Average Jane and 99 Other Bloggers

I’m thrilled to have been invited to participate in the 100bloggers project.  This post will serve as my contribution to the book and as a slightly early one-year Average Jane anniversary summary.

The Blog and I

I’ve always had a thing for the humorous essay. I may have been the only nine-year-old in the
world who wanted to grow up to be Erma Bombeck.

Sure, I enjoy fiction and informative non-fiction, but
there’s something about quirky true-life tales the length of a newspaper column
that really grabs me. Whether written by
Mark Twain or Dave Barry, a good comedic essay is a delightful treat.

I once thought I might someday become a newspaper columnist,
but my career path veered away from journalism shortly after college and hasn’t
made it back (so far).

Still, I’m a spontaneous written communicator. When I raised a tank of Sea-Monkeys on my
desk several years ago, I kept my friends informed of the little crustaceans’
progress via weekly e-mails. By the time
I finally flushed the last Sea-Monkey corpses down the toilet my "subscription
list" had increased by several dozen people, some of whom I didn’t even know.

I’d had it in the back of my mind for quite some time to
start a blog called "Average Jane."  I
knew I wanted to post every weekday and that the post titles would be written
in the third person. The one thing I didn’t
know was how to handle the technical aspects, and that delayed the launch by a
couple of years.

Fortunately, I ended up maintaining a Typepad blog at work
and it didn’t take me long to figure out how to start one of my own. The hardest part was creating a design. I already had the doodle of myself drawn by a
co-worker back in the early ’90s when I was skinnier and had a big perm. I reversed the image in Photoshop and, after
experimenting with adding pastel colors, eventually went with black and white.

I began by posting the Sea-Monkey Journals (which still
bring in a lot of Google traffic) and took off from there. I’ve posted almost every weekday since,
except when I’ve been really sick, out of town, or so frazzled by work that I
have nothing to say.

Average Jane is a decidedly personal blog, but I’ve taken
care not to over-share. I don’t specify
where I live, give my name or the names of my friends, or discuss my work. If you agree with the quote (by either Eleanor Roosevelt or Admiral Hyman Rickover, depending upon which source you consult), "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds
discuss events, small minds discuss people," then you’ll find that I fall
neatly into the "average" category for most of my posts. What a coincidence!

I’ve never made a
list of the blog content rules I set for myself, but I base them largely on the
way I’d behave socially. Everything you
read on Average Jane really happened, pretty much as described. Naturally, since I’m the writer I make myself
sound nicer and more even-tempered than I really am. Anyone who knows me can confirm that Average
Jane reflects my personality pretty accurately, though.

I’m not perfect about
following my own rules. For example I
break my "Jean Teasdale Rule" (no talking about cats) fairly often simply
because I have four cats and sometimes they’re the most interesting thing I
have to talk about. When you’ve
committed yourself to daily posting, there are times when you have to take any subject
matter you can get.

Writing is only the
beginning of the blogging experience. What makes blogging truly a new medium and more than just a journal or
column is the interaction that comes from the readers.

Prompting comments from readers is a science in and of
itself – one that I can’t say I’ve mastered yet. Sometimes I’ll write an entry that seems to
beg for comments, only to be greeted with the blog equivalent of crickets
chirping on a quiet evening: zero
comments. Other posts will garner a huge
number of comments and bring out lurkers whose names I’ve never seen
before.
I’ve "met" interesting people from all over the world via
the comments they’ve left and the kind words and links they’ve put on their own
blogs. I’ve also discovered that more
friends, co-workers and friends of friends read Average Jane than I would
have expected. I’m always surprised and
pleased to have a new reader, no matter how he or she learned about my blog.

I use my "Other Blogs I Like" list as a source of daily
entertainment. I also keep a long list
of business blogs bookmarked for regular perusal. Many of them are on the 100bloggers list, so
I feel especially honored that my non-business blog will be included.

Considering that blogging and blog reading are such rich and
entertaining experiences, I don’t imagine that the phenomenon will peak anytime
soon. I have lots of friends who don’t
read my blogs and don’t really understand what a blog is, but I have quite a
few other friends who have begun their own blogs in the past year.

For the foreseeable future, I expect to continue Average
Jane and another blog I have that’s focused on the amenities of the city where
I live. I’ll also keep plugging blogs as
a business communication and marketing tool for my clients. I’d eventually like to jump into the business
blogs arena with my two cents, but I need to give it a little more thought
first. In the meantime, I’ll keep commenting
on other business blogs.

Average Jane has been a wonderful exercise to help me find
my voice as a writer and I have every reason to expect that it will lead me to
opportunities that I would never have found before blogs came about.  The blogosphere thrives on ideas,
personalities, interactions and shared experiences. Who wouldn’t want more of that?