Some Bizarre Sickness

So, if you haven't noticed - I haven't published anything on the blog recently.  I'm just on the other end of crawling out of the pits of a sickness that were so deep I couldn't get my head out from the fog it was stuck in for a full 5 days.

Which is good because my wife is a superb take-care-of-sick-people person.  She treats me so amazingly, it's almost worth being sick and dragging it out.

But which is bad because I couldn't play with Sammy for a full five days.  Not even be within 5 feet of him.  And that was really bad, not only because my wife had to carry the full weight of taking care of him (though I got to sleep a LOT - which was terrific) but also because I turned around, and he was a full week older.  He's CRAWLING for god's sake.  (though the technical term for what he's doing would be closer to forward-motion dragging, we in the Borscht household are claiming a win)

And now, my wife is sick because I got her a homerun birthday present, and she was crazy enough to thank me with a kiss.  And I think some of my snot got in the way of the kiss.  And now she's sick.  Which is REALLY bad, because since she's still feeding Sammy with her breasts (despite having all the same words - this sounds much worse than breastfeeding, doesn't it?) she can't take any pills, which means the sickness is kicking her butt right now.

And yet, she's still busting her ass at work and going with me to class tonight.  I swear, I either married the most dedicated woman alive, or the most stubborn.  Likely both.

I'm back on the horse, people - more content tomorrow with a guest post, and then some good-ol' fashioned Borscht Blogging on Friday.

In the Meantime - check out this website I found while trying to figure out if Elijah Wood is Jewish (he's not).  It's incredibly fun.  By the way, also take a look at the TV show Wilfred on Hulu.  I definitely enjoy how bizarre it is.

100th Post!!! Time to Celebrate, Russian Style!

Happy 100th post to me!!! and to celebrate, we'll all drink shots of vodka and toast to life, love, and health!

As a present to you all for coming along with me so far, I had an amazingly wonderful video of my in laws singing the Soviet national anthem after three bottles of vodka while we were at the beach last week.  It's something that comes out relatively frequently when reminiscing about the motherland.

HOWEVER, I wasn't given permission to post it because there was some concern that it would be...somewhat...embarrassing.  Harumph, don't they know that's the point?  So anyway, what follows will have to suffice.  I found this searching "drunk russians singing soviet national anthem".  It's almost exactly what you would have seen had I uploaded my own family's video.




Sadly, we Americans don't have this kind of nostalgic, nationalistic pride.  It's a shame, really.

Thank you so much for reading - I love you all!!

Learning things? Awww, man! *pouts*

Ah, boy, it's been a whole week, and sadly, #SummerBlogSocial is coming to a close.

So in the past four days, from reading everyone else's posts, and comments on this here blog, I've come to the conclusion that today's post will encapsulate all the things I learned during my time at Summer Blog Social.

It is not some grand revelation that I want to blog full time. Everyone wants to blog full time.  Ok, maybe not everyone, but if you were to give someone the option to sit around all day drinking lattes, cocktails, and aperitifs while tweeting all day long vs. going to a 9-5, most people wouldn't think twice about it.  So, I shouldn't think it's some amazingly unique plan or desire to be a full time blogger.   The "duh" factor on this one is pretty high.  At LEAST a nine or a ten.

Twitter is like being bitten by a radioactive spider.  You know that line, "with great awesomeness comes great responsibility" or whatever it was from the spiderman movie.  You can either use it to be an amazingly engaged person whom everyone wants to be friends with because they are just about as cool as humanly possible.  Or you can...well, not.  People also have amazingly complicated formulae regarding tweets to retweets ratios, tweets to links ratios, and overall self-promotion ratios.  I'm actually very surprised that such a very literary world incorporates math so readily into their daily lives.

While most people have their emails linked so that when they comment, their reply addresses are listed, some do not, and it is absolutely needs to be remedied.  When you comment on one of my posts, I absolutely love being able to email you back with a witty and sometimes (read:never) insightful response that will almost certainly (read: definitely not) fulfill and enrich your life.  But if the response is "no-reply@blogger.com" it may as well be "iactuallydontlikecommunicatingwithyou@stoptalkingtome.please".  And I get sad.  No, I really do, there's usually tears and everything because a potential connection could have been made, but now, i'm just left staring at some words that are analogous to graffiti.

And probably the last important thing that I learned is that no matter how much apprehension you feel, or insecure you are, or how marginally you are awake or conscious, talking to people on twitter and leaving comments is always, always, always appreciated.  I guess I knew this one as well, but after this week, it was definitely solidified in my brain.

So, I wanted to thank both Liz and Jessica for coming up with such a great link up idea, and for all the people who are new followers and whom I am now following as well.  It's been a great time this week.

But honestly?  I can't wait to stop being serious and get back to being a sarcastic and silly goofball.  I've got some great stories from my recent trip to the beach.

The Time Suck That is Blogging

As the last day I'll post something for the #SummerBlogSocial, I chose to do prompt #12, which asks, as you reflect back on your time blogging, tweeting and Facebooking, what has surprised you most?


Ahh, blogging.  It's been an amazing 3-4 months.  But looking back, I've gotta say I'm surprised about how much of a time suck the entire process was.

It started with dreaming up a topic, something that would serve as the foundation for the entire blog.  Then, I started thinking about how to designing a look/brand.  Then, thinking up a post, deciding the correct angle to discuss that post, creating that post, and finally making sure people come to see what you've written, which includes commenting, promoting, and branding.

While each post might take less than 30 minutes to write, the entire blogging experience eats on average three or four hours of my day.  Which, at the starting block, I definitely never had expected.  And please don't take that as a complaint - I love every second of it.  


I spend time reading other's blogs, and commenting, tweeting (when I've got something to say), but I think the most dangerous and expansive time suck is dreaming - dreaming about what I want to do with the whole thing.  


In my mind, I've created a structure, a town, no - a city-state, psh, a WHOLE COUNTRY, all built around the idea of a visual representation of every connection that happens on my neural network, plastered onto the internet so as to keep record of it all so it doesn't tumble out of my head like I'm trying to catch a bowl of jello with my hands that some punk poured out of the third story window.  In my brain, I've got a website with travel recommendations, business ideas, investment choices and tutorials, silly vlogs where I make an ass out of myself while learning how to cook insanely difficult meals, humerous short stories, short biographies that I've written more as a way to learn how to write than anything else, political manifestos, societal commentaries, novels, book reviews, film critiques, gardening suggestions, poetry, essays, apostrophes, screenplays, and cartoons.


These are the dreams that take up at least a sixth of my day, but like I said - I'm not complaining.  I love this.  I love blogging.  If I could figure out a way to get paid a decent salary for this, I'd quit my real job in a heartbeat and work full time at interacting with the blogging community.


In the end, this is what surprised me the absolute most: that while so much of my day is devoted to something I previously found so intangible and silly, I've now discovered just how awesome this intangible and silly thing could really be.

Wit vs. Self-promotion: A Quandary

This is the third day of #SummerBlogSocial 2011, and this post is for prompt #6, which asks: Tell us about an element or two of your blog or social media presence that you are unsure of and would like opinions on.

I love twitter.  No, seriously, I think I have a little bit of a man-crush on it.  It's like every single one of my tweets is a mini-blog post that I get all giddy and excited over hitting the "publish" button on my computer.  And the fact that I've gathered together such a great mini-community that sometimes will respond to my tweets that I think are so clever and amazing with adulation and praise - that's awesome. 

But, as with all great loves, I've got a little bit of a quarrel with my crush.  Sometimes, I just don't have anything to say.

So my twitter account will sit idle, waiting for some twit-spiration to arise and per-twit me to be clever and twitty for a couple of days.  And all my followers will get in the meantime is a couple of tweets a day that say,

"hey - I know you're super busy and all, but I just wrote this really long diatribe about nothing of any importance to you.  By the way, what's the difference between a monologue and a diatribe?  I know what a dialogue is, but can you have a monotribe?  Haha, I really love these kinds of linguistic questions, don't you?  ok, anyway, here's the link for my blog, come see me, please?  no seriously, come!"

Although not in so many characters.

In addition to the lack of inspiration when it comes to funny and clever tweets (we can't all be Marinka @motherhoodNYC) I have a phone that is about as current as those massive brick phones of the early 80s, so even when I DO have something awesome to say, it takes me about 30 minutes to type it out.

So my question to you all is really two-fold:

First, how do you all manage your twitter account in terms of actual substance and tweets that promote real connections between you and your followers vs. self-promotion.  And second, how do you perceive those people who will, for days, do nothing but self-promote (albeit sparse self-promotion, but absent any real content). 

Writing that last sentence, I feel like I should add a disclaimer: if someone follows me, and I look through their history and all I see are links, I will not follow.  What does that say about me?

Severe Case of Navel-Gazing, or Omphaloskepsis (which sounds better)

High emotion tends to create drama, and drama is usually what draws an audience.  But the thing about high emotion is that one needs to express that emotion in an environment that the person feels is safe - no one likes to put themselves out there only to be met with ridicule and negative reaction.

So in a way, the ability to control your audience is crucial. 

I tried to show this on a 3D graph (with an x, y and z axis) but I couldn't figure out anywhere where I could make 3D graphs except by hand.  And I'm not smart enough to draw that, so you'll just have to imagine it.  It'll be awesome when you do.

Moving on...

For example, my family doesn't know about this blog - and I'd pay anything to make sure they never do - because I feel like if they WERE to find out about it, I really wouldn't be able to write this blog the same way that I do.

I tried to write a second blog (concurrently with this one) that would be available to them.  It started out terribly, and ended up with me just sort of copying and pasting boring and watered-down posts from this blog over to that one.  In the end, it was a terrible disaster, and I put it on death row.  Trying to write to an audience that includes them is about as conducive to creativity as having an open-faced dirty-diaper-sandwich rubbed in your face.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in an audience controlled environment, I can shoot to write like Michelangelo (the ninja turtle, not the angsty and perpetually filthy painter) would write, whereas otherwise, I'd have to write like I would imagine Leonardo or Donatello would write: boring, melancholy and ultimately depressing and stifling. Also, if you're going to choose a ninja weapon, don't choose a Katana or a Sai.  They're dumb weapons.  Nun-chucks are where it's at.  At least the Shredder had those really cool spikes on his hands.

But I've also considered going to the other extreme: total anonymity.  I'm still actually considering that possibility.  This way I'd be able to talk about EVERYTHING.  The problem, of course, is then I can't talk to anyone about it.  Which I love.  My wife is probably starting to get annoyed by just how much I talk about you all.

So I guess in the end, my question is: how do you all manage your blog life and your real life?  Are they intertwined at all?  Do you have any tips/suggestions?

10 Blogging Tips for the hypothetical newbie

Liz over at A Belle, a Bean, and a Chicago Dog is running possibly the most brilliant plan for those of us who are too cheap too busy to go to all these blog conferences.  She (along with Jessica from Four Plus an Angel) is hosting a stay-at-home conference called the #SummerBlogSocial!  From what I gather, because this is my first blog conference of ANY type, it's an exceptionally awesome way to write about blogging, and then get together and discuss through link ups!


So without any further ado, 

If there was a person who was thinking about starting a blog, I'd try as hard as I could to offer them these 10 incredibly useful tips:

1.  Outline your goals, short, intermediate, and long term.  If you're just writing a blog as a type of diary, and you don't necessarily care about stats or readership, than this is something to keep in mind when you're designing your layout, or piecing together your content.  Likewise, if you're looking to get a large army of readers as fast as humanly possible, your approach would be completely different.

2.  If your goal IS to get a large army of readers as fast as humanly possible, please - take a breath.  Now take a chill pill, and finally, take a reality check.  Things don't happen as fast as you'd like.  For some people, yes - they can gather a huge amount of people quickly, but you'd be surprised at how much work  it is.

3.  Comment!  No, seriously, comment a lot.  Bloggers love to hear feedback from their readers, no matter how positive or negative.  It's really how everyone learns to get better, or even how they connect with people.  But don't leave crappy comments.  A little thought put into them goes a long, long way.

4.  Once you get started (assuming you want more readers, of course) you should absolutely get a blog assessment or even a personalized strategy from Eli Rose Social Media.  This helped me incredibly, and I think it allows you to be more focused in not only your content, but in your entire blog "brand".  Just one suggestion about it, give yourself some time before you go get their help.  You need to understand a little bit about how the blog community works in order to reap the most benefit from their suggestions.

5.  Try to control your audience.  Dependent upon whether you want your blog to be entirely anonymous, or to give your name and address, and invite your whole family to read your blog, this should really be part of your strategy to balance your blog-life and your real-life.  This is something I'm still struggling with, and will likely end up being an entire post all on its own.

6.  Don't be too hard on yourself.  If you write a post that people hate, or have to take some time off so you can get your life back on track, or you're just too busy - it's not the end of the world.  Look, in all reality, it's just a blog.  The people you're writing to will likely never know who you are, and you'll likely never see them in real life (unless you go to a blog conference).  To be honest, what you write is MOSTLY just for you.

7.  That said, if it's something you have the time and desire for, put effort into it.  You can absolutely tell the difference between those who have nothing to say and are just spinning their wheels, vs. those who are really trying to create a blog that really encompasses who they are, and is really cohesive.

8.  In regards to content - don't pigeon-hole yourself.  Keeping yourself broad will allow you to be whatever kind of blogger you want to be.  I admit that I'm a "daddy blogger", but I try to distance myself from that term so that I don't get stuck writing solely about being a dad.  I enjoy blogging about other things too, like anything from the clashing russian/american cultures, to literature, to linguistics.

9.  Write ahead of time.  I can't stress how important this is.  Some times you just don't feel like writing.  You're tired, hungover, and missing a couple teeth.  The last thing you want to do is sit down and churn out something for the blog.  Other times, you're manic and need to get out the four or five posts on gigantic topics.  That natural instability (everyone's got it) should be balanced out by blogging ahead.  Added bonus: you can re-read stuff you've already written so you don't make a mistake by hitting the publish button.

10.  Have fun with it.  No, seriously - have a crap-load of fun.  I've met so many amazing people already, and shared great experiences with them even though we've never actually seen each other in real life.  I've read some great blogs, and written some of my favorite posts ever.  These couple of months that I've been blogging have been extraordinary and even if blogger were to seize up and die, and my account were to be lost, I'd never regret a moment.

So there you go, young padowan.  Run free, and grow into the amazing blogger I know you were destined to be.

Also - because it's monday, and this is a list, I'm linking up with Stasha as well at the Good Life for Monday Listicles.  She has asked me to come up with a topic for next week, so if you want to join us for that next monday, create a list about food.  That's right - any food.  Food you like, don't like, wish you liked, etc.  See you next monday!

A Change in Strategy - aka a "Chrategy"

Yesterday I was a mess.  I seriously don't even remember posting anything to the blog.  Also, I apparently commented on someone's blog and then forgot, and told the person that I was sorry I didn't comment, and then they were like, "um...", at which point I went and double checked, only to find out that in fact I DID comment, and so I told said person this via twitter to which they replied, "should I call the ambulance?"

And that's pretty much how my entire day yesterday went.

But one thing that I DO remember is reading a post by Alison @ Mama Wants This, which was interviewing the Babe Ruth of the blogging community Alexandra from Good Day Regular People.  She was giving advice to people who, like me, have no clue what they're doing when it comes to the blogging gig.  And one of her tidbits of advice was, "blog ahead of time, because otherwise your blog is crap, and come on, people - if you have any sense of dedication to your hobby, you can at least get that straight". 

Or something like that.  Probably less abrasive, but I don't remember, cause I was essentially stoned all day yesterday.

And I know I've heard this advice about infinity times, but for some reason, it stuck yesterday. 

So - whereas this was my blogging process before:

oh, wait, what? it's 9am.  I guess I should stop working and figure out what I'm going to blog about.  How about puppies?  No, I don't have a puppy, so it would really be kind of a stretch.  How about my shoes?  they're kind of stinky, maybe that's worth putting in the blog.  No, that's kind of dumb, no one wants to read about my smelly feet (right people?  if you would, let me know, and I'll hook you up).  How about a list of all the things I THOUGHT I was going to blog about, but finally decided against? Brilliant! Entire time from idea formation to hitting the "publish" button: 15 minutes.

This will now be my process:

I have enough posts sitting and waiting to be published that I could die a horrible death likely from falling out of a window from a very tall building and people wouldn't know about it until three years from now.  Well, besides those people who would be walking by that building.  They would know pretty much instantaneously.  Unless they were looking away at that exact moment, but once they turned their heads back, yeah, they would know then.  

So I told my boss that I'm not working on his crap today, I'm spending my entire day today building up my library of posts.  Then I apologized profusely and played it off as a joke.  It'll just be our secret, ok?

Blog Maintenance Day

Today was a blog maintenance day. 

I updated my pages, and I think I'm blogged-out for the day. 

Check out my updated pages (blogroll and My favorite effing posts)!

I'm still trying to get up the gut-strength to switch over to my own domain, which is purchased, but sitting unused because I still can't figure that fo-shizzle out.  So, right now, www.smellslikeborscht.com is in limbo/purgatory/whatever the ending of Lost was.

That is all.

But, so that you don't feel like your trip here was a total waste, I have a picture for you. 

What're YOU lookin'at?

Back in Business

Have you ever felt like a crazy, rabid monkey just would not quit humping your arm?  Besides the obvious pleasure from the experience, you'd probably feel a little annoyed that one of your appendages was unusable.  Also, there'd be a lot of loud screeching.

This is how I feel about purchasing my own domain.  I'm excited because it's a new step, and my URL won't have as many characters as War and Peace.  But at the same time, it's annoying.  It's annoying because my knowledge of internet speak is limited to URL, WoW, and porn. (note - I actually do not play World of Warcraft, nor have I ever watched pornography.  This is for humorous demonstrative purposes only...obviously)

And since I don't know anything about anything, it is a brutal march.  Just last night, I realized I could point this site back to blogspot, and not have it hovering in the purgatory between domains.  So I'm back here, hoping to figure it out so I can make the switch over this weekend.

Ok, but enough about that. I had this post imagined a while ago, and I understand it's a couple days late. (thanks, stupid interwebs).  For your viewing pleasure, six of the greatest Passover/Judaism related links ever assembled.  Notice, they are not sausage links, which would be delicious.  just the regular internet kind.

1. Dude makes Washington Square Arch out of matzo, wins $1,000 - goes on to dye hair normal color

2. Who doesn't like Orthodox Jewish Cats? My wife informs me that in Russian, Shpilkes are high-heels. That makes this comic take on a delightfully surreal meaning.

3. Journey out of Egypt through a tunnel of Matzo.  Oh, Canada, is there anything you can do that the entire world WON'T find adorable?

4.  For those last minute Seder gifts, don't forget to purchase The 10 plagues finger puppet set.  Educational, cute, and convenient that there is a plague for every finger!

5.  No list would be a list worth making if we couldn't insert some geeky math puzzle or theorem.  Just another beautiful thing about Pascal's Triangle.  As as side note, Pascal was a pretty badass dude.  First piece of evidence: the guy's name was Blaise.  Or spelled like anyone normal would spell it, Blaze.  If I were naming a big huge dragon, Blaze would be my first pick.



6.  Speaking of math, Rabbi + flamethrower - chametz = Hells yeah

Curses!

I am in the process of foolishly trying to figure out how to move my site from blogspot over to www.smellslikeborscht.com on my own (with some help from the team at @elirosesocial).

so if you have been wondering why there has been no delightful and wondrous new content being published here - that is why. 

I just realized it is my own fault, as I have no clue even what a domain is (unless we're playing D&D).  so until things get up to speed, I think I'll stay over here at blogspot for a bit longer.

new content in the AM, I promise.