megfowler.com

I’m up for Best Personal Blog and Best New Blog… and voting ends SOON.

Remember:

• You can vote daily from ANY computer
• You can vote from ANYWHERE
• You don’t have to give any personal information to vote
• You will earn my undying love

It’s easy-peasy, really.

UPDATE BECAUSE I AM A TRASHY BIMBO: Thank you to JENB, CANADIAN BLOGGING LEGEND, for nominating me for them there awards.

AND…. vote for the amazing and talented Kristin for Best Blog and Best Family Blog. Her blog supports her and her gorgeous family in a lot of ways (as the connector to her other jobs) and THAT is worth supporting, not to mention the fact that she is a gifted and compelling writer. When I grow up, I wanna be like her (except I think I’m older, so that’s not going to happen.)

Thanks for all your votes so far, guys — for me AND Kristin. You’re the collective bomb.

AND… one more note.

I know that a lot of people feel that awards like these somehow diminish the blogging community in some way, and I’ll admit… I get my twinges of HMMM when I remember the days of working with kids and wanting everyone to feel like a winner, and to feel motivated to keep going. And there are gazillions of blogs out there who don’t get the attention they deserve.

Just a couple things, then:

My blog is not NEARLY the most read one around these parts, and I know that it never will be. I don’t have a particular niche I can address my blogging efforts towards, so I will always be dangling out there in some sort of topicless ether with my words. I love many, many portions of the blogging community, and have connected with some amazing people as a result.

So far, that’s been the best damn thing about having a blog, period. But blogging will most likely never be my job.

And that’s okay.

Because writing is. And always will be. And writing is my art and my science and my passion. This is the thing I love. This is the thing that drives me towards excellence, that makes commendations matter, because the more people that read my writing? The more writing I will get to do.

While I blog as a form of self-expression, I also blog as a working writer always on the lookout for freelancing connections and opportunities. This is my bread and butter. That’s what makes traffic matter, what makes awards matter, what makes links matter, the whole nine yards. The more of that stuff that happens, the more I get to do what I love and make a life out of it.

I DO care about being read — I would write all of this in a bound paper book otherwise. I care about connecting, I care about dialogue, and I care about growing as a writer and as a person through all of this. I have always thrived off of the response I get to my words, and I think that’s something writers NEED to do… you need to balance self-expression with the demands of audience engagement if you want to make a career of your words.

So thanks for voting. It’s just one little pebble on the beach of a whole life of writing — seriously, 28 years now — but that pebble will bring other pebbles to the shore. And then I get a whole beach. And then this metaphor dies, except now I want to go back to California. And that took me far too long to say. Awesome.
Dammit.