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!

Trading Sweat for Obesity

On any normal day, if you were to say to me, "Hey, Bill - I've got a splendid idea! Let's go to the beach!"

I'd instead hear this: "Hello, person I hate - I secretly want to kill you.  And the first step in my plan is to tear you from your comfortable air conditioning, stuff you into shorts that have a weird net in them that threatens your freshness, put sand in every place it shouldn't be, and leave you with a terrible skin ailment that will likely give you cancer, but in the meantime makes it uncomfortable to sleep.  Also, please make sure to swim out into the deep part of the ocean so all the billions of terrible fishes and sharks can nibble at your toes until you pass away from nibble-fatigue."

This is the test of true friendship - beaches and Bill mix like seagulls and alka-seltzer.

But not today.  We're headed to the Jersey shore this weekend for some good old fashioned fist pumping and GTL.  In "hey, actually you have a kid" terms, this really means learning how to change a diaper without getting sand in there and applying sun block every five minutes.

And even though I will likely be sweating the entire weekend +2 days, it's totally effing worth it.  We haven't taken time off from work to just sit and relax in over a year.  So I'll suffer through a little bit of melanoma if it means I get to stop working 11 hour days and worrying about silly stuff like what's for dinner.

Because guess who is coming with us?  My mother in law and her friend.

I just recently learned a joke about Jewish Russian Grandmas.  There was some kid who only ate chicken nuggets.  And...well, I don't remember the whole thing, but the punchline was, if you've got a Jewish Russian Grandma, don't waste her by being picky about what you eat.  That is to say, something in their genetic code requires them to make all kinds of delicious food all the frickin' time.

So not only do I have one Jewish Russian Grandma coming with me, I've got TWO.  Please, don't expect me to have any kind of sex-appeal after this weekend.  I fully anticipate being an obese blob.  Don't pretend you're not jealous.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Ok, Maybe I'm Whining a Bit

I never brought any of my buddies or girlfriends over to my house when I was growing up.  I was embarrassed of my family.

"Oh, gosh, how could you be embarrassed, they're your family!" you ask?

Example #1: We were in NYC one weekend eating at some restaurant when I was 12 or 13.  I have no idea where it was, or what restaurant it was, mostly because a deep, deep mental scar healed up over top of it, and in trying to subdue the insanity, the majority of the details were buried.  But the waitress was an attractive 20-something Hungarian girl.  How do I know she was Hungarian? Because my mom asked her. While she was holding on to her arm.  Which she got a hold of by force.  After which followed the phrase: "You've got such GREAT skin!"

Example #2: My father is absolutely incapable of hiding his emotions.  He would get incredibly pissed off at something - the dog, the house, his job, the floor, my mom, me, his shoes, the door, a bug that was on the table, or English grammar - and then the night would be ruined.  And if I had friends coming over (the very few times that it happened) he would almost always be in a crap-tastic mood.


So I guess I was always afraid my dad would sit there silent and seething while mom would attack my friends and start caressing their bodies.

Thus, after living this way for 20 something years, you can imagine how strange it is for me to bring my wife and kid home to see them.  My strange and awkward mother is externally overly interested in my wife's background and culture while secretly hating the fact that she's not some southern debutante.  And my dad's mood is about as volatile as an aging star whose mass is above the Chandrasekhar Limit (Yay Astronomy!). 


This is probably one of the big reasons we're living a couple hours away from them, and about 3.5 minutes away from my in-laws.  This fact is especially pronounced when semi-big events come up, like when your only grandson reaches six months old. 


My wife's parents bought presents, we drank in celebration (just a symbolic amount, of course), and they made time out of their day to make sure not only that we knew they cared, but that Sammy felt special.


My parents still haven't called or texted anything.


Look, I'm not whining - I'm just curious.  A lot of times, I have these perceptions of American culture that are seen through distorted lenses.  Firstly, my parents are outliers in pretty much every American cultural norm.  And second - my second family is just as clueless about American culture as I am.


So, like I said - I'm mostly just curious whether this is something you all are like, "dude - six months?  seriously?  who cares?"


Yeah, not whining - just....curious.  No matter what the title of the post says.

Six months of Sammy

Sammy is Six months today, and looking back at the past six months, I can't believe that he ever was this small

That he slept almost constantly the first couple days:

That he ever had trouble smiling at us

That we used to swaddle him and constantly keep him in hats

Or that he would laugh at the most benign things

Because for me, even though I look through the pictures, and recognize that he was so much smaller, and couldn't even hold his head, or that he didn't eat real-person foods, or show any interest in toys, I still will always hold him in my head as a generally naked, smiling and loving baby, who is curious and handsome and smart and loves to explore, and has exceeded every expectation I've ever had.

Cleaning Requests from the Wife

As much as I hate to admit it, I am not a clean person.  Or, rather, I am fairly clean, but not as clean as my wife would want me to be.  I can tolerate a bit of mess, such as our shoes lined up slightly non-symmetrically, whereas she wants our treatment of shoes to mirror what this dude's got going on.

 

Not wanting to catch tongue-ringworm, I am satisfied being slightly more messy than she would like.  But to be honest, I used to be a lot more organized.  

Take, for example, my method of pants storage while in college.  It was an amazingly devised system of complicated temporary pants placement that incorporated strategically located venues of pants removal - all of which were outside the bedroom and within ten feet of the door to the outside.  It was through this procedure that I could find the exact pair of pants that I needed, pick them out of their respective pile from the floor, and I was on my way.  It was like a highly pants-specific version of that "take a penny, leave a penny" policy.

My wife couldn't understand it and over-simplified it.  She just said (and still says to this day) that I would simply drop my pants upon entering the apartment, leaving a path of filth in my wake.

Psh, women.  They know nothing of complicated, scientifically-derived procedures.  

Anyway, she's now reached the pinnacle of the apex of the most ridiculous possible request: vacuuming under the bed.  In case she's not aware, people can't SEE under the bed.  And in my book, the dedication is to the inventor of the motto "out of sight, it's effing clean!"  I don't need to see under there to know that there's nothing of any interest below my sleeping bum.  Sparkling and clean down there, I tell you.

Next thing you know, she'll be asking me to do something insane like, cleaning out the refrigerator, or something.  Which is dumb, because EVERYONE knows that bacteria can't grow in the cold, so no reason to ever clean a fridge.

10 ways to NOT FALL ASLEEP

This week, Sammy will be six months old.  Yip-a-dee doo dah - it's exciting and all, but he still can't figure out how to sleep.  On Saturday, he went an hour and fifteen minutes from the time I put him in his crib until he finally passed out.  I seriously don't get it.  If I were in a room with a thousand gyrating people, and a giant Rhinoceros were to be doing the can-can while someone hit me in the face with a fly-swatter every thirty seconds while tiny leprechauns were to tickle my feet, I'd STILL be able to fall asleep in under 10 minutes.
 
I blame it on my wife.  Before we had Sammy, she always needed to chat for at least 45 minutes before going to bed, otherwise she'd stay up until 2 in the morning bored and unable to fall asleep.  Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with her, either.

So what follows is the 10-step-process by which Sammy goes through falling asleep every night, without fail. 

1.  Close my eyes?  That doesn't seem right.  Are you sure?  Get the instruction book again.

2.  Can I fall asleep like THIS? (rolls over on stomach and looks up at me)

3.  How about like THIS? (rolls to his back but flips legs up on side of crib)

4.  Hold on, do I need to have my eyes closed?  I keep forgetting that part

5.  How about if I were to try to stick my entire fist in my mouth?  Is that sleeping?

6.  I don't want my pacifier in my mouth! (Take it out and throws it across the crib).  I hate this thing!

7.  WHERE IS MY PACIFIER?!?

8.  I need my blankey!  Oh, and the eyes gotta be closed!

9.  Pacifier, dad!  Let's have it!

10.  Oh....hey, uh...I pooped...you gotta start all over.

Seriously, what's wrong with him.  You don't need a degree from an Ivy league school in order to figure out how to sleep.  Just close your eyes and let it happen! 

I am almost willing to be that my wife secretly slips him cocaine and meth just before bedtime solely so that Sammy can give me troubles when I'm putting him to bed.  Totally sounds like something she'd do.  Actually, I AM willing to bet.  Any takers?

Guest Posting at Daddy Runs A Lot!

Today, I have the grand honor of guest posting over at Daddy Runs A Lot - a blog about a dad who...you guessed it, runs a LOT.  Once, he just walked outside, willy nilly, and busted out a half marathon without even thinking twice about it.

I knew I liked the guy when he talked about his love of opera.  But then, he sealed it with an accurate discussion of the different types of zombies available to choose from when deciding which one to run away from first.  The list even includes the often contemplated "Rule 34 Zombies", who are at all times sexy, weird, and brain-hungry.

So, if you please, head on over to his place and peruse the merchandise, then read some blabbering monologue I put together about how impatient I am about Sammy growing up.