Cottages, Campgrounds and Family Times

Hi all,

Thoroughly enjoyed guest-blogging with fellow author Babette James last Friday. We chatted about what I wish I’d known–and done differently–after having been published. I also shared a sneak-peak of the cover prototypes for No Matter Why and its sequel, No Matter What. If you missed it, you can still check it out here. (Just remember to come back, lol.)

  (My cottage kitchen. Those are the original battens forming the wall behind the sink. We saved the sinktop and built the base with treated lumber. Sorry about the poor picture quality. Took these with my Motorola Q phone at least 3 cell phones ago.) 

“Who would have thought hanging out and playing cards could be so much fun?”

That’s what my older son said, as he, my younger dude and a buddy for each sat around the oversized antique chestnut table in the dining room at my cottage-in-the-PA-country woods, built somewhere between 1872 and 1905. (The development, originally a tent community, had about 88 structures at one time. About 30 remain.) Within half an hour of arrival, this Mac-loving, tech-savvy boy was feeling his connection to Mother Earth and remembering how much we all love it there. (Yep. Even moi—once I got past the overwhelmed one gets when you see the mess awaiting, the one I helped make when we closed the place up last October.)

Mind you, each kid, (now just a few months away from turning 16 and 14) grumped and moaned about heading out for a few days. “It’s so boring,” was the expected complaint. (Hey. They both have 3G via Verizon. No excuses.) But, with a friend each in tow, my ‘suburbia (?) boys’ found a happy reminder of how much they loved the “Little House in the PA Woods,” as this fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder loves to say. In fact, the older guy made sure Dad confirmed ‘getting’ the cottage when Dad and Mom ‘go.’

  One of the beds we found when we bought the place.

Like the lunatic with unresolved control issues I’m sure I have, I cleaned. (Went once last year and the place has only been attended only by men in between.) With hubby, the boys worked tirelessly on a mini-bike; hiked through the woods; went swimming at a nearby pool; played cards late into the night; built a fire ring with flagstone, campfire to go with it and whittled sticks for marshmallow roasting. (We teased our campground neighbors that ours was the bigger and better blaze, and we had marshmallows. They had awesome homemade desserts. ‘Nuff said.)

  Not sure what kind of wood this awesome chest and mirror are made of. It’s my favorite and the only piece I’d take if we ever sell the place. The mirror alone weighs 20 lb or more. It’s REALLY heavy for its size. What’s amazing is everything we needed was there. I bought next-to-nothing for this little haven. 

I’d hoped to write, but my brain just don’t seem to be goin’ there these days, so I brainstormed and read while my inner editor critiqued—she is SO annoying. (And hubby wakes up too early these days. ). I did, however, see one couple who reminded me they are the inspiration between one of my works-in-progress, so maybe that will translate into the major re-write I want to do soon.) When I wasn’t reading, cleaning or cooking (those boys have to eat), I socialized with other folks on our little development. I even sneaked in one good walk off site. Can’t do it on the grounds—one winds up talking for hours.

 My bedroom (second floor), taken from the screen-enclosed porch that leads into it. The dual set of French doors still have the intricately-tooled hinges that may have been handmade. I love waking up, looking up at the steeply-pitched ceiling and then into the trees outside the porch.

Guess the point of my ramblings is this: amazing how simple things that reflect simpler times refresh our souls. Hubby didn’t seem to need his TV much. I’m sure kids texted but they didn’t do Netflix or games until in bed, circa 2 AM or later the three nights we stayed. (And with 3G, we even managed a little Wi-Fi for the grownups to check email, lol.) Me? I’m always thrilled to be in such a natural setting and hope to clean less and enjoy more on our next trip.

 

  A view from my enclosed screen porch on the second floor. During the summer the weather is warm enough to sleep with the French doors open. This is one scene I get to enjoy immediately upon waking up. 

 

 

 

 This handsome thing kept showing up one year, even after animal control services took him. I called him Kirby. Kids thought Pancake suited him. 

Until next time,

Joanna

PEM: Diane Lang on Life Learned!

Hi all,

Welcome to a new week and another Positive Energy Monday. Hope each of you is well.

We’ve had our fair share of challenges this week but are hanging in there as a family and trusting God with the reins. He always seems to handle them better than we do, lol. 

Funny. I always grab my good friend Diane’s inbox entries and share. This one truly applied to me this week–and especially on Sunday, when we got some unwelcome news. (Nothing horrid and totally deal-able.) Guess I can boil it down to it’s been a week of teachable moments. 

                

Every day is a learnable/teachable moment. The more I learn to live in the Now and create my day, the more I realize every moment is precious and can be learned from.

This eliminates the right and wrong. It just means what is… is what is.

It eliminates “mistakes;” instead of worrying about making a mistake I now realize that there are no mistakes,  just teachable moments.

Instead of thinking of “failures”, we just realize we need to adjust our path to fulfill our dreams and goals. Every day offers new opportunities. If you realize that, then you will realize there is no such thing as failure. A new direction has opened up.

If we think in the moment, we realize how great each moment is. You’re alive. The moment is all yours to do as you wish.

When you live in the now, you break free from control issues. In the now, we don’t worry about the future and why should we? We can’t control it anyway. We let go of the past because we realize it’s gone and we have the power to make each moment be whatever we choose.

When we live in the moment we actually stop and smell the flowers. We realize how many simple moments of pleasure we actually have each and every day. The small things give us the biggest pleasures such as my daughter’s laugh, my dog’s excitement every time I walk through the door, the warm sun and the lazy days of summer.

If we all could live in the NOW we could release a lot of our worry, anxiety and fear. Imagine life without those distractions.

For more information visit my website: www.dlcounseling.com or my blog at www.creatingbalanceandfindinghappiness.wordpress.com

Buy Diane’s books here: Baby Steps: The Path from Motherhood to Career and Creating Balance

Counseling Educator
www.dlcounseling.com

Thanks to Diane, as always, for allowing me to pass  her wisdom to you. The more I get to know her, the more I realize how much great insight she has and how blessed I am to be on the receiving end of it! 

My HMO about a book I loved later this week! Thanks for stopping in!

Joanna

Fan Fiction? Bad? Hmm…

Happy Middle-of-the-Week-Day! Hope this post finds you all well, open to possibilities and looking forward to great things!

The other day I happened on Janice Hardy’s awesome blog: The Other Side of the Story. Novice and more experienced writers will find a slew of excellent articles designed to help with any/every aspect of writing, submitting and marketing one can conceive. And tips are easily applicable, even if you’re not sitting keyboard-side.

As I browsed through the responses to a post, I noticed a comment that resonated with some of my current writing struggles. I emailed the commenter, who replied.  She touted herself as ‘bad me’ for writing fan fiction. As my response to her grew, I realized I had a blog post on my hands. So, this one is for my newest online writer-friend—almost—exactly as I wrote it in the body of the email (before I copied and pasted it into the blogging software ):

“No such thing as ‘bad’ associated with fanfic, and I’ve already done what you want to do from yours–launch an original piece. I started with a very popular, very dramatic/high-stakes two-part episode of a very popular TV series. What was great about that is I didn’t have to generate the story. The work was done for me, lol, and it gave me a great forum to start learning how to get description, dialogue, etc, on virtual paper. I also got some nice feedback from readers/fans, who felt the original characters I’d introduced into the story line were woven into it well.

So, sixty pages later, I was done, but one line from one of the show’s characters kept nagging me: how did my character meet up with the show’s (and her) hero?

My original story took off from there. I borrowed one character and what should have been one chapter became a short (but full-length) romance around him and my heroine. From there came flashbacks that wound up being NO MATTER WHY, my debut novel with The Wild Rose Press. Its sequel, NO MATTER WHAT, should have been the ‘bridge/transition story’ between NMWhy and my (original) fanfic. Since I realized the character arc for my heroine was done, my fanfic (a highly polished first draft) is now slated as the springboard for a related ‘prequel’ story showcasing minor characters introduced in NMWhat. A completely original part 3—and completion of the trilogy—is in the works (and my current problem-child wip, lol).

As per the fanfic, two very cool things came of that:

(1) I started getting positive reader feedback (especially from the webmaster) and a small following. I even got my own page on that particular fanfic site. There were at least 700 entries posted and I became one of the eight she chose to showcase and make more discoverable. Talk about a confidence boost!

(2) One of my climactic scenes–totally original–took second place in the first contest I entered. The judge’s feedback was ridiculously simple: “Go forth and publish.” Gave me the guts to go ahead and write the query for NMWhy.

So you see, writer-friend, never judge your writing efforts, no matter what form they take. As your writing journey takes shape, you’ll find where each stop on that expedition fits in the grander scheme of God’s plan for you as a writer!”

Your turn! Please take a moment to share some of the unexpected turns and twists your writing journey has taken. Do you judge yourself, or try to follow the flow of your learning experience and see where it leads?

Thanks so much to all of you for stopping in, and thanks, EP, for inspiring this post.

Happy creating,

Joanna

The First Man in My Life

Hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend. Wimbledon closes tomorrow. Love the Slams but it’s always nice to get my life back in between.

That’s only one of the reasons I’m always behind, lol. Part of it is perceptual impairment to time. Part of it is avoidance behavior, I’m sure.

This post should have gone live on Father’s Day. (Having had it written might have helped; please forgive me for running long.) Here’s to a very belated Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful gentlemen out there honoring their call in life. Hubby is working and striving every day to be the best husband and father he can be. Kudos too, to my brother who I often feel is a better dad than I am a mom. Each of you is awesome. Never underestimate the worth of a dad.

On Father’s Day I made a trip to the cemetery. I visit several times per season, but never enough, I suppose (at least by my off-the-boat-mom’s Italian standards). Today my dad is gone eighteen years. He was a few months shy of a measly near-sixty-four when God called him, but he’d been hospitalized at least sixty percent of the last year he lived. I remember accompanying him to a dance on October 3 and taking him to the emergency room as soon as we got home. He wasn’t discharged until January 22^nd and was more in than out after that until the day he passed away.

My dad with two of his (four) sisters–those closer to him on his right. The little girl next to him is one of his favorite nieces: my cousin Rosina (?) who now resides in Australia. Dad was about (?) 18 years old in this one, so this was taken circa 1948. Love vintage photos! 

I won’t get into his health issues. (He certainly had enough of them and was a lousy patient anyway.) I’d rather focus on the little things that made our relationship special.

He immigrated from Italy around 1961. I’ve always been in awe of folks who pick and take off to a country where they don’t know the language. Sure, there was some support from those who came before him, but in many ways, he and my mom were on their own. (They’d married end of 1959 but for details I don’t remember–or know(?)–she came ahead of him.) We traveled as a family to Italy ten years later. He took off to Australia from there. Italy held no fascination for him after that. My dad LOVED The Land Down Under and would have moved there if he could.)

When my mom was pregnant with me, he wound up convinced—via family and friends—that I was a boy. Back then dads didn’t enter the delivery room. He is said to have gone home and to sleep. The story goes he was awakened by my uncle calling home, and telling my dad his wife had given birth to a girl. Not only did my dad not believe my uncle, rumor had it my dad was upset.

Mom tells me once I came home though, all that changed. The man glued himself cradle-side. Guess I’ve been Daddy’s Little Girl since.

Was it always perfect? Oh no. I was lucky enough that, being an off-the-boat-man, he wasn’t the stereotypically strict type. Not that I had free rein but he gave me way more freedom than my mom would have (sorry Mom!). He also had this way of letting me know he wasn’t thrilled when I thought of doing anything of which he didn’t approve. I’d get a story about him when he was younger. From what I remember, it didn’t seem relevant to the situation at hand. (Or maybe I didn’t want to hear it?) He tended to wrap up the same way each time. “I’m not like my father. I give you liberty to do whatever you want. But I don’t like it!” That closer did its job until I hit my twenties, and guilt at not ‘listening to Daddy’ was less of a factor. Then at twenty-eight, I did the unthinkable: I moved out. First-generation American-Italian girls don’t do that, you know.

Think my move out was rough on him, but I visited often. (I lived one town over). Given his health issues we spent a lot of time together anyway. You see, that (only) daughter usually takes care of her parents—it’s a cultural thing. We’ll toss in that my parents had this weird type of commitment and I got thrown into the mix of their stuff. (I wasn’t old or wise enough to know this either, so grumping and griping, I often went off to do the expected. I wasn’t always gracious about it.)

We played cards together. He taught me the Italian games, Brisk and Sweep (a.k.a. Briscola and Scopa, respectively) before the age of eight. What always got me, was how he kept track of every major card played and always knew what was in my hand. When he could no longer drive and got weaker, I took him places. The mall. LibertyScienceCenter. Parks in our area, where we dragged along my brother’s Great Danes. (Those guys are topics for another post.)

He was a tailor by trade and taught me a few good tips to altering clothing. Guess I inherited my love of sewing and my ability to read and reread (and now revise) a beloved book too many times to count from him. I can still see my dad sitting at his spot at our kitchen table, legs resting on my seat and crossed at the ankles, that same book in his hand. He was also big on the news, and followed politics via the Italian newspaper he bought daily. Because his command of English wasn’t great and he had a hearing impairment, TV was only so entertaining for him. (He did like staged wrestling. Never did a Monday night pass without the predecessors to the WWE and RAW gracing our set. I even took him to see Hulk Hogan’s first movie, and translated as much as I could without disturbing the other patrons.)

I still remember snippets of his last hospitalization. After a nine-hour marathon surgery to save his leg, the vascular specialist had to amputate below the knee. Have a feeling my dad kind of gave up after that. He just seemed to get more and more tired during our visits at the hospital. (He was also on renal dialysis, which I’m sure didn’t help with the fatigue factor.) The night before he died, we left and he seemed to be talking to himself. I got word the next morning that he’d passed away.

Interestingly enough, Hubby is a lot like my dad. The crazy thing is he’s a lousy patient too and has similar health issues—go figure.  We started dating about a week after my dad was hospitalized that October 3^rd. The two of them chatted twice. According to my husband, my dad told my hunny I was ‘special.’ I truly believe God took my dad when he did because He knew I couldn’t take care of both of them.

My dad never got to see his little girl get married (or engaged). He never got to meet his grandchildren, who I know he would have adored. It’s all okay though. I believe a spirit never dies; it lives on in all of us who came from and after him. Case in point: One of my dad’s first cousins shared his first name. They were fairly close in age and even looked a bit alike. The detail that I always noted was how his cousin walked like my dad, holding his left hand down at his side with his pinky up a bit. Guess what I’m trying to say is, if I look hard enough, I’ll still see his spirit here among us. (He shows up in my younger son too, who, as a baby, looked a bit like my dad. He’s stubborn in the same way, asking me my opinion on something then doing it his way anyway.)

I will close on that note, and thanks to all of you for indulging me. See you next week!

Joanna

 

Force A Solution?

Not always the way to go for me.

Good day, friends. Hoping this Tuesday finds you all well.

Wow. This calendar year is flying; Memorial Day weekend (and the French Open Tennis Championships ) both start next week. Then a few more weeks to another school year closing–where does time go?

Brings me to how busy this past weekend was–all good–but I wasn’t able to get something new together. I have three works-in-progress going on right now and struggling a bit with direction for each. I can do internal stories pretty well; those external plots get me crazy. Translation: I’ve been getting myself a little nuts with plotting books, templates, etc and am so jumbled with ideas I’m getting nowhere. So, because this older post is a great illustration of where I am right now in my writing journey, I thought I’d pop it up here again. I’d love to know your thoughts on the subject. And, as always, if the article speaks to you and you believe someone else can benefit from it, please click a SHARE button before you go!

The 30-40-minute meal I promised Stephanie should be up Friday! Hope to see you then

Have a wonderful day,

Joanna

Job Description: Mom Wanted

Yay! Post number 235!  Hope you’re all enjoying this day. 

Celebrated mine and my niece’s birthday and mother’s day yesterday with snacks, homemade pizzas and dessert. We had my brother and his family, my mom and later, my son’s friends. Couldn’t ask for better. Spent this morning running around a little but now settled in and enjoying my yard, the breeze and my laptop!  (Weather on the north-central east coast has been awesome all weekend.) Special thanks to my good friend Diane Lang who sent this to my inbox and never minds my sharing her wonderful emails! 

    

It’s Mother Day today. I wanted to send a reminder of how much all moms do for us. If we had to hire  a mom this is what the ad would look like and I’m sure more could be added on! If moms received a paycheck our annual salary would be around $125,000. I think Moms are priceless!

Make sure you tell your mom how special she is this Sunday and all year long!

Happy Mother’s Day:

 

Help Wanted: Mom

Must have a beautiful  smile, warm eyes and a loving touch. Highly motivated and energetic individual with the ability to multi-task, negotiate, and manage time. Must be a self-starter and be willing to learn new tasks at any time. Must be organized, delegate responsibility and manage a budget. Patience is a must. Must work well under pressure. Must be responsible, caring, disciplined and have good managerial skills. Listening skills a plus. Must have a reliable car. Position requires long hours, overtime, weekends and holidays. No sick or vacation time. Pay is low, appreciation is rare but you will learn a lot from this position.

Diane Lang, MA
Counseling Educator
www.dlcounseling.com

Thanks again, Diane! Hope you’re enjoying your day, too. 

Catch the rest of you later in the week!

Joanna

Wedding Anniversary Seventeen and Blog Post 230

#230: A WordPress milemarker. Ironically enough it’s on commitment. (Go figure.)

Meant to get this up and ready to go last night but hubby and I got back MUCH later than expected from our anniversary dinner. We even got to do a little dancing. Spent part of the AM in church and am now finally getting some time to get caught up.

This post recently ran over at fellow Liberty States Fiction Writer Chris Redding’s blog. Thought it appropo to run today. If you missed it, here’s your chance to catch up. If you’ve already read it–and hopefully liked it–please feel free to SHARE the thoughts!

The other morning, hubby I were hanging out in the kitchen. It was one of those fresh, sunny spring days, the kind that really brings to light how bright my kitchen is. Hubby was in a good mood—think we both were—and I noticed how his backlit green eyes really popped against the backdrop.

And it occurred to me how much I enjoy and love him these days. Or, as he would say, I was “peaking.”

Got me to thinking: We’re married seventeen years April 29. Hard to believe sometimes, but yep, that’s what it is. Most of the time, things are pretty even keel. Like others (I’m sure) we get our up days and down days; days we like each other and days we wonder, “What were we thinking?” (Hubby says we weren’t. ) Fortunately, the percentage of the latter tends to outweigh the former.

I thought a little more. Last year, right around this time, some ‘stuff’ that had been building hit its climax. Hindsight may be 20/20, but until you’re far enough away from a situation to actually have that perspective (and maybe to even see how ‘stuff’ was a set-up or segue to a greater good), surviving ‘stuff’ is a choice one makes. Sometimes one does so a day at a time; sometimes an hour at time or whatever it is those involved can handle.

We’ve gotten through other ‘stuff’ too—again, via a conscious choice to do so. We’ve drawn lines in the sand and made up our minds to agree to disagree on certain subjects. We’ve learned to joke about topics that were very hot a few years ago (not that we agree on them either and probably never will).

But we have chosen to accept each other the best we can for exactly who we are. (And learning, over the past nineteen years—we dated about eighteen months before marrying—that we’re kind of polar opposites but can OPT to make this work between us. And those lovely moments I peak? Those are the payoff for hanging tough through the times that feel tougher.

Brings me to the topic of commitment and writing. (Feel free to substitute whatever you like in place of the underlined word. Sometimes I’ll fill in the blank with exercise, day job, kids—almost anything applies.) Rather than get into a long-drawn out discussion on that I’ll simply direct you to my posts (The Big C—Parts One and Two).

These days, I feel as though I’m going through ‘stuff’ with my writing. There are so many changes in the writing world; so many opportunities, yet so much to do and a gazillion possibilities. I suppose, like the opener to Charles Dickens’ classic, A Tale of Two Cities, it is “the best of times (and…) the worst of times.” Time itself is always an issue and, lately so is my focus. (It kinda sucks. There. “I said it; yes I did,” as syndicated radio host and author Michael Baisden is wont to say.)  Story issues. Confidence (or lack of it). Things I’ve yet to learn and others I know I should be putting in motion. Fear of failure. Fear of success.

I hang in there, though, just like I have with my marriage. When I think about it, any (and almost every) relationship I’m part of is like that, right? Same with my writing. Time to make some conscious choices, beginning with a detailed plan of action, a few self-imposed deadlines, etc. If that current work-in-progress (wip) just isn’t working, maybe it’s time to turn my energies to another wip or begin a new one altogether. I’ve taken steps back to learn parts of the craft where I feel weak. I’ve reached out for help from fellow writers. (Now I’ve got to take the plunge and accept some of the offers— What?! Expose that disaster of a document I call ‘scratch pad’? Let people see how truly convoluted my grey matter is, lol? Nah. I’ll take fingernails being dragged down the chalkboard for $200, Mr. Trebec.”)

Then I remember one last thing, something the inspiring Ms. Jody Hedlund alluded to in a recent post at her blog. She talked about my unique writer’s journey and the pace I may be meant to keep. How I translate that to apply to me: I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be (in God’s plan for me, or so I choose to think). If that’s the case, then all I need to do is hang in a little longer, keep taking steps in positive directions and, like these days with hubby, enjoy peaking during a much-welcomed moment of payoff.

So what are your thoughts on these topics? What gets you through the stuff of life and what payoffs have you been blessed to experience? Are you following the pace that’s right for you? Do you feel as though you’re where you’re meant to be at this very moment in time?

Have a great day,

Joanna

Commitment 2012

Hi all,

I’m hanging out with the very talented Chris Redding today. Join us at her place!

Joanna

Another Coincidence? You Decide!

Hello friends,

Hope this posts finds you all well!

Okay, I know I’ve written the everything-happens-for-a-reason blog at some point in my blogging career (uses term loosely ), but I had an incident recently that’s just too much of a coinkidink? Judge for yourself!

Beginning sometime a few Thursdays ago (3/1/2012, to be exact—date isn’t significant; I just happened to remember it, lol), I had this ridiculous craving for white or yellow cake (homemade, as in box cake) with classic chocolate frosting on it. I was convinced I had the frosting in the pantry but couldn’t find it. I also forgot to pick it up at the market on my usual Friday trip there.

The weekend passed, and I didn’t make that cake. Almost got one of those Entemnan’s Chocolate Frosted Golden Cakes late Saturday night but passed b/c I swear, I’d have eaten almost all of it myself. Would have made one Sunday night, but we had no eggs and I was too lazy to go to the convenience store to get some. (Nor do I care for the brand of eggs they sell and I was really trying to NOT make this cake, darn it!)

Of course, Monday comes and I’m still craving this stupid cake. After dinner, I took a chance I had some leftover chocolate frosting in my spare fridge (in the basement) and headed down there to look.

Mind you, this came on the heels of a very weird smell I’d noticed (and hadn’t been able to pinpoint or locate its source) over the weekend prior. By Sunday night hubby thought maybe we had a dead mouse (or worse???) buried somewhere near the alcoves under the stairs leading to my basement. (I store toys and games for school there, kids’ shoes, etc. My younger son plays his video games down there, too.) After I ran the dishwasher though, the smell seemed to have dissipated and/or disappeared.

Back to my frosting: there was none in the downstairs refrigerator—which had switched off.

Odd.

It’s one of those models that needs to be manually defrosted. (Yep. Those archaic things are still around. Hubby bought it for his apartment prior to us meeting; it’s 19 years old.) The ice had fallen onto the few bags of frozen chicken in there, so I didn’t have to toss them. (BTW, I learned frozen pierogi and stuffed shells are much more delicate in texture and flavor when cooked after defrosting, thank you very much.)

The circuit breaker wasn’t out, so that wasn’t why the power had switched off. One look at the power source gave me the heebee-geebies: The supposedly heavier-duty three-outlet power strip—into which ONLY the fridge was plugged—had burned almost through one side. That weird smell had been rubber melting, though it wasn’t a typical odor. How we avoided an electrical fire is something I’ll never know. Having lived through the aftermath of one—more on that in this post—I’m beyond grateful that I don’t have to do that again. (Something also tells me my outlet has been rendered useless but until an electrician checks that one out, I won’t know for sure.)

Ridiculous how a quest for chocolate frosting led me to such a discovery, isn’t it? Chances are, the only connection between the two is in my head, but here’s one final coincidence. Last night, I found the container of chocolate frosting I’d believed I’d had all along—in the pantry and exactly where I’d expected it to be. (Of course that was AFTER I finally made it to the market, got another container of frosting and made my cake. My craving has been satisfied–until the next one !)

Your turn: share your story about a coincidence that maybe wasn’t?

Like the content? Please take a second and click on a share button below! That tiny little action has such potential in it, but only YOU can make it happen. Thank you!

Until next time,

Joanna

Blogging Etiquette–Faux Pas or Nah?

Happy Thursday all,

Not sure if sharing this is my best move, but an episode involving a comment I posted during a recent first-time visit to a blog inspired these thoughts. I came by said blog via a link in a loop; I’d never heard of the blog author or her guest but really liked the site.

Long story short, my comment included a link back to my blog. The post I linked to was so on-topic, you could read it in the URL. When I checked back at the site a while later, I noticed my comment had been ‘removed by the blog moderator/administer.’

Honestly, I was a bit taken aback. Yes, it was my first visit there, but I really wasn’t trying to be rude. Maybe I was excited to read content that reminded me of my own very similar post so I linked back to it, thinking it might be beneficial to someone else. BTW,  I have no problem with someone linking back to his/her blog from mine. (I might take exception to linking to content that I don’t believe family friendly, but that has yet to happen so I’ll deal with that on a case-by-case basis, should the occasion arise!)

I thought about why so many of us blog in the first place: to establish relationships with people and to create a presence online. Maybe I’m too steeped in social media etiquette as per Kristen Lamb’s teachings, whose we-are-not-alone approach encourages us to be out there as much as we can, supporting and promoting others, and when appropriate, ourselves too. (Perhaps I’ve missed something? IDK, someone would have to write something ridiculously offensive for me to consider removing any comment, or even editing it. Cyberspace—particularly the blogosphere—is so vast, I believe there is room for all of us. A final thought on the sharing part: perhaps anyone who clicked on my link might have found my content helpful. And said link-clicker would have already read the blog where comment was posted, so I don’t believe I was taking away from the original blogger.)

So what do you all think about this? Did I err or break a rule of blog etiquette of which I am unaware? Please feel free to comment away (email me privately, DM me on Twitter or send me a message via Facebook) and enlighten me. I would love some other thoughts on this—really!

Thanks, TTFN and a great day to all,

Joanna