Blogger Idol
September 21, 2013
You’ve heard me mention before—I’m impressionable. So when my friend casually mentioned that I should enter this year’s Blogger Idol contest, that was pretty much all it took. For the last week, that notion has been niggling in the back of my brain and now that the deadline for auditioning is all but past, I’ve decided that I must spring into action and put myself out there to be judged by the world.
Of course, as a public blog under my own, real name, it’s already out there being judged by the world. Only now, if I’m chosen to continue, I’m going to have to do things to actually promote and try to improve it and gain readership.
It’s not that my goal is to make this some big thing. I write for myself, and if a few people pause to read an entry or two, well, that’s just dandy. I write because I like to write.
But I do like a challenge. And one of my favorite methods of blogging is if I am given a topic. My source used to be a website that engaged in daily “assignments.” Most often that would amount to taking a photo based on some community-voted theme. I would use my photo as the jumping-off point for some writing. That website petered out and so did the frequency of my blogging.
But recently, that wonderful blogger Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim posted a list of fifty topic ideas, and that was just the jump-starter I needed. I have written through #7 and I have #8 ready to go. I’ve managed not to study the list too hard, so that each next topic is fairly unpremeditated. I like it that way.
And that’s why this Blogger Idol contest is interesting to me. Sure, I could win great prizes like money to spend on Marware, whose awesome leather iBook laptop satchel I have owned and loved for years, and a host of other web-, design-, and life-related services. But the real appeal is the chance to participate in the weekly assignments over which I will have no control. That’s just the way I like it!
So watch this space, as they say! If I pass the audition, I’ll post updates on how you can help pull me through from week to week.
Thanks for reading!
It’s just another frantic Friday
November 17, 2012
Open letter of application
April 14, 2011
Dear the3six5,
For weeks, nay, months, I have been waiting to find the perfect time to write the perfect email to you to apply for an author spot on your interesting blog. I should have known better. The perfect time never happens. And the other perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
Tonight I have finally gotten fed up with my inaction and fairly quickly come around to the notion of turning tonight’s entry on my own blog into my application to your blog.
All along, I had been planning to give you the link to my blog as my resumé for your project. Because what better way to demonstrate that on any given day, I can write about something, anything, than to show you that I do.
I like to write but I hate coming up with ideas, so this is where I confess that it’s not entirely my own imagination that drives my blog. For a year and three-quarters I have been playing on tweaktoday.com where we do something different every day, documenting said thing, most often, with an original photo, but sometimes with a video. It eventually occurred to me that using our daily mission as the jumping-off point for my blog would be an easy way to overcome that bit of laziness. But it would still be a challenge because by letting an outside influence dictate my direction, I wouldn’t get to write about something near and dear to me a lot of the time. So for a year and a half, I’ve been taking what the community dealt me. I think it’s gone pretty well.
It’s ironic that today, when I finally apply to you, the mission chosen on tweaktoday.com is by me and that no one, including myself, has submitted anything.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t write. And I’ll even write on a holiday, such as my birthday or Christmas. And look, this letter just happens to be 354 words long, almost perfectly fitting your author guidelines.
Sincerely,
Kelly Doudna
V.D.
February 15, 2011
For some weird reason, I didn’t hate today. I even wore a red shirt. I wasn’t looking forward to flowers from a sweetie or anything like that. No, I couldn’t wait to secretly decorating the fake ficus tree in the lobby on my floor at work.
The fake ficus has become the subject of daily updates on another division of my blog because I find its ever-changing position humorous. I don’t doubt that I’m the only one who does. I’m sure the sixty-four page views that the earlier entries have tallied mostly happened by accident. Doesn’t matter. I get a kick out of it so I’ll keep taking a photo every (week)day around 2:45 or 3. The tree actually hasn’t been moving around as much since I started documenting. I also get a kick out of how our neighbors put their large trash right out there to be the first thing people see when they step off the elevator. That’s professional. If you don’t want it in your suite, do you think anyone else wants to look at it in a common area?
I wasn’t privy to many comments about the hearts; I imagine a lot of people didn’t even notice them as many, myself included, have their noses in their phones as they cross through the lobby on the way to the bathroom or the Down button (we’re on the top floor).
I do plan to keep decorating for upcoming holidays and special days. I suppose the ultimate measure of success would be if other secret decorators got into the spirit. They probably won’t, though.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 