4 cents an hour and a shiny pink button

People ask me why I blog. All the time.

Well, some still ask what a blog is. 10% of these interactions occur at cocktail parties; 90% of these interractions occur in an elevator at an actual blog conference. The person asking generally has a bad hair cut and an ill-fitting jacket, and is attending some other conference filled with people with bad hair cuts and ill-fitting jackets. And I think, don’t roll your eyes at me, Mr. MCNCAAF Conference attendee! I bet you don’t get to got to a party tonight with glow sticks and a giant unicorn cake.

Anyway.

Those people who do (kind of) know what a blog is, they want to know why I do it. They ask why I keep it up when I’m so busy in advertising and I’ve got so much else going on with my website and these two growing kids, and sheesh, don’t you make about $.04 an hour on Mom-101, all things considered?

And I say, yes. All those things are true.

I also say those thing are exactly why I blog.

Here, I do not have to make logos bigger or make headlines smaller, or convince women that their successes in life will be measured by things like freshness or sparkling, spot-free glassware. Here, I can use the word oy and not worry how it will play in Peoria. Here I will not be told that the word awesomeness is polarizing. Here I can write about things that no one else talks about. Or things that every mother talks about. Or things I can’t talk about in front of my kids. Or things that I wish we’d talk about more.

I write posts that get 150 comments and posts that get 4 comments, and either way, I pretty much never regret having written them.

Also, here I have you.

This week, when I got the phone call from a big fancy editor of Parents magazine telling me they had chosen Mom-101 as Best All Around Mom Blog in their Best Blogs contest, I was rendered speechless for one of the few times in my life.

Partly because are you kidding me? Holy crap.

Also partly because I didn’t know you could win awards these days without begging your friends to hit a big VOTE button once a day from different IP addresses until they hate you and you can never ask them for anything again.

(Holy crap!)

My inclination is generally to say such things don’t matter all that much, but to me, this one does. It feels really, really good (really good) when people you respect say, “nice job.” No matter what it’s for.

I hope you all get to feel that as often as possible in your life.

Now back to the part about you…

One of the things the editor mentioned on the phone was how much all they love reading discussions here. She noted that the commenters here always had such good things to say. And how, scanning the comments, there are so few that just say “haha you’re so funny!” or “cute picture!” or “cheap Canadian Viagra!” (Though that last one is more the doing of a good spam filter.)

So I am especially honored to post this little pink button, because I truly don’t think it’s just about the writing. It’s not about posts. It’s about the blog. And a blog is, at its best, is a community that lives and breathes and thinks and discusses and make each other better and smarter, even after the blogger has hit publish and walked away to go pee.

If you want to know why I keep coming back here for $.04 an hour, that’s as good an answer as I can come up with.

See how I ended that last sentence in a preposition? That’s another thing you get to do on a blog. Awesomeness.