What's in the Liberal Coalition Kool-Aid anyway? Was it the Koufax Awards (where I didn't make it past the semi-finals either)? Please to calm down, Scout and Guy, you're making John look fairly prescient. :) I think you may be seeing what's not there - or should that be, not seeing what is there? I read Kevin and Duncan daily, and yeah okay, I've corresponded with both gentlemen and have found them friendly and nice so maybe I'm biased, but honestly, I think you're getting het up over a slight that doesn't really exist. Each of these guys does a heck of a lot of link-citing. Heck, even Mark Evanier has started link-citing, and he gets slack because he was doing an online journal long before the netiquette of "you really should type 'via so-and-so' if you're going to blog about an item you first read on someone else's blog" became established practice.
If the real issue is that the big fish in this medium-and-getting-larger pond don't acknowledge the smaller fish of which you consider yourself one, it may say more about you than about them. Take it from someone who's been a medium-sized fish in more small ponds than I can count - it's just not worth it to try to jockey for position. That way madness lies. It's not a competition, the 'net's just too large for that. It's not even a matter of a class-action snub the way the 90-day-female-poli-blogging cycle seems to be. And for gosh sakes it's not personal, so please don't view it that way!
I think y'all need to ask yourself what you really expect to get out of blogging. If I really yearned to win a Koufax instead of just make the first round of nominations, I acknowledge I would have had to post a lot more regularly, and write more longer essays like the "Conditions of Art" post below, than I did in 2004, so I truly cannot bitch about my exclusion from the Koufax finals. If I wanted "famous" bloggers to blogroll me, I'd e-mail them and ask what I could do to be worthy of their consideration (and in fact that's what I did in the past, before my own blogroll became nigh unwieldy). If my goal was to be a "famous" blogger myself - I'm sorry, that's out of my control but there are certainly ways to increase your online presence (join alliances and webrings, go out and actually find/report on real news scoops, attend Drinking Liberally or other social events). If you're looking to Make Money Fast - well, I'm sure there's a Nigerian prince with a message just for you waiting in your in-box.
My goal for Pen-Elayne on the Web is essentially what it's always been - to have at least as many regular readers as I did when I was spending $300+ every six weeks self-publishing and mailing out INSIDE JOKE in the '80s. And I met that goal within about two months of starting this blog, without having to spend a penny (my only non-emotional investment in Pen-Elayne has been my time). And to have fun with it, which I still am. In the end, all any of us can do is maintain the best possible blog to our standards, not to anyone else's, and keep at it and hope that enough people notice to make us happy. And if someone "famous" notices me and links to a post of mine, that's swell and I don't downplay it at all, although I admit it'll probably never be the high that being mentioned in the credits of a Firesign Theatre video credits was. (Plug time, Firesign chat tonight!) But I don't have a sense of entitlement about it, and it's not the reason I blog. Just something to think about, y'know?
If the real issue is that the big fish in this medium-and-getting-larger pond don't acknowledge the smaller fish of which you consider yourself one, it may say more about you than about them. Take it from someone who's been a medium-sized fish in more small ponds than I can count - it's just not worth it to try to jockey for position. That way madness lies. It's not a competition, the 'net's just too large for that. It's not even a matter of a class-action snub the way the 90-day-female-poli-blogging cycle seems to be. And for gosh sakes it's not personal, so please don't view it that way!
I think y'all need to ask yourself what you really expect to get out of blogging. If I really yearned to win a Koufax instead of just make the first round of nominations, I acknowledge I would have had to post a lot more regularly, and write more longer essays like the "Conditions of Art" post below, than I did in 2004, so I truly cannot bitch about my exclusion from the Koufax finals. If I wanted "famous" bloggers to blogroll me, I'd e-mail them and ask what I could do to be worthy of their consideration (and in fact that's what I did in the past, before my own blogroll became nigh unwieldy). If my goal was to be a "famous" blogger myself - I'm sorry, that's out of my control but there are certainly ways to increase your online presence (join alliances and webrings, go out and actually find/report on real news scoops, attend Drinking Liberally or other social events). If you're looking to Make Money Fast - well, I'm sure there's a Nigerian prince with a message just for you waiting in your in-box.
My goal for Pen-Elayne on the Web is essentially what it's always been - to have at least as many regular readers as I did when I was spending $300+ every six weeks self-publishing and mailing out INSIDE JOKE in the '80s. And I met that goal within about two months of starting this blog, without having to spend a penny (my only non-emotional investment in Pen-Elayne has been my time). And to have fun with it, which I still am. In the end, all any of us can do is maintain the best possible blog to our standards, not to anyone else's, and keep at it and hope that enough people notice to make us happy. And if someone "famous" notices me and links to a post of mine, that's swell and I don't downplay it at all, although I admit it'll probably never be the high that being mentioned in the credits of a Firesign Theatre video credits was. (Plug time, Firesign chat tonight!) But I don't have a sense of entitlement about it, and it's not the reason I blog. Just something to think about, y'know?
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