Tamar Jacobson blogs at Mining Nuggets. Today marks the beginning of her sixth year practicing the blogger’s art.
Congratulations for staying the course Tamar! I understand your feelings when you say,
This morning, as I look back at the very beginning of blogging, I feel as if it has been more than just five years. The Internet became a great friend to me. I have learned so much through writing these two blogs, and have connected with amazing people all over the world. Writing in the blogs has given me the expression I desperately needed during some very difficult and lonely days when we first moved to Philadelphia from Buffalo. But more than all that, I discovered that I really and truly like to write. I adore having a public forum to write to. I do not know who reads me, and, although my audience is not as great as many other bloggers I know, it is important for me that others read what I write. At times, it feels as if I have something important to say, and that it is worth sharing with others. Indeed, I want to be heard. I do not want to be invisible with what I say or think …
“Authenticity” is a concept that many find ephemeral these days. Sometimes it is more easily described with an example than with language lubricated by postmodern relativism. You write from the heart and provide us all with a good example of how to share our experiences authentically.
In 2010, as I struggle to revitalize my own blog in an expanded online world, I can wish for no better example of the way forward than “Mining Nuggets.”
Over on twitter there is a practice known as Follow Friday.” Twitterers craft tweets and often tag them with the characters #ff (for Follow Friday). If you show up on a Follow Friday list you know that at least one twitterer likes your tweets, or respects you, or appreciates the links you share, or is stalking you, sucking-up or whatever. One hundred forty characters, the maximum length for a tweet, doesn’t permit a lot of nuance, but in general I’d say it pleases people to be on a #ff list.
Here’s a short list of some blogs I’ve been reading, and/or twitterers whose tweets tickle me. Think of this as my prolix attempt to do a Follow Friday thing. Behind the wall, in the false security of Facebook “privacy,” there are some people I follow too. But Facebook is a walled garden, a private place that doesn’t conform to rulez of the internex, so I can’t really point you to their work. I can say that if you have a Facebook account today I recommend friending Kat Herding and Mike Golby. Aren’t all the neologisms of social media WONDERFUL? Who knew that “to friend” could be a verb? In the old days, like 2003 and prior, we used the more conventional “to befriend.” Ah well, time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana.
This is not to suggest that you sign up for a Facebook account in order to follow Kat and Mike.
In the flock of twitterers that I follow are these interesting, funny, or (seriously) serious people:
@anamariecox
@gartenberg
@maddow
You don’t have to sign up for a twitter account to follow these people, but why not do it anyway?
And here is the main course of my Follow Friday, the blogs. Forget about tweet streams and friend lists. Focus on some good writing. The kind that can’t be packed into a 140 character tweet. Read these bloggers:
Suzy of Luminiferous Ether (or “spacegoo” for short)
Cinderbelle, Quaker Fruit Salad and/or Ramblings of a Ringtail
Tom Matrullo, Improprieties
Jon Lebkowsky at Weblogsky
That’s all for now. And it’s still Friday here in the Middle Earth.
