Posts Tagged blogging
7 Things (I hate about memes … just kidding)
I guess this is one way to, ahem, put this blog in a bit more of a spotlight.
The fabulous JCloe tagged me for this 7 things thingie and I hemmed and hawed briefly about whether or not I want to play the game. I mean, really, haven’t we all grown out of the chain letter phase? But I didn’t want to let the diva of classic rock down.
So, here it goes. First, the obligatory listing of the rules, which are:
1. Link to your original tagger and list these rules in your post. (check)
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post. (see below)
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. (see below below)
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged. (see Twitter)
Okay then. Now the hard part. My 7 things.
1. I am an aspiring geek. Here is a short list of the geekeries to which I most aspire: cheese geekery, social media geekery, WordPress geekery (stop laughing, I am just beginning this one), wine geekery and smart-grid technology geekery.
2. I hate The Gypsy Kings, chewing gum and lima beans. I know, hate is a strong word, but it applies in these cases. Except maybe The Gypsy Kings because I am sure they are nice people.
3. I grew up in Alaska but spent the better part of my formative years in denial of that fact (think mini skirts and tanning beds and teeny tiny little shoes with no socks – it was the ’80s!). I hate cold weather and I don’t know Sarah Palin.
4. I have written about open source software in one capacity or another since 1998. Yet I have never owned a machine, on purpose anyway, that runs open source. (This is not a fact of which I am proud.)
5. I like to bust out whenever possible. “Busting out” in my definition includes everything from packing up and moving to a new city (complicated currently by the fact that I’m not-so-secretly in love with Portland) to dressing the busting-out part for no particular reason.
6. I love going to movies by myself, going to bed with wet hair, and drinking pink wine in the summer, red wine in the winter and white wine all year round.
7. My son is going to be famous. My husband and I are banking on it. But he has all the traits: huge head, outgoing personality, a knack for charming large groups of people…
Tah-dah!
And here are my 7 tags:
1) Tyler Ashcraft of Spending Days (and, yes, I’ll fix the link on my blogroll) because he beat me to this blogging thing and I’m sure his New Year’s resolution is to update more often.
2) The inimitable Don G. Park who was also helped nudge me in the blog direction and who is sure to have an interesting seven.
3) Jay Parkhill of Startup Toolbox, a talented lawyer, my Twitter tutor and dear friend who is really bikey and belongs in Portland.
4) And of course Cory Frye of The Daily Wrazz, truly the most creative writer I know and the coolest cat in Albany, Ore.
5) Kathleen Mazzocco of kmazz, whose global savvy, PR smarts and approach to life in general I really admire. Plus she takes awesome food porn photos in France and then shares.
6) The lovely and talented Media Chick of I Heart Media because I’m a huge fan and she’s joining the Beer & Blog franchise and ‘09 is going to be a BIG year for her, I can just tell.
7) And, finally, reaching randomly into my list of Twitter friends who blog, all of whom would generate interesting lists that I would surely enjoy reading, I tag Mara Collins, Oleoptene,who I had the pleasure of meeting at a recent BackFencePDX and whose writing I enjoy.
I give
I’ve been obsessing about story of late.
Mainly, I blame two things for this, although there are probably many more I could blame.
I don’t blame NaNoWriMo. I am too time-strapped and chicken to attempt to write a novel in 30 day’s time. I don’t blame the ever present stack of books beside my bed that I devour at varying speeds. I don’t blame the ritual of nightly stories with my 2-year-old son who is just becoming acquainted with his imagination. I don’t blame the fact that my days are spent tugging on the threads of business to find my clients’ stories and then trying to find the best audience to tell them to.
No, I blame my iPod and BackFencePDX.
A few months back I got one of the new iPods. Not the clippy one, the supersized postage stamp one. It was so much lighter and sleeker than the clunky old one that has become our home stereo. I became a podcast fiend. Suddenly every walk with the dog was the opportunity to listen. I started with the eat-your-veggie podcasts about technology and sustainability. Then I evolved to the voyeuristic pleasure of listening to interviews with local tech celebrities on StrangeLoveLive. But while I still enjoy learning-by-podcast, nothing transports me like a good story. I listen to This American Life while I toil up the hills to Mt. Tabor, I listen to The Moth while I shuffle to Stumptown for my morning coffee. I listen to writers talking about each other (in a good way) on the New Yorker Fiction podcast while I follow the dog around the neighborhood after dark. I can’t get enough.
Which brings me to my other scapegoat: BackFencePDX. The idea of standing up in front of people and telling them a story is terrifying and exhilarating. The experience of sitting in a crowd of rapt listeners and hanging on the words of someone I’ve never met and yet feel a random kinship with is transporting. It’s really just fun but it feels like something more. My brain works away, chewing on each story arc, reflecting on the pacing and intonation, noting the comic timing. My memory cycles back to something that happened last week, last year, when I was 20: What would my story be?
I want to get better at stories. I want to join the conversation. I want to have a voice that’s just mine. And yes, I’m impressed and inspired by Portland’s enormous blogging community — that includes you, Tyler — and ready to stop making excuses and join its ranks.
Let me say up front: I will make mistakes. I will go for long periods of time without updating. I will reveal the depth of my ignorance on any number of topics. But I will do my best to tell a good story or two. And I’d love it if you listened.