Time of reckoning

Last week, when I was writing about the kilogram and got sidetracked into calendars, I realized two things:

One. Gydle is a year old now! The first post was on March 2, 2011.

Two. We’ve been living in Switzerland for 7.5 years, 8.5 if you count the sabbatical year in 2002-2003.

Time flies, huh? There’s way too much in these two momentous events for a single post, so today, I’m just going to bask in the glow of Gydle’s one-year birthday. I’ll write about number two tomorrow (maybe).

Gydle was born on Blogger, which drove me nuts because it kept putting random html tags in my texts. To carry the baby metaphor farther than is probably wise, it was as if I dropped her off at daycare in one cute outfit and when I picked her up, she was wearing some other baby’s lameass clothes. I was constantly undressing her and dressing her back in her own clothes. So on September 21, we satisfied my OCD streak by onverting to WordPress. Now I have Total Control. The reds all match. Nobody’s messing with my baby’s outfits.

It took me a whole year to figure out that maybe it might be a good idea to use the “more” feature so you don’t have to scroll down through endless prose to see what else I’ve written. And I’m still a little confused about “meta” tagging. I’m sure I’m not running this thing at full throttle. I need to crack the whip and get my CTO (aka Dave) working on it again. All he’s been good for lately is backups. And lengthy conversations about the musical manifestations of our crossed-over sensory systems. It’s all great, Dave, but I’m not paying you to be synesthetic. (I know, I know. I’m not paying you at all. Why do you obsess over details like this when you could be mastering the meta?)

I’m still breaking all the blogging rules. I figure there are plenty of niche blogs out there to satisy the niche blog readers. The last thing anyone needs is another niche blog. I spent enough time writing what I thought other people wanted to hear in college and in EPFL’s press office; I’m not about to do that here. No; I want to surprise you.

In truth, I feel the same way about blogging rules as the honey badger feels about getting stung by bees. (If there is anyone out there who is by some miracle not aware of the honey badger meme, please go see the video. It’s a matter of cultural literacy.)

I really appreciate the fact that you’ve been coming back . No, I really appreciate it. You’re what makes it fun for me. It’s wonderful for me that you’re out there reading my drivel, maybe learning something, maybe having a moment of resonance or, dare I say, inspiration. Today, Gydle had her 4,800th page view since the move to WordPress on September 21. Thank you!!

The post that gets the most hits is 10 reasons not to wear a tie. There are a lot of confused people out there. I hope I cleared things up for them in the wardrobe department. Another heavy hitter is Winnning and Wining; people stumble on this one because they don’t know how to spell. Gydle had the most page view ever the day I guest blogged on Running and Rambling. Some people found my blog that day and have come back for more. (Hi, Les.)

Mindset Mapping got a lot of hits the other day because Yanko Tsvetkov, the graphic artist who made the maps, was featured in the Guardian. His new map, Europe according to the future (2022), is hilarious. Sicily has become a prison, the Vatican has moved to central Spain (where most of the devout Catholics are anyway), the current Eurozone has shrunk to a federation-like entity called Merkelreich with a capital in Paris, renamed Neuberlin, and Switzerland has become the European Central Bank because the Europeans have finally admitted they suck at banking. He’s always coming up with something new. I love his sense of humor.

One of the blogging rules I don’t follow is to spew Twitter spam that points to old posts, in an effort to try to get more traffic.

Me!! Me!! Hey, over here, look at me!! I have an amazing new book/post/thought/plantar’s wart and I’ve already tweeted this 300 x in the last 2 hrs but in case you weren’t online, here’s the link again!! 

I still don’t really like Twitter that much; I guess my poor synesthetic cross-wired brain gets easily overwhelmed.

But just because I don’t follow the rules doesn’t mean I don’t think you shouldn’t follow them. Feel free to tweet away about Gydle, send a link to your great aunt in Saskatchewan, share a link with your tribe on Facebook (Gydle has a page, BTW) , but please be sure to add an irreverent tagline. I read this weird blog written by a woman who’s obsessed with the gut microbiome and barefoot running, really, you should check it out… I write to be read, after all. And if one person tells ten people, who each tell ten other people, then we prove that those blogging rules are for lemmings and that honey badgers rule.

One last thing- I really like it when you leave comments here on the blog. That way, wherever you’re coming from, whether it’s FB, Twitter, or just visiting, we can start a conversation with each other, on the same page. On that note, what do you think? Are we up for another year? Any suggestions for improvement? Requests? Rants? Grammatical commentary? Recipes?

4 thoughts on “Time of reckoning

  1. Many Happy Returns, Gydle. Need I say more, except perhaps that I should commit to continue following your writings and enjoying their informative content, with less inane comments on my part.

    Thanks for the blog, Mary.

    Les K

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