Kiddo's grandmas and I were in attendance for the presentation. (Yes, I tore myself away from the computer for a few hours during my big SITS day!) Kiddo did a GREAT job telling her class all about her, and I quickly realized the reason she wanted to do two posterboards full of pictures was to enable herself to get maximum usage out of the pointer. The pointer, which was practically longer than she is tall, and which miraculously didn't brain or poke the eyes out of any of her classmates during her talk - though it did come close enough times to make my blood pressure spike alarmingly...



Then last night was the kindergarten Open House. Kiddo was SO excited to take Hubby and me through her school and show us all the different rooms, like the art studio, gym, music room and library. The only problem there was that the art studio was the only room open, so Kiddo was sorely disappointed that she couldn't show us the other rooms (as a child after her mama's own heart, she wanted to show us the library most of all). We did get to meet all the "specials" teachers, though, and it was nice to put faces with the names of both the teachers and students we've been hearing about for weeks now. Getting to see all the projects they've done (and they've done a LOT for only having been in school one month - guess that's in part due to them being in school all day instead of a half day) was a treat, too.

Today is school picture day, and I volunteered to help out for a shift, mostly because I want to be there to run a comb through Kiddo's hair before her photo is taken, and also make sure her glasses haven't gone askew. I don't know how she does it, but Kiddo manages to become completely disheveled within moments of walking out of our front door. Seriously, it will look like the child has never seen the business end of a hairbrush or washcloth within seconds... So, off I go to school, and then to the butcher shop. Today was day 7 of the bologna I bought on my last trip to the butcher, and it smelled funky. I mean funky for bologna - bologna always smells bad to me, but this was extra-bad. Kiddo was disappointed not to have her beloved bologna and provolone for lunch, too. That is what she wants every single day, much to my chagrin. Then again, when I was in first grade, I wanted a cream cheese and grape jelly sandwich on white bread - no crusts, raisins, carrot sticks and chocolate milk every single day, so maybe Kiddo's not so weird. Do your kids want the same thing for lunch every day, or is this just a weirdness that Kiddo and I share(d)?

Blog Around the World: In a New York State of Mind

Greetings and welcome to New York, BATWers! So glad you could stop by today and visit our great state. Now, I know the other hostess for NY is a city girl, but I'm here to represent the rest of the state. While New York City certainly is fantabulous (I am originally a Jersey Girl and grew up within an hour of NYC - my first real job was in Manhattan and NYC remains one of my most favorite cities ever), there is a lot more to the state than just those five delightful boroughs. I'll leave the city tour to her, and show you around upstate. As our state motto says, Excelsior! (That means "ever upward" in case you can't recall your high school Latin. I know I can't - I had to look that up!)

There are several great places to visit in New York. We've got vineyards and apple orchards and farms aplenty. We've got mountains - the Adirondacks, Catskills and Alleghenies (which are part of the Appalachian Mountain range) all go through our state. We've also got lakes, including a couple of the Great ones (Lake Ontario, where I live, and Lake Erie, too). We've got dibs on one side of Niagara Falls (though, props to the Canadians for having the better side - though that was just luck of the draw on the border, eh?). Some slightly less massive, yet still amazing and beautiful waterfalls can be found all over our state, along with the gorges they cut into the land - gorgeous! Oh yeah, and we've also got kind of a famous canal, that runs right through my town....



Is the sightseeing making you hungry? There are loads of "good eats" that originated here in NY! For example, we all know and love Buffalo wings (or just plain old "wings" as we call 'em around here). A delicious sandwich you may not have heard of that also comes out of Buffalo is the Beef on Weck, which is a roast beef sandwich with horseradish on a Kimmelweck roll. Closer to my neck of the woods, there's a little dish known as the Garbage Plate. Despite its name, it is delicious, if a bit messy. Salt Potatoes are native to central NY, and you can find them at fairs, festivals and summertime BBQs and picnics across the state. Another delicious dish with NY ties is Chicken French, though veal and artichokes can also be done French and are all equally tasty.

Besides our land and our food, there are lots of cool things to do in upstate NY. Each August, you can visit the Great New York State Fair over in Syracuse. That is a can't miss trip for my kiddo and me every summer. We have music festivals aplenty - Rochester and Syracuse both have annual jazz festivals, for example, oh and there's a little music festival you might of heard of called Woodstock - that's a NY thing, too! There are many great arts and crafts festivals, along with the music festivals. For example, Rochester is home to the Lilac Festival, which is lots of fun and another can't-miss for my family. We have one of the top children's museums in the country right here in upstate New York, not to mention several terrific zoos and 176 state parks to visit. New York is home to several great educational institutions, from Cornell (if you're feeling Ivy-ish) to the SUNY schools, to Syracuse University (have to plug it - Hubby and I are both Orange! Yes, I know, our alma mater's mascot is a citrus fruit, what can I say, we didn't pick it and he is pretty cute!). West Point is also in NY, to give a shout out to our military. And did you know that the women's rights movement has its birthplace in upstate NY? Yep, the first ever Women's Rights Convention was in 1848 in Seneca Falls.

What else can I tell you? Our state insect is the ladybug and our state flower is the rose. We are, of course, the Empire State. So, please enjoy your visit to our great state, and be sure to pop by NYC and check out that wonderful corner of the state, too!