Velveteen Mind

Blog Nosh Magazine Editors are Good Enough to Eat.

What may appear as blog paralysis to you is actually a great mind at work behind the scenes.

No?  Not buying it?

Okay, so I know I haven't posted in something like a million years, but I have been blogging, in general terms.  I have been teaching myself how to make blog graphics so that I could finish designing the Editors page of Blog Nosh Magazine and I am almost done.  Almost done!!!

Wonder why I am so excited?  For one, teaching myself how to design buttons and graphics and blawg sturf like that is not easy.  But most importantly, the editors I have lined up are utterly awesome and I've been working hard to do right by them before we launch.

Want to take a sneak peak?

  Click over to Blog Nosh Magazine and
check out the Editors Page in-progress.   

Even a quick browse through the editors and each of their channels will tell you that we have a diverse group, although still heavily female.  Must work on that.  Men?  Manish boys?  Dads who are really just kids?  We need you.

Click through to the editors' blogs, take advantage of the handy "Subscribe" buttons, and be sure to check back at the end of the day when the remainder of the editors should be included.

Seriously, Blog Nosh Magazine will only work if you support the blogs that are featured there.  That includes the editors.  I pay them in exposure for their blogs...  so technically, that makes you the bank.

So click!  Read!  Subscribe!  And absolutely tell me how you think we are doing so far.  I am making this up as I go along and I'm doing it for you, so speak up!  Tell me what you want to see and we'll do our best to deliver.

Launch date is hopefully next week.  Now go nosh!!!

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A Few Loose Strings from my Threadbare Mind

I'm taking another turn on the eBay blog rollercoaster.  This time the ride is called Sparkplugging, my personal car is called eBay and eCommerce, and I'm graced with a new passenger/ co-author.  Frankly, this ride sounds much more exciting than eMoms at Home, dontcha think?.  Wanna check it out?

I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it.

Hopefully I won't fly out of the car this time and forget to write anything for, say, five months.  Well, I was busy.  I'm writing now.  Deal.

;)

I'll be continuing my eBay Selling for eParents channel at Sparkplugging, writing about starting and managing an eBay store.   My co-author is Kristie McDonald from Nitro Toyz and she will be covering much of the how-to nuts and bolts of opening and running an eCommerce store, which extends far beyond eBay.

So, yes, I'll pretty much be prattling on about personal eBay stories, crazy customers, and my envy of much-cuter-than-mine eBay stores, while Kristie will tell you how to get some real work done.  Sounds like a deal to me.

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If the work-at-home generation is not your style, then take a swing over to my other project, Blog Nosh Magazine. A divine new banner is up, courtesy of Sam at Temptation Designs and you have to check it out.    Seriously, I want to eat that banner.  I literally had to go out and buy a pack of chocolate doughnuts after we were done with the design.  Yeah, I didn't have a craving for a ripe red apple, strangely enough.

And then my butt and thighs chuckle to themselves.

I am still organizing the site and I still need your help.  Particularly, I need your help finding a few good men.  Aaaaawwww yeah. 

No, seriously, we need some testosterone in that joint and I'm not talking about the kind that makes us sprout hairs in weird places.

Do you know some amazing dad bloggers?  Male gamers?  Men who eat food?  Send 'em my way.

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Don't care about working at home or promoting your own blog and those of others?  Rather just splash out on some snazzy new fitted tees?  You'll be happy to know that this is a project I have absolutely nothing to do with:

Mrs. Fussypants is launching her new CafePress store today!     Blissfully Domestic Designs offers clever products in categories ranging from Blissful Babies to Mommy Bloggers.  Going to BlogHer this year?  Buy your wardrobe from Blissfully Domestic Designs! 

They also have coffee mugs (buying all of them, I swear), bags, and hats.  Seriously, just a ton of stuff.  All with that Blissfully beautiful air about them.

Ooh, and if you are a particular fan of Mrs. Fussypants, finding yourself consistently flattered by her complimenting of your beautimous face and cute shoes, followed by her big sweet "MWAH!" kisses, then sneak over to Mrs. Fussypants Baby Shower today and wish her well on shooting out baby boy #5. 

Yeah, the woman is insane.

This is why you need to buy something from her new CafePress store above.  The chick needs to pay for 90 packs of diapers a month.

The Baby Shower blog will feature well-wishing posts from some of your favorite mommybloggers today, including me, if I ever write anything.  Love you, Alli!  I thank God every day that I am able to manage two little boys.   Five?  Bless your heart.

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So, clearly, what I am saying to you today is:  Be anywhere but here.  Because here at Velveteen Mind today, I got nothing.  But all of those other places?  I got tons.

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What do you have on *your* plate?

I received no less than three emails today from unrelated people saying more or less the same thing:

"You know the [fill in the name of project here] we discussed?  We need to move forward on that soon.  Hello?"

Look people, in case you haven't caught on, yet, I will say "yes" to anything.  Want me to write for your site?  Sure, send me the access code!  Want me to help you redesign your blog even though I have no design skills?  Absolutely, let's brainstorm!  Want me to give birth to your baby?  No problem, I shoot 'em out like a bazooka.

Okay, I'm actually a little more picky than that, but you get the idea.

Inevitably, however, some things slip through the cracks.  Conference calls, for instance.  Um, could you all just call me?  Yeah, the entire conference.  You call me as a group.  No?  That's not the way it works?  Humpf.

Wait, you wanted that contract signed?  I still haven't unpacked my printer.  Could you just sort of forge my signature?  This email can serve as my permission for you to do so.  What?  Legal who?  Grrrrr.

Who is supposed to pay taxes again?  I think I paid those last year.  What?  Every year?  Um, let me get back to you on that one.

What do you mean you haven't eaten lunch today?  Didn't your 20 month old brother prepare a nutritious meal for you from the one cabinet he can reach?  What?  It only had an empty box of cereal in it and an old cereal bar wrapper?  Didn't you go grocery shopping, my dear sweet 3 year old?  What exactly do you think that tricycle is for, kid?

Maybe I am exaggerating a bit.  But that's how it feels sometimes.

...Good God... (rereading this post so far...)

I think I've just written a textbook mommyblog post.

I am Mommyblogger.  Hear me snore!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

A post about overextending myself.  Huh.  That's original.

Did I mention I've only been sleeping three hours a night?  Not for lack of trying, either.  And I was actually entertaining the idea of having a third child.  I am one cah-ray-zee lady.

So, consider this my open letter to all of you to whom I have made promises since signing back online in March.  I have received your emails.  I have received your calls.  I have received your contracts.  I have received your psychic messages wishing me focus and drive and the ability to follow-through.  I hear you.

I'm on it.  And I really do mean that.  I meant it when I said I wanted to [fill in whatever it is that I said I wanted to do].  I've just gotten a little distracted. 

But now?  I'm on it.

Right after I take a nap.
Love,
Megan

PS-- This whole over-extending ourselves thing?  That is precisely why I have begun the launch of Blog Nosh Magazine.  I want to reward all of us for keeping something of value on our own blogs.   Even if that means writing something brilliant that only your audience of 20 will read.

That's where Blog Nosh Magazine will come in.  Make it good.  Make it solid.  Make it for yourself.  We'll help you find the audience.  Just do it for you, first and foremost.

That's why I overextend myself.  At the end of the day, I get something of great value out of every single project to which I commit, even if that something is helping others. 

It is just that today was one of those really long days.

And I could have sworn it was Friday.

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Let Me Back Into The Matrix

A little over a year ago, I took the blue pill.  The one that places you inside the Matrix.  The Matrix that is the blogosphere, that is.

A little over four months ago, I took the red pill.  The one that removes you, albeit painfully, from the Matrix.  The one that plants you in the real world.

Now I'm ready to take the blue pill again.  But will you let me back into the Matrix?

~~~

It is amazing how much I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

It is disconcerting how little I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

Wading through hundreds of blog posts, it is clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Conversations turn into friendships.  Slights turn into tantrums.  Radicals are born and movements are started.  Resolves fizzle as the shine of new blog buttons begin to dull.  Awards are doled out and flashes appear in the pan.  All that glitters...

And yet nuggets of genuine gold are there.  Scratch them.  See for yourself.  There is value in this Matrix that we have created.  You just have to know where to look.

So I took the blue pill.

Now let me back into the damn Matrix.

~~~

My progress so far...

Apparently BOSSY really did email me about her Excellent Road Trip  while I was, uh, not reading my email.  Thanks for supporting my bludgeoning of her for "overlooking" me anyway.  I should probably read my email from her before I start yelling at her next time.  Nevertheless, I will be meeting up with BOSSY at her stop in New Orleans and I couldn't be more excited to have her in my neighborhood.

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TopBlogMag is not dead after all.  It was just in a coma.  Unfortunately, it has woken up from its coma with amnesia, not being able to even remember its name.  Therefore, I have renamed it and given it an all-new identity that suits my purposes as its new publisher and editor:

Blog Nosh Magazine!

After consulting with all of TopBlogMag's excellent writers, the new reincarnation will be a magazine featuring republished posts from your blog's old archives. 

You know those really great posts you wrote before anyone was reading your blog?  The ones you try to pimp out in your sidebar's "Dear God, Please Read These Before You Judge Me for Writing About My New Haircut 4 Days in a Row!" section?  Yeah, those.

If it has fallen off of you r front page and you love it, then we will be noshing on it!

*With your permission, of course.*

I'll be calling for editors soon to start compiling content for lots of subcategories.  While TopBlogMag always had male writers, the majority of the bloggers seemed to come from mommyblogs.  Time to ditch our niche and help promote and discover  some solid content not originating from the uterus.

Not that I don't love mommybloggers.  ;)

*By the way, we will still have some "themed writing" challenges, but it won't be the entire content model now.

Want to get your name in early as a writer, contributor, and/or editor?  email me and I'll add you to the Blog Nosh Magazine mailing list for updates and cries for help about the progress of the magazine's restructuring and relaunch.

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In this same vein, one of my favorite new discoveries post-hiatus is Alltop.com.  Granted, I sort of hover around the moms.alltop.com section, but when I do venture out, I am always richly rewarded.   Alltop.com is an excellent source to break out of your "Internet stagnation."  Taken from their "about" page:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections ... into individual Alltop sites based on topics ... At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet... The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

Precisely.  As such, Alltop has become an excellent source for knowing which blogs' archives I might like to dig through to find old content that they might like republished and re-promoted for Blog Nosh Magazine.  Particularly blogs in niches that I don't generally read.  A gold mine, indeed.  Although they only display the most recent headlines and preview the first paragraphs* from these blogs' posts, it's usually enough to know if I want to click through or not.

*Good reminder to all of us:  open strong and headline with intrigue!
 

Love it.

>>>

Finally, the worst of my renewed immersion in the Matrix has been twitter.  When I took the red pill and stepped away from the computer, I was a so-so fan of twitter.  Mostly, I found that people used it to promote their blog posts and maybe talk about what they were eating.  No real conversations within the circle of twitters that I followed.

At the suggestion of MammaLoves, however, I decided to give twitter another go.  Apparently, Mamma is a drug pusher.   

May I suggest that if any of you decide to take a hiatus from blogging (highly recommended, mind you), twitter may be the fastest track back online.  Within days of logging back on, I have found at least a dozen new blogs that I adore and gained twice as many lovely "followers" as I had even last week. 

Talk about getting lost in the Matrix.  Get yourself an account or start using that dusty old one you already have and start following me.  You'll be amazed at who you'll meet, who you'll start reading, and who will start reading you.

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Now it's your turn.  Tell me, what else did I miss while I was away?   Pop a blue pill and draw me further into your Matrix.

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