What's Up Wit Dat

Maybe you’ve noticed. Maybe you’ve received an email from me and wondered why my website is part of my email signature. Maybe you’ve thought that I’m just that proud of myself, (of course I am) or that I’m a bit of an exhibitionist (not so much) or even that my kids are THAT cute, (of course they are) but probably you’ve wondered why it's there. There are several reasons for this and I’d like to share all of them with you.

First and foremost. I’m trying to drive up traffic on my site. Why would I do this? That’s simple. More traffic = more people, more people = more clicking, more clicking = maybe an ad or two, maybe an ad or two = maybe some income. That’s right. At some point I’m going to throw some ads in the sidebars of my site. This might piss some people off. This might make some people stop coming to the site completely. I mean, how dare I try to make an extra five dollars a month by allowing the world to read about my personal life. So to that I say, fine, don’t come back to my site… but if you could just click on that Amazon ad over there on your way out the door? Thanks.

Second. Motivation. It helps me to write because I’m writing for an audience. You wouldn’t know it by the comments left on my posts. In fact, if you base my traffic on my post comments you’ll be thinking that Amanda and Dawn are going to have a lot of clicking to do if I did put ads in the sidebars. You might be right. At any rate, it helps motivate me to write on a regular basis if I know that I’m writing for someone else. I’m writing for the kids and husband, clearly. I love that if I get hit by a bus, they have my writings. It’s memory insurance.
Blogging is sometimes like second job… or a fourth job if you are staying home with kids, it can be difficult to sit down and do your homework at the end of the day, but I’ve made it a habit. Habit enough that if I don’t blog for a few days… I actually feel a sense of guilt. After all, Dawn and Amanda are depending on me.

Third. It makes me nervous to post my writing online. Before I hit the send button on my email to post a blog entry, I get butterflies in my stomach. It’s sort of a digital version of public speaking and I think we all know how I feel about public speaking. So I do it anyway, for the same reasons that I put myself in other situations where I might be forced to speak out loud to more than two people. Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.” Being brave enough to say, Hey, Look at ME! is part of the ever present, resistance to fear movement.

So there it is, that’s the reason my website is part of my email signature. And if you have a blog, you should add it to your email signature. I promise I’ll click on your ads.