SpaceAgeSage

When I started my blog last February, I enjoyed an endless passion to write about personal development. I also suffered from a naive cluelessness. I had no idea the Blogging World, Blogopolis, the Blogosphere — or whatever you call it — held so many fascinating people, ideas, and writing styles.

As I ventured out from my own blog to explore, a whole new world opened up. Like this Vulturine Guinea-fowl, bloggers and blogging can be weird, wild, and wacky.

But blogging is also home to some sane and wonderful folks who make the blog world and the real world a better place. I like hanging out with those people.

Here are seven things I learned from the whole experience:

• Blogging offers satisfying self expression
  Whether I write to vent, expound, or question, I still find pushing the Publish button has its rewards for me. I may feel a range of emotions from simple satisfaction to an adrenaline rush. My post may not be perfect grammatically, it may not be aimed at anyone specifically, it may be written for my own amusement, it won’t always be pithy, and it won’t win a Pulitzer, but in the moment where thoughts take a short flight to the keyboard and then to the world beyond, I take pleasure in knowing that at least one person will find something of value here.

• The main rule of blogging is authenticity
  Be an ass; be a moron; be brilliant; be a mover and shaker; but whatever you do online, be genuine, human, real, transparent, and true to your words. People of my generation grew up blindly following the lead of mainstream business, media, and education, so it has taken me all of my 49 years of living on this planet to read a person with intuitive insight. This is not true of those online now. Authenticity is the new cool, the new connective tissue in a community, the new Holy Grail.

• There is a learning curve
  Whether I aim to be a small-time blogger with plain text posts or a blogger in search of a six-figure income, there is something new to learn. When I started, I found WordPress.com easy as pie. When I wanted to move to my own hosted site, I had to bring in the big guns — my techie husband who moved SpaceAgeSage to a .com site (instead of spaceagesage.wordpress.com/). I’ve read how to monetize my site, but it seems to fall into a quicksand bog in my brain. To help me in this, I’m looking forward to the blog Blogopolis Blueprint, which is a collaboration between Sean Platt of Writer Dad and Eric Hamm of “Motivate Thyself.”

• The community is amazing
  When I first read other blogs — mainly at WordPress.com — I found voices crying, sighing, singing, and laughing. What a wild ride it can be reading about the inner lives of others. I read words and saw images from:

ranters and rebels and revolutionaries
reasoned and seasoned souls
religious types
revelers in the written word
teachers, tutors, trainers
photographers and videographers
moms and dads and grandparents

In other words, tons of people who want to put pen to paper … er, I mean, put words on the screen to connect with family, friends, or strangers waiting to introduce themselves.

• Kindness is worldwide
  When someone first commented on my blog, I felt a warm glow of appreciation for the person and for blogging. As a newspaper reporter and journalist, I’d rarely received feedback. Now I give and receive it regularly.  I like to listen to the words of my favorite bloggers and hear the sound of kindness. (Although I know they exists, I choose not to listen to other bloggers who value negativity and tearing down people out of insecurity.)

• Big or little fish need a clear, sharp voice
  It’s taking me awhile to find my blogging voice. Experimenting helps me find a tone and resonance that fires up my posts and readers, but I’m still searching for the powerhouse voice that erupts out of me now and again. I want to grab it and pin it down so I have consistency.

• Bloggers don’t fail. They re-direct.
  Blogging allows me to be as free or as rule-bound as I want. If I just want to write, I can express anything that comes to mind. If I don’t like how that is going, I can choose another way, style, or type of content. I can even choose to stop posting for awhile. Now if I want to earn a living at this, I have to follow the rules of the road and learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the like, but the great thing about blogging is the rules aren’t set in stone yet, so it’s ripe for exploration and innovation.

Of course I’ve learned more, much more than this about blogging and also about people, writing, and myself, but this post grows long! Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. How about you? What has blogging taught you about yourself, your writing, or anything else?

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Photo credit: speech path girl

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Tags: blog writing, blogging, things learned

“The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.”

~G. K. Chesterton

This year will be filled with change like we’ve not seen in many years.

Not all of it will be good, but out of adversity comes strength, out of challenge comes ingenuity, and out of hard times come a deeper appreciation for what really matters. Not all of it will be bad, because so many of us are embracing change, learning to give, and finding our healthier selves.

It’s important to think every now and again about our lives as if we have only a few weeks or months to live.

Ask yourself: What would I change in my life if time suddenly became short and precious?

I plan to face this next year with that question more at the forefront of my thinking. No, I’m not dying of an illness or anything, but it’s time to shed some more old ways.

They say, fortune favors the brave. So may we all bravely and forthrightly face the dawn of a most amazing year.

May your 2009 ring in with truth, love, and a spirit of adventure!

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Photo credit: speech path girl

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Tags: adversity, blessing, challenges, New Years

Hello one and all,

I hope this post finds your holidays going well! May the new year bring many wonderful open doors and chances to change things for the better.

I’ll reach my one-year blogging mark in one month. I’ve learned much, most of it coming from other bloggers. That’s the kind of world blogging can be.  I’m better for having read their posts or had them comment here at SpaceAgeSage.com. Here are just a few. I hope you take some time to check them out! They are listed in no particular order:

Cheerful Monk

Attraction Mind Map

Urban Panther’s Lair

Confident Writing

Successful Blog (Successful and Outstanding Bloggers)

Abundance Blog

Loving Pulse (also writing at Shades of Crimson)

MomGrind

Writer Dad

She-Power

Tender Loving Eldercare

Let’s Live Forever

Zen Habits

Light Beckons

Blogging Without a Blog

GoodLife Zen

Pun Intended

ProBlogger

Ribeezie

9Rules Blogging Community

Write to Done

Conflict Zen

Jungle of Life

Ramana’s Musings

Our Best Version

Chrisg.com

THANKS TO YOU ALL!

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Spiritual people are not usually:

• Hypocritical
• Arrogant
• Self-absorbed
• Self-righteous
• Worried
• Hateful
• Petty
• Insincere
• Careless
• Malicious
• Rude
• Greedy

But, hey, we’re humans — I’m human — so we can’t remove these things from our lives overnight, no matter what spiritual path we follow. The idea is to move away from these listed items.

But most spiritual people would embrace being all of these:

• Kind
• Humble (not feeling superior to others)
• Generous
• Thankful
• Forgiving (not holding grudges)
• Authentic and honest (with self and others)
• Practice and stand for what you believe
• Respectful
• Cooperative
• Grounded and fearless
• Happy and fun-loving

When I look in the Bible, I see Jesus calling me out of the first list and into the second.

… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law … Let us not be conceited, provoking one another, envious of one another.

Christ’s truth shows me that I need to take action to make this happen. As my husband says, “The truth makes you stand up and take action. A lie does not.”

Whether you follow Christ or not, you would think we could all agree on these two lists as opposite ends of the spectrum, one detracting from life and the other making life richer and more meaningful. Heck, even more fun.

And the most fun for me happens when I embrace authenticity.

My previous post, which included great comments and insight from my readers, made me want to find an example of authenticity for a post — perhaps even something raw, funny, poignant, emotional, or pointed. I found Pink.

Not the color, the rock star.

Why can’t we be as genuine, real, authentic, playful, and in touch with our emotions as Pink demonstrates in her videos I’ve linked to below? Whether you agree with her or not, whether you like her style or not, and whether you prefer less intense or not, you must admit, she is a person who understands authentic and who doesn’t fear her inner landscape or her passions. She understands and lives life with the genuineness of Shakespeare’s words:  “To thine own self be true.”

Just so you know, some of the videos are not rated G!

• Dear Mr President
  

• So What

• Stupid Girls

Yeah, I know. Picking a rock star to explain authenticity — or healthy Christianity  — might seem insane. There are aspects of Pink’s life and her videos I don’t agree with, but I’d pick her honesty over the hypocritical Pharisees of Jesus’ time or their counterparts today with their disingenuous appeals to the hearts and pocketbooks of Christians.

I agree a lot with Pink, who said, “My biggest pet peeve is uptight people.”

You see, being uptight goes with the first list, not the second.

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Call it authenticity, transparency, or being human, most people appreciate when a person demonstrates an open genuineness. No one loves hypocrisy, artificial drama, or phony types. At least not for long. Most of us value Truth, however we define it. We want to trust, to know a person’s words and actions come from the heart, and to see clearly anyone’s agendas.

And yet, we — or those around us — fall so short of that magical openness.

Vulnerability, our protectiveness of unhealed wounds, and learned cynicism mix together to shut us down:

• We fear to ask for help
• We avoid certain social situations
• We run from difficult relationships
• We close our hearts to helping
• And then we wrap ourselves in protective justification about it all

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been guilty of everything on the list. Yes, I do manage to rise above my limitations and open the wounded me more and more, but it’s not easy.

I would ask my readers — any suggestions? What has worked for you? Are you a natural or do you have to work at it?

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Photo credit: speech path girl

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Tags: authentic, fear, relationships, transparent