What Is Family?

Not long ago, I got into a discussion with a friend about the term “family.”  My friend is in college and was telling me about one of her classes in which they discuss controversial topics and the idea of “traditional verses non-traditional” was one of these topics.  Her view-point was surprising to me as she explained what her response in her class had been.  When she was a child, she thought that all families were the same.  All families had a mother and a father and that was it.  I searched my brain, but could never remember a time in which I also thought that all families were the same as mine.  But I quickly realized that was because I saw it every day.  I was raised by my mother alone, and most of my friends were being raised by both parents – the “traditional” family – so I always knew that there were different kinds of families.  Until I reached college, I had never heard the terms “traditional” or “non-traditional.”  I had never given it a second thought and my initial reaction to these terms was somewhat biting.  Being labeled a “non-traditional family” seemed almost like being excluded from some prestigious group, like any time that term was said, the say-er had an automatic distasteful tone.

I remember being in a family studies class probably more than 5 years ago.  I was never the type to draw attention to myself.  I took my notes and bided my time until class was over, making mental notes of points that the conversation brought up so I could use them later during open answer tests.  But on this one day, I knew I had to speak up.  My stomach was in knots and my brain kept saying “What the hell are you doing?!” But I raised my hand.  I demanded the attention of all my classmates to respond to a woman’s statement that children from non-traditional families are cheated out of a real family, that non-traditional families are detrimental to the development of a child.  My response was simple: “I disagree 100%.  I was raised by a single mother.  My father played no part in my upbringing, and I have no doubt that I am a better person because of that.  I was never cheated.  I never felt that I missed opportunities or missed out on a part of my life because of that.  If it wasn’t for the way my mother raised me independently, I could possibly not even be here now.  I understand that studies often show that children of single parent homes are more susceptible to learning problems, to lower socio-economic status, etc., but this is not always the case.  I wouldn’t have had it any other way and I disagree with generalized statements such as that.”  Needless to say, the woman tried to eat her words, obviously flustered in thinking she had offended me.

Holy Crap, Award x3

I was nominated for the Beautiful Blogger Award by Mr. Purple, *here*.

I am super surprised to get nominated for 3 different awards so close together.  Or even at all!  Thank you so much!

I Got Another Award!?

I have been nominated for the Liebster Award by kateginnivan, *here*.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I still don’t know what I’m doing here.  I looked it up on Google and I think I’m doing this correctly!

I’d like to thank the Academy…

Ok, as promised, here we go!  I have waded through the plethora of comments and likes and shares and reblogs and follows and amazing, amazing feedback from my Freshly Pressed post.  I have finally found a way to rig my laptop so that it functions enough to not just crash every time I try to use it.  I am was caught up on my daily post challenge….oh well.  Down to business:

I was nominated for the Sunshine Blog Award by Tech Tard.  The original post is *here*.

Thank you so very much for nominating me for this award!  I have no idea what I’m doing, but whatever.  Picture, nominations, and answers to questions….I’m just jumping in head first 🙂

A Complete & Utter Loss For Words…

This ^ is where I’m at right now.  And  those of you that have followed my blog for a bit could probably attest to the fact that this is not normal…

Big news in my world is that I randomly and unexpectedly received a notification on my phone today that I had been mentioned in a Tweet by Freshly Pressed for a recent post I had done.  I thought to myself “That’s strange.  Freshly Pressed is big news for WordPress.  But this is Twitter…”  So I load up my Twitter, expecting it to be something random (since the only Tweets I get mentioned in are the fake accounts promoting porn), but I find that it is, indeed, Freshly Pressed.  I’m still thinking, “Okay, okay.  But it’s not the Freshly Pressed.  There’s no way.”  I expand the Tweet to see that it’s already been retweeted twice.  I figure I should probably promote myself a bit, even if it is a mistake, so I retweet it, too.

Then I open my WordPress app.  Mind you, the WordPress app is insanely finicky and often just crashes.  It’s nearly impossible to do anything aside from using the reader on it, but it does send notifications if someone comments on one your posts, but checking notifications and replying to comments more or less turns into a fiasco for me every time.  For any of you that see a comment or a reply with a typo in it, it’s because of my blasted phone and its horrible attempt at autocorrect and it makes me want to scream.  So generally I tend to only use the phone app to read other blog posts.  I tap on the FP icon and it loads up the page – with my little letter right at the top – and I almost immediately begin getting comment notifications.

Stop Copying Me!

Maybe the most popular sibling phrase aside from “Stop touching me” and “I’m not touching you.”  Annoying – yes.  Illegal – no.  Immoral – maybe.  But what if you’re not a kid anymore?  And what if the copying isn’t your actions or expressions, but your hard work?  Your blood, sweat, and tears, just stolen right out from under you…

So in case everyone hasn’t noticed, I can sometimes obsess.  I am a worry wart and once I get an idea, it can sometimes take over my entire life for a span of time.  This is why I’m lightweight freaking out right now about the safety of my blog.  That’s right, folks: I’m talking about plagiarism.

*cue insidious music*

found on Tumblr

In all seriousness now, I really am having a moment of panic.  I was looking through some other blogs today and saw that one blogger had a Copyright statement in their sidebar.  Before seeing this, I though my simple “Copyright © 2012/13” at the bottom of my original pieces was just fine.  But after seeing this I thought, “Hmm.  Maybe I should make one of those statements, too.”  I decided it couldn’t hurt to add on to my footers.  By this point, however, I couldn’t remember the blog that I’d seen it on.  I decided to Google it and try to find a general copyright statement to put on my blog.  That’s when all hell broke loose…

Party Time, Everyone’s Invited!

I stumbled upon Jessica and her idea to host a blog party a couple of days ago.  Basically, she is requesting links from fellow bloggers of their most viewed blog post to be emailed to her by Monday, the 28th.  Then she will be sharing the links to the posts from the 31st to February 3rd.

Umm, hello…can we say it all together now: great freaking idea!  This is such a good way to connect with other bloggers, find blogs that you may never have seen without this, and get your own blog out there to even more people.  I just sent her my blog post information to be included in this shindig, and I think everyone else should, too.  The more, the merrier, right?

If this sounds interesting to you, go check out her post about it on her blog Everything under the sun and more for the full description and how to join in.  The direct link to the blog post is below.

While you’re there, check out the rest of the blog, too.  Her blog is full of great stuff.

Then join in on the party!

Related articles

• It’s a Party.. And you are invited! (everythingunderthesunandmore.wordpress.com)

Freshly Pressed/Stale and Wrinkled/None of the above

I keep coming across blog posts giving the how-to’s for getting a post be “Freshly Pressed.”  It’s great, really.  These writers who are talented, creative, and witty enough to be awarded a Freshly Pressed entry sharing their ones and twos on how they got to where they are.  But I see it as less a calculated formula to blog success and more just good-fortune and luck.

Write about something interesting.  Of course, that would be helpful to have a successful blog.  However, the things that interest me probably don’t interest even a fraction of other bloggers on this site.  So are you then supposed to write about something that the masses find interesting, rather that something you find interesting?  Well, that just wouldn’t work either.  I don’t care how good of a writer a person is, if they are writing about something they aren’t interested in or don’t care for, that comes across in their writing no matter how hard they try to camouflage it.  I imagine that a dull, drab, borderline anti-“whatever the subject matter is” blog post will be even further from being Freshly Pressed than an intriguing, excitable post about a topic with a smaller fan base.

Make sure you make clear and concise statements, using good grammar, yada yada yada.  Is this supposed to be a surprise?  A writer should, at all times, ensure that their writings are full of real sentences with proper grammar unless is serves the writing to be done otherwise.  For example: I am well aware that “yada yada yada” is gibberish.  However, it was useful to the point I was attempting to make in that sentence, which was that I felt that finishing that sentence was pointless because the information it would have provided should be common sense for any writer.