Velveteen Mind

Will You Hit Your Saturation Point Before Your Tipping Point?

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No one likes to be left out.  Just look at what I wrote on twitter the other day:

Fantastic, indeed.  That is my personal recipe for getting nowhere fast in the business side of blogging.  Largely because I don’t do the things that produce the numbers or metrics that “they” seem to value.

For the concentration of this post, I’ll focus on mom bloggers, though this applies to all bloggers. 

In the sprint to be noticed, to be included, to be asked to participate in the discussion, many bloggers lose sight of why they began blogging in the first place.  For fear of missing out on the one great opportunity that will finally get them noticed, bloggers begin moving away from their personal writing and begin spreading themselves thin across a seemingly endless sea of “write for us!” sites that can offer nothing more than “exposure.” 

There is nothing wrong with gaining exposure, as marketing is all part of building your audience, but when it begins to come at the cost of your personal platform?  That is when I begin to take umbrage.  It is at this point that we see so many mom bloggers throw in the towel altogether, rather than step back and refocus.

Blogging becomes a chore, a job (an unpaid one at that), something you do for other people.  You find yourself making imperceptible course corrections along the way in order to accommodate certain policies and guidelines, eventually coming to the startling discovery that you are nowhere near where you want to be and no longer have the energy to find your way back. 

In other words, in the race to find your personal tipping point, you find yourself hitting your saturation point first.

This is my plea to you:  Being “included” is not all that it’s cracked up to be.  Or so I gather.  Being “you,” however, is more than most people are ever able to manage.

Bloggers are learning to game the system.  The numbers lie.  Your voice does not.

Trust yourself again. 

Yes, the mom blogging landscape has changed in the last few years.  Strong content is no longer enough for people to find you in the sea of voices.  If you want more than your mama and her sister to read what you write, you will have to do a bit of marketing, whether that be through personal branding (custom banners, logos, taglines) that stops the casual blog-hopper in their tracks or through a bit of social media networking like twitter or facebook.

What you have in your favor, though, is that strong content is no longer enough.  Those big dogs that came into the fight early and never had to lower their heads to see what was scuttling around them?  That approach doesn’t work so well anymore.

The rules of engagement have changed and they have changed in your favor.  The mere fact that you know how to engage with your audience gives you a leg up…  though now would be a good time to drop the “dog” analogy.  Ahem.

What I ask of you is that you don’t “engage” yourself right out of your self, though. 

We all want to be included.  We all want to be invited to the sparkly party or sent on a fancy trip.  But if we aren’t careful, all we’ll have left to dress up for that party is an empty corporatized shell.  We’ll look great in our party dress, sure, but we won’t remember why we wanted to be invited to the party in the first place.

In your dash to find your tipping point, don’t let yourself reach your saturation point.

Every now and then, step back, reassess, and shed a few pieces of the jewelry you have layered onto yourself.  With all of that bling glaring in our faces, it sometimes gets hard for us to see your face.

Remember, your personality is the best adornment you own.

Wear it well.  

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Learning to Let It Count on Mother's Day

Every year I entertain an internal debate as to whether or not I should remind my husband that Mother’s Day is coming up or wait and see if he remembers on his own.

I picture this conversation:

Maguire:  When is Mother’s Day this year?

Megan:  Yesterday.

It’s evil, yes, but I can’t help but be mindful of my store of “You owe me one” moments.  I’ve been cashing them in a lot lately, what with the month in front of the toilet and the periodic energy droughts that wrack my pregnant body.  I need there to be some substance behind the “Oh no you d’int” looks I throw my husband’s way when he mentions that this is his third day without clean underwear.

Maguire is an only child and came into our marriage with little to no experience in the “consideration” department.  He was the kind of guy to eat the last cookie every time.  The kind of guy to open the new bag of snacks you bought, you thinking they would last a couple of weeks, and eat them all in one sitting.  Maybe he would put the bag back in the cupboard with some crumbs.  You know, for you.

It is safe to say that the majority of our arguments begin with “What exactly did you think would happen?” or “What did you think I would say?”  All simply different versions of “Did you even think of me?”

Notice how all of those exclamations include a running theme?  The word “think.”

As an only child to a doting mother, Maguire functions as most men do, with his existence hovering single-mindedly somewhere near the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid.

This is human nature.  Base human instincts.  Men are nothing if not instinctual.

As it turns out, there is no Holiday Instinct.  No “I wonder if she needs a break instinct.”  At least not naturally, that is.  After more than eight years of marriage, the “I wonder if she needs a break” bit can certainly be a learned response.

A learned response in the face of a wife’s outstretched claw-like hands and deranged face as she whirls around to lurch at you when you ask “While you are hanging around today, do you think you could iron my shirts and take care of these dishes?”  Because, you know, I do a lot of just hanging around.

But husbands are not the only ones that could use a little work on their learned responses.  Maguire is teaching me that.

In response to the multitude of ways that I ask him “Did you even think of me?” we have finally boiled our understanding of his responses down to, “No, but I would if you asked me to.”

In reaction to my “Why can’t you be more considerate?!” Maguire tells me, “I would be if you reminded me to be.”

You can imagine how I take this.  Lots of “It doesn’t count as being considerate if you are told to be considerate!  That’s not being considerate, that’s just following orders.”

You know the logic.  Picture Jennifer Aniston’s “I want you to want to do the dishes.” to Vince Vaughn’s “Why would I want to do dishes?” in The Break-up.  Vince’s point is that, in the end, he’ll do the dishes if she asks him to.  And isn’t that what she wants?  Explaining what Jennifer actually wants is not only mind-melting but also something that most women understand and empathize with.

But yeah, there are clean dishes ultimately involved.  So what if we have to tell them the bottom line?  This is what I keep asking myself.

On Mother’s Day, what I ultimately want is a break.  And to be acknowledged.  And to be pampered.  And maybe half a dozen other things, all of which revolve around my not being asked to do any work around the house, pretty much.  What I don’t actually need is for my husband to suddenly become psychic (his frequent claim as to what I clearly must want because how else was he supposed to know it was our anniversary?!) and begin acting considerate.

Maguire, today I’m going to tell you what I want and I’m going to let it count when you do it.  Not because it was a surprise or because you thought of it all on your own.  Nah.  Because I’m the mom and moms know what really counts in the end.

Today is Mother’s Day.  Now, um, surprise me.  I’ll tell you how.

***

PS-  Hot red beans and rice!  I'm the Southern Mama Blogger of the Week for Mother's Day over at Southern Living Magazine.  Yes, that Southern Living.  The one on every southern mama's coffee table and in every well-equipped guest bath!  Now then, since a dream of mine is to write for them, ya'll please go over and tell them that they didn't drop the cheese ball when they chose me.  And Happy Mother's Day! 

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"In the Bubble" at Walt Disney World

They call it being “in the bubble.”  As a guest at Walt Disney World resorts, you are “in the bubble” from the moment you step into the line for your Magical Express ride from the airport to your resort, through the landscaping on the property, to the smell of the dungeons of the Pirates of the Caribbean, right on to the moment you step back onto your plane to make your way home.

It’s those special touches.  The “We’ve got it covered” approach that meets you at every turn.  The extra dose of magic that finds its way into everything from the towels to the soap to the carpet in the hallways. 

It’s the Mickey.

Yikes, that’s a scary still frame after a long day.  The video above was shot in my room at the Walt Disney World Beach Club Resort.  By the way, that “towel” was actually a blanket.

Thank my lucky stars, I was fortunate enough to have spent the weekend at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, as part of the Spring Mom Blogger Mixer.  Well, thank my lucky stars whose names happen to be Maria Bailey from BSM Media and the Social Media department of Walt Disney World. 

For my having been singled out as a mom blogger, well, some pixie dust must have been involved.

I haven’t been to Disney World since I was 12, having grown up going to either Epcot or the Magic Kingdom every year prior as part of our annual trip to St. Pete’s Beach.  Back then, Disney was a one day trip, where you chose one park or the other to tear through before heading back to your own hotel hours away.

My, how things have changed.

The resort culture that exists at Walt Disney World today is extraordinary.  As a mom of pre-school age children, it is now the only way to do Disney, in my opinion.  The benefits of spending your Disney vacation “in the bubble” (or on Disney property, from the resorts to the parks) for the duration of your stay, are immeasurable.

Our group was referred to as the “Magical Moms.”  If that means that we were magically transformed into 9 year olds, then the term is spot on.  Even the model-esque Lindsay Ferrier of Suburban Turmoil was reduced to a wide-eyed awe-struck babe.  I assure you, it is difficult to be intimidated by even the most “successful” bloggers when they become a puddle of emotion and sparkles in the face of the world that Walt built.

The video above was shot during the Reflections of Earth presentation in Epcot’s World Showcase Lagoon.  The mom bloggers you see are Lindsay from Suburban Turmoil, Beth (the one with the camera) from I Should Be Folding Laundry, Andrea from Mommy Snacks, and Emily from Mommin’ It Up.

There is so much more to tell you about the trip, not the least important of which being how I think I’m finally getting used to the idea of this new baby, but it’s time for us all to pop back out of the bubble until the next post. 

More videos, more stories about the other bloggers (some of whom I know you’ll love, if you don’t already), and much more about the Disney experience to come.

Most of all, I want to share with you what I learned.  You know full well that I don’t generally write reviews.  But this was different, and for that reason, I ask that you bear with me and trust me.  This trip to Disney changed the way I think of my family and my role as their mother. 

For all of the fun times that I miss from being in my twenties, nothing compares to the joy that family life brings.  Since this was a business trip, our families had to stay behind (understandably so, as we were completely booked).  Let me tell you, I had to hold back tears for the whole first hour I was in the Magic Kingdom because I missed them so thoroughly.  I was jealous of every mother that watched wonder spread across the face of her child as they stood in front of Cinderella’s castle.  I sort of wanted to kick every dad that propped his son on his shoulders as they headed toward the Jungle Cruise. 

Because I wanted to share the experience with my kids. 

My life is nothing without my family.  And the magic of Disney only highlighted that for me this weekend.  For that, Mickey, I thank you. 

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