Today is National Blog Delurking Day. Who knew?
What that means is that if you come to read my blog and tiptoe quietly away -- a perfectly acceptable practice the other 364 days in the year -- today, January 14th, you are supposed to stop for a moment and leave me a comment.
It needn't be much. Hello is fine.
But if you'd like to tell me a little something about yourself? That would be awesome. Anything you want.
Need a prompt? OK....
What is your name? Or, if you desire anonymity, what do you wish your name had been?
Where do you live? If you could live anywhere else in the world, where would that be?
What is your favorite color?
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? (And what movie is that a quote from?)
Also, because this is all about comments? I thought this would be a grand opportunity to explain my policy for my replying to your comments... um, I don't really have one.
OK, that means I have some more 'splaining to do...
My blog is currently on Google's Blogger platform, and their one main drawback (to me) is that their innate comments system sucks. You cannot directly reply to a comment, comment threading does not exist.
I felt frustrated by that. Many of my favorite bloggers, my blogging mentors (gals, you know who you are) are wonderful at responding to every or nearly every comment they receive. And I am sure that is one reason I felt so close to these women so quickly: we are always engaging in a multiply looped conversation.
(And if you've ever had a child in speech therapy, I don't need to explain conversation loops to you, and how important they are to relatedness.)
So I installed the Intense Debate commenting system on my blog the last time I gave it a facelift. But then I discovered two things:
First, it's a bit buggy here. Comments -- both the counter and the link to them -- disappear on the home or multi-post view of my blog. You have to be in the single post view (which you enter by clicking on the post's title link, either at the top of the post or in the archive list on the left) to see and leave comments.
I need to get this fixed, but I'm a techno weenie married to a likewise non-computer-geek of a husband (oh, how I envy those of you married to your IT guys).
Second? I suck at consistently replying to comments. I always want to. I intend to. But? Shit happens. All the time. Including in the whirlwind that is my brain.
Some days I'm all over the awesome, and actually respond to all your comments within 6 hours.
Others? I figure if I haven't responded by two, three days out it's just too late to call it a conversation at that point, and you are likely to not come back to see the response. So I kind of just read and slink away.
So my non-policy policy is this:
Know that I ALWAYS do read each and every comment and I appreciate them so much. I feel connected to you, I am so happy you have felt connected enough to me to comment.
On the days when I have time and energy? And when I am not in the midst of a kitchen disaster or another skirmish in the homework wars or recovering from surgery? I will try to respond to all comments.
Other days, I may not respond to any, but please know it's not you, it's me. No, really, it IS me. Damn, wish there were a way to say this so you'd believe me... how's this:
Remember, some days I am all ADD-rific and get very little done. IT. REALLY. IS. ME.
And sometimes I may respond to only one or two comments in a post that has received many, and please don't feel slighted it its not yours. The comments I have responded to may have really needed a response, or touched something specific in me, or been from an actual non-blog world IRL friend that I really needed to say something to.
Or, also highly likely, I had three seconds to sit down at the computer to respond and that's the first comment I read at that moment. Randomness, luck (or lack thereof if my response sucks), pure chance; all significant factors here.
OK, that's now enough about me.
Tell me something about you, I'm listening....
Looking for Comments? I still haven't fixed my "Intense Debate disappearing comment link on home page problem" yet, so if you are viewing this on my home page and want to read my comments or make one of your own, click on the post's title to bring you to the post's page view. Voila! Still don't see them? Is your browser's pop-up filter set too high? (Hopefully this will get fixed soon - sorry!)
