Velveteen Mind

Socialism is the New Black

We are currently broke.  There is a difference between broke and poor, poor seeming to me to be a more permanent situation.  We're just plain broke folk at the moment.

Given this current cash hemorrhage flow problem, I have turned to my online ventures to help stop the death throes gap.  As a blogger, this means advertising.

One of my favorite blogs is Jessica Knows, currently featuring 15 Days of Marketing.  This is right up my alley of pressing needs, as her post on building your brand through a solid biography page, reinforced through a meticulous Press page is just what I need to focus on as I decide how to pitch the advertising opportunities available on Velveteen Mind.

Fortunately, I'm fairly happy with my current "About" page, needing mostly to add Press and my advertising rates.  Oooooh, that's right...  advertising rates.

I'm brainstorming, kicking around numbers based on basic research I've already done for the advertising available on Blog Nosh Magazine, and I come to a brilliant conclusion:  Small businesses and personal blogs will receive a discounted rate, while larger businesses will receive a higher rate.  You know, the big boxes like Kodak and WalMart shouldn't get the sweet deals I give the mom and pops just trying to scrape together a living.  Let's call it a "luxury tax."

Man, I am so funny.  Crack myself up.

Heeeeey...  wait...

What exactly is different about my "tax" plan and President-elect Obama's? 

Damn.

I'm going to have to reconsider this redistribution of the blogosphere wealth.

In the meantime, I did pick up one very clear and easy-to-utilize tip from Jessica Knows:  ScratchBack's TopSpots widget!  In short, it's a tip jar with benefits.  If you would like to support Velveteen Mind and/or Blog Nosh Magazine, you simply toss in a tip via PayPal through the widget in the right sidebar.  It's the one under "Subscribe" that says "Are You in my TopSpots?" on a blue bit of paper.  As thanks, you receive a text link for your blog or business on Velveteen Mind (or go to Blog Nosh Magazine and do the same).  Simple.  Clean.

I don't mean that I literally want you to tip me right now yes I do, just swap the name of my blog for yours or your friend's and you see the intrigue.

Tip jars always felt tacky to me, yet I never hesitate to chip in when someone requests a donation for their services, whether it be NPR or a free web application I use religiously.  I love tip jars on blogs, even when I'm only tipping a buck or two.  ScratchBack gives bloggers a really easy way to give back a tangible thanks, though, which is quite my style.

And no, this is not an ad for them.  No commissions paid. 

I'm just, you know, spreading the wealth.

Sigh.

Damn it.

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Now Appearing in Nashville, Possibly Headless

"If you started your blog to write about your everyday life and now your blog has infiltrated your everyday life, how do you account for that in your writing?"

This question was posed recently in the blogging community by a tenacious new blogger, trying to find her foothold in parenting blogger circles.    This is actually an amalgam of questions posed by a variety of upstart up-and-coming bloggers (oops, a reader pointed out that "upstart" can also mean arrogant, sorry there), all openly researching the top blogs in their chosen genre, trying to pin down what defines their success. 

In doing their research, these new bloggers began to notice not only what defines the success of the old guard, but also what signals the beginning of their decline:  the introduction of self-awareness.  Specifically, the self-consciousness of being observed.

One of my very first blog posts was Shrouded Audience Revealed.  Through years of keeping journals, I became aware that even though my journals or diaries were entirely private, books stashed away for none to find, I was never able to write as openly as I wanted.  On some level, I always expected my entries to eventually be read by someone other than me.  The hackneyed Emily Dickinson.

Blogging removed the shroud from that imagined audience.  And it changed the way I write.  For better or worse.

We all try to deny this self-awareness in our writing, but it is there.  We consider our audience now.  Even if just a tiny little bit.  Perhaps in a moment of hesitation before we hit publish on a controversial topic.  An occasional second thought.

I had one of those second thoughts this morning.  I sat down to write a post  to share the news that I would be attending and speaking at BlissDom in Nashville on October 18.  But then I thought:

"This isn't 'news.'  It's just information.  And who the hell cares, anyway?  Am I suggesting that there is someone out there that might decide to go to BlissDom because Mrs. Fancypants here is going to be hogging the mic?"

Yeah.  Exactly.  Drivel.

The true point is that I'm excited about 1) being invited to speak at all and 2) having one-on-one time in a small group of people that I either haven't yet met or didn't have enough time with at BlogHer.  I can't wait and genuinely hope that you'll be able to make it, not to hear me, but just to visit.  Bliss.

This brings me back to that original question:  How can we claim that we are the same, writing about our everyday mundane, when blogging has changed our lives or at least has the potential to do so?  For instance, I am traveling over 8 hours one-way in order to not only meet other bloggers (a subculture I once considered marginal and geeky but now see as increasingly mainstream and ingenious), but to speak to them.  And they might even want to hear what I have to say.  About blogging.

And part of this engagement involves writing about it.

The paradox:

Blogging can be like any other job.  Of course it infiltrates your life, just as your job should.  But when your "job" is to write about how your life is like everyone else's, and then that job changes your life, where does that leave you? 

The following is best read as one giant run-on sentence, for full effect...

When your everyday activities now include much that revolves around blogging, does writing about it become circular?  You are now blogging about blogging, because blogging is very much a part of your everyday activities?  But people began reading your blog to read about your everyday life, when it had nothing to do with blogging other than the fact that you were actually writing it down and sharing it within the platform of a blog...  Will they still want to read about your everyday life when your everyday life includes writing about your everyday life?

 

Now pick up the pieces of your head that just exploded and get back to me.

~~~

But do get back to me before the 18th of October, because I'll be speaking at BlissDom in Nashville about blogging about my everyday life, which I insist you will see yourself in, and which now includes traveling cross-country to talk about blogging.  Because that's normal everyday life, right?  Right.  Help me out here.  Come talk me down from the ledge.

~~~

*The "serpent eating its tail" images are referred to as the Ouroboros, symbolic of both infinity and, for our purposes, the circular argument.

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Hot Spot Hopping

Today, I collected coffee cups like a hipster collects nightclub hand stamps. 

After dropping off the boys at their preschool, one of two days during the week when they are both there, if only for a few hours, I decided that I would load up my gear and get some work done at our local Barnes and Noble.  I have always envied the oblivious laptop users I would see in cafes, so it was high time that I tote my new laptop to a local cafe and get all oblivious-like in my work, too.

Apparently, there is some secret among said oblivious-laptop-users in these cafes that they are none too interested in spilling...  and that secret involves how you access the wifi connections.  Ah, wireless Internet!  How you escape me!

After being assured by the barista (no matter how many times I read that word, it still sounds pretentious) that all I had to do was open my browser and I'd see what to do, I was hesitant to return to her and say that, in fact, I did not see what to do.  Something about the smirky tone in which she delivered my "instructions" suggested that if I didn't get it, I shouldn't be allowed to breathe their French-roasted air.

Maybe it's all the times customers give fake names to be written on their cups like "Chewbacca" or "Spanky" that make them lose patience with customers.  How many times can you call out, "Tall half-caf Pumpkin Latte for Magnum P.I.!" before you crack?

In any case, after an hour of trying to hack the secret code embedded in the AT&T wireless site, I gave up and moved to the next cafe.

By the way, AT&T, I was absolutely willing to pay $3.99 for 2 hours of your lousy Internet connection, so how about making it easier to take advantage of the desperately relieved to be out of the house?  Like, a big blinking button on your front page that says "Click here to pay an unreasonable amount of money for a very brief amount of access. Because who are we kidding?  You just paid $4 for a coffee."  I would totally click that.

Nevertheless, I was off to the next cafe.

Which didn't have wifi.   

A fact I was informed of as the barista was handing me my "I'm not here to take advantage of your free wifi connection" coffee.

Hm.  I need to get the order of my questions down better.  First ask if they have wifi, then order your coffee.

I now have two coffees, have consumed about half of each, of which I really wanted neither, and I can feel the coffee-sweat-jitters setting in.  Clearly, I would need to buy a $12 muffin at my next stop to soak up some of this caffeine.  Clearly.

Next stop, the cute new coffee house I've been meaning to try but whose exterior suggested that I would need to be wearing eye makeup if I wanted to feel comfortable.  As it happens today, I have on eye makeup, so here goes...

I've got the system down now:

Barista:  How can I help you?

Me (scrutinizing coffee board as though I'm dying for an obscure dessert drink, while holding in my sweaty armpits so she can't tell I'm OD'ing on caffeine already):  Hmm, let's see...  Oh, right, do ya'll have wifi?

Barista: Yes, ma'am, we do.  You should be able to just open a browser and see what to do.

Me (experiencing déjà vu but feeling optimistically wicked smaht): Great, right, so I'd like a tall white chocolate mocha.  Er, half caf.

Barista:  Here's your change.  Oh, by the way, when you look for our wireless network, our wifi is AT&T.

Me:  D'oh!

I'm back at home now.  Three dessert coffees poorer.  Three doses of caffeine higher.  On my already-paid-for wireless connection, trying desperately to ignore all of the chores that need to be done and pretending that my now-home kids are just noisy cafe patrons that like to spill things.

Oh, and did I mention that since being pregnant for a seemingly solid four years, I don't usually drink caffeinated coffee?

Yeah.

I'll be up til Monday.

jitter jitter buzz buzz shake sweat jitter buzz

...........................

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