She says “I’d rather have you not see me and think good things about me than have you see me and hate me. Because I can’t afford to have you hate me, Keith. The only things I care about in this life are me, my drums, and you.”

This morning I woke up to zero comments on my Bead Snowflake post. Turning on your computer to zero comments is like standing in front of a bemused Simon Cowell. He shakes his head sadly: “You can’t be serious. That was bloody awful.”

I’ve been thinking for some time about turning off comments. I talked to Marie about it back in September, as a way to make sure that you’re blogging for the “right” reasons, and she pointed out that turning off comments can seem snobbish, as if you don’t care what anyone else has to say.

Well, the truth is, I care too much. Oh, not about what others think, exactly. In fact, I like nothing more than a well-thought-out disagreement. (See the great comments on Bloggy Prostitution or Kids and Cars).

But the comments, or lack thereof. It matters too much, and I hate that it affects how I feel about myself AT ALL. Even encouraging comments mean too much.

Every time I see her, my grandma tells me how much she enjoys my blog. I’m so “unexpected,” she says. (I think Grandma is a bit sheltered, in a good way).

If I can make Grandma happy, what care I for sponsors and trackbacks and followers?

Still. My visceral response to zero comments (or, on days when NOTHING would appease the insatiable comment monster, NOT ENOUGH comments): It’s something I can stomach no longer.

(I’ve tried less drastic remedies. Reaffirmation mantras like “I am a worthwhile human being whether people comment or not” and the Neti Pot. (Not really on the mantras and the Neti Pot was great for my sinuses.) But I did set up a protocol in GMAIL where my comment notification emails bypass my inbox and get quarantined in the WAM Comment folder. Didn’t help. Much. Except I can now check my email without facing my neuroses. Most of the time. And ol’ Sitemeter? We parted ways months ago.)

I’d rather have you not read me and not comment than have you read me and not comment. Or something like that. Really I’d love it if you read and commented and came to sponge my fevered brow while the dinner made itself and the dishwasher deigned to actually CLEANSE THE DISHES when I push Start.

This may be a short experiment; who knows? Blogging is great for the freedom to make a complete idiot of yourself and then make as many corrections as necessary in trying to get it right. I do know that one of my favorite things about NaBloPoMo was that I was too busy thinking about what to write that day to worry if “enough” people liked what I’d written the day before.

As always, I welcome your emails (whataboutmom@gmail.com), and I cannot thank each of you enough for the kind words you’ve sent my way. I’m just afraid that if I end up in a mental institution for Acute Comment Anxiety, I might not get the serious drugs such a condition would require.

Would the doctor even believe that Acute Comment Anxiety exists?

If she’s also a blogger, I’m willing to bet she would.

Jane

Posting every day for a month is demanding and specific enough that you start to hold your breath at the end, hoping you’ll make it to the edge of the pool before your arms give out. You think of all the other things you need to be checking off your To-Do list, and realize (half-guilty, half-relieved) that you can’t possibly deal with them until this thing is over.

Two quotes have been chasing each other like hamsters in my brain all month (yep, there’s a lot of space in there for hamster wheels and puppy dog tails). The first is so intoxicating, exhilarating, liberating, inspiring, and I have no idea what it really means (or, if, in fact, Ray Bradbury ever really said this):

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Why is this so appealing? Why does it make me want to run BARBARIC YAWPING to an Edenic spring, tearing off all my clothes as I go and cannon-balling into the water with a splash that ripples all the way to the shore?

The second quote, I am all too sure that I know exactly what it means, and what it means is that I will never be a genius (i.e. “one who creates”) so long as I am mired in the motherhood. (Handy, right, to blame all my un-genius-ness on the myriad mundane moorings of my morassifisic life?):

A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

Perhaps William James just wanted an excuse to give his wife for why he was always late for dinner.

And I am the wife. Feeling (not-guilty-but-defensive) if dinner is not on the table.

Jane

Especially this year, I’m just grateful that anyone is willing to take on the job (and the blame) of leading us through recession, war, pestilence, and frogs.

And whatever else President-elect Obama is able to accomplish, the absolute highest hope I have for his presidency is that, God willing and all the stars aligning, my friends, The Express will be the last movie EVER MADE to feature a newly-integrated sports team triumphing over bigotry, failed quizzes, athlete’s crotch, and small-town blonde girls in leftover poodle skirts.

But I wonder if our President-elect might not be rethinking his ambitions. Apparently, the president is not allowed to email or text or instant message. Obama is hoping to have a laptop in the Oval Office, and if he succeeds, he would be the first American president to ever have a laptop on his desk.

I have a laptop on my desk IN MY KITCHEN.

Who knew that being a stay-at-home mom had advantages over being president of the United States?

What do you think? Would it be worth technological annihilation to preside over 300 million back-seat strategists?

Jane

Blogging is the easiest and most easily rewarding way to write that I know of. But it can still be discouraging or upsetting or maddening. In the end, I blog (despite not turning blog-famous) because I have something to say.

And also, apparently, to communicate with my husband. Dick writes at IdRatherBeWriting.com, and today he’s got a post up about how living with a mommy blogger is great training for a corporate blogger. He totally misrepresents me in places, but I’m reminded that I fell in love with his thoughts and writing even before his hot body.

If you started reading Seagull Fountain after reading Dick, I only ask that you keep in mind that, while Dick’s college GPA was .02 higher than mine, I smoked him on the ACT, GRE, and dishwashing championships.

Why do YOU blog? (Or not?)

Jane

What we have here is a chance to win a $25 giftcard to the online store of your choice in exchange for a few minutes of your time and some constructive criticism.

But first, a short quiz:

Tacky or Not?
1) Requiring people to subscribe to your feed to enter a giveaway.
2) Requiring people to leave an actual, thought-ful comment to enter a giveaway.
3) Throwing out all entries that don’t include the words “thank you for the giveaway” in the comment.
4) Holding giveaways in the first place.
5) Using spit to clean the baby’s face. (your spit). (in public).

And another quiz, though this one is more open-answer:

Which type of post do you prefer?

A) Dear Sally, Grandma Thinks You’re Autistic, and She Can’t Stop Talking About It

B) Molten Lava Cakes: 5 Ingredients to Chocolate Bliss

C) Shooting Yourself in the Foot

D) I’d Gaze at My Navel, But Have You Seen That Thing?

Go check them out. I’ll wait. There’s a link back to this post (HELP WANTED) at the top of each of these.

Tell me your Tacky or Not answers and which type of post you prefer (and why), and you’ll be eligible to win the 25 dollar giftcard. (Don’t forget to leave your email address so I can contact you if you win!)

Thanks!

Jane

Updated: The contest is now over. I’d still love your feedback, but the winner of the $25 gift card is commenter #15, Kathleen. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions!

Spot turned two yesterday, so we set her up with her very own blog: Spot.blogspot.com.

(I guess I should check and make sure that isn’t a naughty site). (Checked. Dang. Someone’s already taken it!)

Happy WW!

Comment of the day from JanMary in N Ireland:

My older 2 kids recently requested their own laptops, and both the adults in the house now have them.  We declined, and my 8 year old replied “But we are human TOO”

He’s got an interesting post today called: Should Your 14 Year Old Be On Facebook, to which I left a way-insightful comment, and I got this email reply:

Just a quick note to thank you for leaving your first comment on my blog, Jonathan Fields | Awake At The Wheel.

Feel free to stop back anytime, e-mail me any questions and, if you\’ve enjoyed the blog, why not subscribe for free updates? Here\’s the link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JonathanFields

Have a great day!

Jonathan

How sweet. He responded. So quickly. And, come to think of it, I do have a few questions for the veteran blogger, so I drafted an email response. I asked if he knew what percent of people subscribe after getting one of these comment-follow-up emails, and if he really “follows” all the people he follows on Twitter.

I suspect there must be a secret super-blogger Twitter filter for sifting out the feeds you actually want to pay attention to (while appearing as if you are gracious enough to follow everyone who follows you).

In my email, I was torn between my readerly-disdain for automated replies to comments, and my bloggerly-interest in GETTING! NEW! READERS! THE EASY WAY!

The only other blogger I’ve gotten an automated comment-response email from was Jordan @ MommaBlogga, and she just had a baby, so I didn’t harass her about it. Plus she has explained tricky WordPress thingies to me, so I love her, even though she sent me an automated response after we totally email-bonded over the tricky WordPress thingies (not to mention my participation in her group writing project, but, really, I still love her).

I hesitated before sending my email to Jonathan (can I call you Jonathan?), worrying that I sounded too snarky, and — What if his email wasn’t automated? What if he really does follow my twittering? What if he’s deeply offended by my not feeling his sincerity about wanting to be my friend and get emails from me?

Well, I got both the answer to some of my questions and absolution for my snarkiness, in under a minute:

Internet Smarm = We’re agin’ it!

***Updated*** Holy Real-Time Internet Non-Smarminess: THE Jonathan Fields just responded to my email, NOT AUTOMATED, and can I just say that I am his loyal follower for EVER now.

While mommy blogging is not dangerous in the same way that crack cocaine dealing is, or even illegal, it is an illogical, unrewarding thing for otherwise-reasonable women to engage in in the hope of making it big. Just like crack cocaine dealing.

Consider:

“The problem with crack dealing is the same as in every other glamour profession: a lot of people are competing for a very few prizes.” (Sure, some women earn a bunch, but a million more would like to).

“When there are a lot of people willing and able to do a job, that job generally doesn’t pay well.” (Mommy Blogging pays roughly .0032 cents an hour, and that’s not including the time spent dealing with those “episodes” that become charming “anecdotes”). (105)

How can Mommy Blogging have so much in common with standing on a corner all day catering to addled codependents who demand something as brain-enhancing as SpongeBog Squarepants crack cocaine?

It turns out that the worlds of crack dealing and Mommy Blogging are both governed by tournament-type rules.

Rules of the Glamour Job Tournament

1- “You must start out at the bottom to have a shot at the top.”

2- “You must be willing to work long and hard at substandard wages.”

3- “In order to advance in the tournament you must prove yourself not merely above average but spectacular.”

4- “And finally, once you come to the sad realization that you will never make it to the top, you will quit the tournament.” (106)

Blogging in general (personal blogging in specific, and Mommy Blogging in more specific) has so little space at the top of the pyramid of success that even those who have enough success or get enough comments feel terribly insecure about it. Where enough equals any more success or comments than Jane gets.

Which is why I am going to stop blogging. Just kidding. Of course I’m not in blogging for the fame or the fortune. Like you, I do it for the friendships and the writing.

And because I don’t know any crack cocaine gangs that are hiring.

What, you don’t think that blogging is anything like dealing crack? Maybe Jane was smoking a bit too much of her own product? Or maybe she should just stop reading Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

Okay, I’ll stop. Since I finished this spectacular book yesterday, anyway. I’m going to keep reading the Freakonomics blog, though, because I LOVE it.

The authors (of both book and blog) are curious, smart, creative, and they apply their curiosity and reasoning powers to a dizzying array of topics. From the link between legalized abortion and reduced crime to the incentives of cheating, daycare pickup fines, and real estate commissions, to exploring the (non)benefits of obsessive parenting, Steve D. Levitt (the economist) and Stephen J. Dubner (the journalist) are, basically, wonderfully thought-provoking.

Even if they did convince me that blogging (standing on a virtual corner shouting LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME) is about as smart as selling crack.

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You know the Christmas letters that sound as if you’re trying to pimp out your kids? Family reunions can be even worse — a full-color, animated Christmas letter you can’t tape to the refrigerator door and ignore.

If you’re in the market for a career, or have children who need a swift kick in the rear career advice, you might want to keep in mind that the bar for bragging has been raised in recent years. Where once it was enough to graduate from a respectable college and enter a respectable profession (engineer, doctor, engineer, lawyer, dentist, engineer), now you need a little something extra to get respect around the family reunion campfire.

My sweet cousin Peter, who’s number 30 of 57 first cousins or something (I lost the cousin chart they handed out the second night) is not someone I’ve talked to much before (I hang with numbers 10-20). He’s returning to college this fall, and it’s a safe guess that his major is chemical/mechanical/civil non-disobedience engineering.

Peter, who knows that I am a stay-at-home mom like all the other female cousins my age, said to me, “You studied at BYU for awhile, right?”

That night around the campfire, we had family sharing time, where each of my dad’s three sisters and six brothers (except that one brother who’s always “busy”) introduced their kids, beaming proudly if they’d managed to produce their kids in the flesh, hoping to produce adequate excuses if their kids couldn’t make it. Being out of the country on a mission for our church earns a pass, barely.

Occupations and recent accomplishments were mentioned, as were their children’s children. My oldest cousin is turning 40 next year, and he and his wife have adopted several — my three girls are a small, if glittering, contribution to the family tree.

So what’s the most coveted bragging point for mostly-Republican, highly-religious, mostly-high-achiever families? (And an automatic get-out-of-family-reunions card?)

Highest honors around the campfire go to those who have at least one child working in a top secret job for somebody like Lockheed or the NSA.* Then you get to say that you’d like to explain what Johnny does, only he can’t tell you because then he’d have to kill you. Or as my dad’s next oldest brother’s wife says her son says: “I can’t tell you or I’d have to do a lot of paperwork.”

Several of my dad’s nine siblings have sons who have every reason to view more paperwork as the kiss of death.

After my grandparent’s youngest kid told us about his youngest kid’s bluegrass band, my dad said he needed to amend his progeny spiel.

Turns out he has daughters, as do all his brothers and sisters, and, though they are not secret undercover operatives, or even doctors or lawyers or engineers, or MAYOR OF WASILLA, they are doing something wonderful: raising children to become secret undercover operatives or doctor or lawyers or engineers.

Or, as in my case: raising mothers. Mothers who will become governor of Alaska, if I and my studying for awhile at BYU had any confidence in the current fairy tale.

Dad even said that his oldest daughter does the blog, and boy! does she post often.

Then, since I am a supportive wife, I pointed out that Dick also has a top-secret, classified, vital job, and since he works for our church, he answers to a higher power. So there. Your sons might be keeping the free world safe, but my husband? He’s protecting God’s secrets.

And I am raising kids and doing the blog.

*My cousins don’t actually work for these people. I’d tell you who they work for, or where in the world they’re deployed, but then I probably wouldn’t be invited back next year . . .

A few years ago, Angela from New York sent us the children’s book Hurry, Hurry, Mary Dear by N. M. Bodecker and Eric Blegvad. It’s a poem about a woman in New England who has chores galore before winter comes. “Stack the stove wood, string the beans, up the storms and down the screens.” Round and round and in and out she whirls, while Hubs lolls in bed and then waits for his tea in his rocking chair.

Dick isn’t that bad, we live in an apartment, and if ignoring your children were an Olympic sport I’d be the Shawn Johnson of mothering. (Finally a gold in something!). So other than the adequately-helpful husband, easy access to mass-manufactured canned goods, and kids happy to watch movie after movie, my life is exactly the same as the under-appreciated, over-worked Mary Dear.

That’s my excuse for not blogging, anyway. Of course, probably you managed to find other means of entertainment in my absence (Just kidding! — of course you sat and moped while I slumped and Michael Phelps won yet another gold medal. I mean, after awhile, doesn’t all that winning and breaking world records and million dollar bonuses from Visa get just a bit . . . old?).

Have you noticed how many sports have four events or four strokes, or how much better baseball would be if there were only four innings? So I tried to think up four categories for my blogging break, but there’s a reason I’m not an Olympic athlete, despite doing my best to eat as close to 12,000 calories a day as possible. So I fell back on pros and cons:

Seven Pros and Cons of the Blogging Break

(1) Pro: Fun Outings with the kids (pools, dinosaur museums, parks)

Con: Since Susan (turning 4 in October) will not start kindergarten for 734 days, there are more pools, dinosaur museums, parks and McDonald play places in my immediate future than June Cleaver ever imagined.

(2) Pro: All this swimming = best tan of my life.

Con: All this no-routine-in-general, not-going-to-the gym-in-specific = flabbiest stomach since Spot vacated the premises.

(3) Pro: Gorgeous Utah weather — it’s getting chilly after dark now, and we’ve been stopping at parks on our way home.

Con: That’s on our way home from seeing every single (cheap) house, townhome, and condo in a thirty-mile radius. Apparently we are poor, picky, poor, and soon-to-be homeless.

(4) Pro: Quality reading time.

Con: Spending the better part of two days reading Breaking Dawn = “quality” might be a stretch. (That’s nothing time-wasting-wise though — I read Scarlett, arguably the worst book ever, in 18 hours straight).

(5) Pro: More time for “real life.”

Con: The house is still a mess anyway. “Real life” should not include “clean house.”

(6) Pro: Time with good friends from high school and my sister.

Con: Real-life problems like complicated pregnancies and lousy husbands are much harder to cope with that quirky servers and mean Stumblers and feelings of raging blogging-inadequacy.

(7) Pro: If you don’t post, turning on the computer is much less “what-if-no-one-commented-on-my-last-post” angst-ridden.

Con: If you don’t post, getting fewer comments is almost for sure. (Although I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the emails, tweets, and IRL comments; my acknowledgments page is all ready in case I ever write anything real).

If you wrote a great post while I’ve been gone, let me know. I hate it when people say that. Duh, all my posts are great, and if you weren’t such a loser, you’d know that and whenever you come back from a break you’d be camped out at my blog catching up. Right? Well, let me know if I missed your epic/ramble/etc. I’ll stumble it for you! Seriously. Unless you’d rather I didn’t, in which case tell me why, ’cause I’m planning a post on Adventures in Stumbling.

We’re going to my dad’s family’s reunion tonight; back late Thursday. Had to promise Dick I’d do all the laundry this week in exchange for him getting to go on the funnest camping trip ever with the coolest people ever. ! So if you send me a post url after 3 pm today, I’ll stumble it early Friday. I’d really like to read your post, stumble it, and then get some feedback from you as to what sort of response/traffic you get from the experience. Like a focus group, only better.

A few weeks ago my aunt and uncle unsubscribed from my blog’s email updates. Which is like saying “I think you suck, and your writing does too.” Ouch. But it was fine, because I’m a grown-up. Though I may have yelled at Susan to JUST EAT YOUR DING-DANG MACARONI when she asked why I was hunched over my computer instead of coming to the table.

Self-worth comes from God, after all, not readers or comments.

But I did want to find out why they’d unsubscribed, so I’d know whether to ignore them at family reunions or to start dropping subtle hints about blogging being thicker than water.

That irresistible need to know warred with the ignorance imperative — the only thing worse than unsubscription would be for them to know that I knew about it. Or for them to feel bad that I felt like sticking my head in the oven when I found out. Still, I had to know why.

We don’t keep secrets very well in our family, so I’m not sure why I entrusted this delicate mission to my mom, beyond the fact that she could bring it up casually to my aunt. Just find out why, I said, but don’t let them know that I know. Of course it’s not a big deal, AT ALL, it’s just that I’ve been thinking about it anyway. Trying to figure out how much Spot Can Talk! and how much Equal Parenting: Neither Equal Nor Parenting and how much Molten Lava Cakes my blog should be.

People tell you to find a niche, a voice, a hook, a style, and to stick with it. This is harder than it sounds (at least it is for me — not the voice part, but the niche part). And whatever you write, the more some people like it, the more others won’t. In fact, if no one hates a post, you can probably guarantee that no one loves it either.

The great thing about blogging is that you can write whatever you want. Which is the terrible thing about blogging: you can write whatever you want. If I write a post called Awkward, Like Steve Carrell, Only Not As Funny, Carolina will say “Great post -– it’s like all my life issues intersected in your post!” and Aaron will complain that it’s “all over the place.”

Good writing is like porn. Hard to define, maybe, but you know it when you see it. And it’s like sex. You might be technically competent, or have all the working parts, but if there’s no chemistry, no catalyst to jumpstart a connection between you and your audience, you’re gonna stall.

When I asked my mom to reconnoiter the relatives for me, I was hoping she could get a feel for which sort of writing/blog would appeal to them. Not that I would ever cater to such disloyalty, but in the name of market research, I explained my Unified Theory of the Personal Blog. Which is basically that many good (mommy) blogs fall into one of four categories: Mundane Olympics, Nostalgic/Exotic, Unexpected/Humor, and Sweet Family. Which kind appeals to you?

Mundane Olympics

The original Mundane Olympics blog is Dooce. At the risk of turning into a Dooce-fan site, I am IN. AWE. Yes, I wish she wouldn’t dog on my church and use shocking! language. BUT. Anyone who can complain about a four-year old’s propensity to ask Why? without making me want to reach for a sharp implement for my own frontal lobe should just be enshrined already.

Nostalgic/Exotic

Here we have stories from places appealingly different from our own, like The Pioneer Woman‘s. Her photographs are beautiful, her recipes are mouth-watering, and her middle-child angst is endearing. But would she be taking over the world if she didn’t live on a real-life ranch in the middle of virile cowboys and wild mustangs? I wonder.

Unexpected/Humor

Two of my favorites are Bye Bye Pie and Memarie Lane, who recently warned that, as she gestates, her thoughts are turning mommy-ward. Most of her posts are wonderfully self-contained topical features and they’re often hysterical (and not in a uterus sort of way). June of Bye Bye Pie is not a mommy, except to her cats and dog, and I could read about her trips to the post office and never get bored. June usually makes the Mundane Olympics team too.

Sweet Family

Probably too many personal (mommy) blogs fall into this innocuous-sounding category. Still, blogs like Boo Mama and Big Mama are anything but blah. Instead, reading them is like curling up on the window seat with an L.M. Montgomery book and remembering that life is pretty darn good.

This was all more than Mom cared to know about the blogosphere. She nodded. Well, since we were on the phone, she made appropriate “uh-huh” noises whenever I paused for breath. So, basically, Mom, I said, find out if they’d rather I just wrote about family happenings and posted pretty pictures, or if they’re interested in book reviews and recipes and women’s issues. Please?

Mom, who had listened patiently to all my “it doesn’t matter” and “please interrogate them,” then told me that my aunt and uncle just changed email addresses. She read me their new one so I could check the feedburner email subscription list. And there, right near the top, was my aunt and uncle’s new email address.

Not that I cared, or anything.

A couple days ago, my only friend who lives near enough to swap babysitting with moved. We’d like to move too, but haven’t found the right house to buy.

I’ve lived in at least 23 different places, and I confess sometimes I ignore my neighbors, because, well, they probably won’t be my neighbors for long. Other times, though, friends are just there, ready to mock you when you fall off the treadmill or to bring chili when you’re afraid you’ll miscarry.

Blogging, for better or worse, fills a lot of that friendship need (except the babysitting). I joined the BlogHer Adnetwork because June said she’d gotten new readers through the headline circle thingie. I’ve gotten new readers, and new blogs to read, and, most important, new friends who sometimes I wonder if we were separated at birth, as Tara and I were.

Blogging’s also about writing, and I wonder how many bloggers hope to write something different or something more some day. Blogging’s great for developing writing habits and getting instant feedback, but is it the only thing you want to write?

I’m not exactly sure where BlogHer fits in there. Is it friendship or writing, or both? And how serious do you have to be about blogging to actually go to a conference about it? How serious about making friends and writing do you have to be to join a party about a conference that you’re not attending? I’m not sure, but I do know that whenever I meet someone (in real life or online) who speaks to me, I’m compensated, a million times over, for the worlds not conquered and the kids still whining.

Which is why I’m excited to join Pensieve’s BlogHop ’08. If we were getting together for real, I’d make these Molten Lava Cakes for you:

If you seemed approachable and chummy, I’d mention my weekly Things That Must Go post, and encourage you to go share your Things That Must Go because this weekend I’m giving away an LLBean Tote Bag. And if you were really sympatico, I’d probably confide that I recently wrote my first fiction post, called WonderWoman Meets Her Match.

And before the evening was well over, I’d be anxious to get home so I could check out your blog and see for myself, in pixels and in words, who you really are.

Now, I know that there are no vows in blogging. And the stakes are much lower than a presidential election. Why, some people blog for fun. But other people view their blogs as businesses, and many are quite good. I enjoy their posts on blogging, especially, because I vacillate between seeing my blog as a “letter to the world, That never wrote to me,” and something that could provide income in a million years.

So my question is, on blogging: Does following the rules matter?

If you discovered that a blogger you admire appeared to be engaging in some shady practices, would that change how you viewed their blog?

Would you ask them to clarify the situation, hoping there was a good explanation for the apparent shady-ness?

Have you ever asked a question and then wish you’d never asked?

Last week my link on RIMD’s Works-for-Me Wednesday (WFMW) was deleted (long story, my fault, not the point). I was a little upset because my server was down, but the bottom line was that I hadn’t followed the WFMW guidelines, which clearly state that a post-specific url is required.

But it got me curious about Shannon’s enforcement of WFMW guidelines, especially when a friend pointed out to me that a blogger we both enjoy had not been following them. Have you ever asked a question and then wish you’d never asked? Here’s some advice:

For those who wish to continue in happy ignorance: If you see what looks like shady practices, ignore it. It doesn’t matter.

For those who wish to continue to appear honorable: Don’t lie about something that I can check on the internet in approximately four seconds. Especially if it’s something small, something that doesn’t matter.

Because here’s the deal. I don’t care what you do. I mean, I do care, especially if you’re someone I’ve practically idolized up ’til now. But I care even more that you would not be honest about it.

In blogging: Does honesty matter?

I explained this whole situation to my family over the weekend (sorry!), and my younger brother said, Who cares, it’s a BLOG.

True. Who cares?

One part of me wants to write a big expose piece, because DANG IT. SHE LIED. The other part of me (the better part, the part that reminds me I am far from perfect, the part that listens to Dick, who says we should ‘reprove in private and praise in public’) knows that there’s no way I wouldn’t sound like a jealous, petty tattletale (I prefer whistle-blower).

So I’m trying to forget it. I’m trying not to care. But here’s my take on blogging (and life). Following the rules matters. Honesty matters. The end.

]]> http://www.seagullfountain.com/2008/07/06/does-it-matter-blogging-rules/feed/ 15 http://www.seagullfountain.com/2008/06/30/warm-biscuits-warm-hearts-a-things-that-must-go-winner/ http://www.seagullfountain.com/2008/06/30/warm-biscuits-warm-hearts-a-things-that-must-go-winner/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:52:32 +0000 Shannon http://www.seagullfountain.com/?p=1145 Great entries this weekend. I don’t know why I’m so entertained by reading what irks people. Although I had to disagree with a couple of them.

Azucar, for example. I can’t agree that flip-flops (even with wedding dresses) must go. Even though we’re now Twitter-BFFs, I have to stand on my own on this one.

Loved Marie‘s “family reunions. . . . That’s what email is for, people!” I enjoy family reunions, mostly because there’s lots of people to help take care of my kids, BUT email was a big improvement over actually having to talk on the phone to people.

Carolina‘s “lemonade and otter pop stands” was great; I can almost taste the sickly-sweet, too-warm lemonade. And, uh, no thanks on the leftovers you’ve got in your freezer.

Beth and Karin, with “People who are already fit and at the gym” and “woodticks,” respectively, made me laugh and grimace, respectively. Amen. Karen — hope the woodticks stick to your dog from now on!

And Suzie, thank you for the TMI (wink, Mary J!) on “saggy nursing boobs and the sweat underneath them!” Could not agree more.

But the winner is: Gladis. Because it sounds like she would understand my deep and abiding hatred of shoe shopping. Let’s hear it for Things That Must Go: “Inordinately narrow shoes.” Although, with my poor appendages that Dick has called “spatula” and “Flintstone” feet, I probably need the “regularly narrow” shoes to go too. Email me your IRL address, and we’ll get that $50 gift certificate out to you.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks to Warm Biscuit for sponsoring Things That Must Go!

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I’m looking for a sponsor for this coming weekend. It has to be a product or service that I would actually use myself, so that kind of narrows things down, but I know there are tons of cool Mom-trepreneur and big corporations out there just dying to do giveaways.

Actually, it would be cool if there were a website where people/companies looking to sponsor giveaways could match up with bloggers who want to host giveaways. Like a GiveawayMatch.com. Anyone know of something like that?

In the meantime, I’ve posted a (very incomplete) wish list of stuff I’d like to giveaway (It’s heavy on brand names, but only because that’s what’s on the top of my head). If you have any other ideas, please let me know; I’d like to add to my list.

I’m not above contacting companies myself, but I’m interested to see if any of them have Google Alerts set up for their company names, or check their incoming links. If you’re interested in sponsoring a Things That Must Go giveaway, email me at whataboutmom (at) gmail (dot) com. I can supply you with all my reader/traffic statistics.

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Please, for the love of everything holy, go comment on my poor little offering. Thanks! I’ll even close comments here so we can pretend that I’m stopping hordes of you fine people from commenting here instead of there. I already know I have no influence on the children in my life. Let me retain SOME illusions, okay?

I’d offer exotic internet favors in return, but I’ve already pledged my soul to the devil for a DSLR camera via Twitter. Do you think the devil is on Twitter? I guess I hope not. Because I didn’t really mean it about my soul. Maybe a kidney?

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At the lunch, we remarked on the nifty plastic tablecloths. They were fitted and had a tiny edging of elastic to kept them from shifting. My dad was so struck by them that I volunteered to go ask the friendly, middle-aged zoo host guy where they got them. He and his helper were very chatty. I said the tablecloths would be great for church activities, and then later in the conversation he asked what I thought of the whole event. I said that the only thing not perfect was that I wasn’t sure that the paints being used for the birdhouse craft would come out of my childrens’ clothes. And he said, “Well, that would be a great topic for a Relief Society night.”

This caught me off guard and I didn’t respond right away. He said, “You know, getting paint out of clothes.” Still a confused look on my face, so he rushed to apologize: “Oh, when you said that about church activities, but, I’m sorry . . . ,” and of course I said, “Oh no, that’s fine, you’re right, it would be a great topic for Relief Society.” (Although it wouldn’t. Who wants to learn about laundry techniques on the rare night out with the church-girls?)

The weird thing is that I’m sure at some point in my life I wouldn’t have been at all surprised by his casual reference to the church I belong to. And at some other point in my life I would have been offended on behalf of every non-Mormon that someone would assume from a simple “church activities” that I was Mormon and not Baptist or Catholic. I’m pretty sure they have activities too. Not to mention his assuming that everyone knows that “Relief Society,” in Mormon terms, refers to the entire women’s group, and not some committee to send aid to lepers in the leper colony (although Relief Society women have been known to knit those funny bandages).

Now I’m at a point in my life where it was just awkward, and I felt bad for him putting me on the spot and for me putting him on the spot. Of course, it was even more awkward when, after he had taken pains to speak to the craft women and to assure me that the birdhouse paint was water-soluble, I spilled an entire coke all over the nifty plastic tablecloth and then had to stand around apologizing and feeling stupid while he cleaned up after me.

Not my finest moment.

Also at the lunch, a woman came over to Dick and me. I did not recognize her at first, though she looks much more similar to her pre-children college self than I do. In other words, she looks great. Turns out that the three of us were in Writing Fellows together, which was the class/club/ finally-I-know-who-I-am-group where Dick and I met at BYU. She is married to my dad’s, well, not boss exactly, but very-respected colleague of some sort. We asked some personal (awkward) questions in an attempt to catch up. Yes, those four kids are hers. No, the older two (including a 14 year-old) are from her husband’s first marriage. Etc.

Dick and I talked too much, in our excitement at seeing her and through her, re-connecting with our idealistic, impressionable selves. I often feel later that I have monopolized a conversation, talking too much about myself, my interests and I never know if it’s because I am a really insufferable person (probably) or if the people I tend to be friends with are just really good at asking questions and seeming to be interested in me.

We asked her if she was writing. And it was as if we had asked if she were curing cancer yet. She was bashful, a bit apologetic, wistful. (I guess if you felt you should be curing cancer you’d be REALLY apologetic). I stumbled to say, “Of course, I know with kids and all, it’s almost impossible to do anything else.”

So, no writing, except for some family history things, stories about her ancestors, that sort of thing. Which, of course, is “writing,” though it was obvious that she didn’t consider it to be the kind of thing that we were talking about. Even after we told her we mostly blog, and everyone knows that isn’t a very respectable form of writing. And Dick is a technical writer, which everyone knows is selling out.

I wondered how I would have felt two years ago or a week ago when I felt like never writing another post, if someone had asked me, “Are you writing?”

Quite likely I would have screamed, “Are you KIDDING me? When should I be writing? Between the mopping of the syrup and the listening to the tantrums? Or the policing of the snack cupboard and the feeling guilty for pulling hair? Or the listening to the whining and the smelling stinky panties? I haven’t even had my Mountain Dew yet, and you think I SHOULD BE WRITING?”

I wanted to apologize, and yet, how could I? I’d apologize for the fact that her kids are taking up so much of her time, only she looks like she’s enjoying it, and her kids look really happy too.

The worst part is that Dick and I actually had cards to give her. I felt like a realtor, or a Mary Kay consultant. At least my cards were free at Vista Print and I only got them for that blogging conference I went to a few weeks ago. And they don’t have my picture on them.

Still, it was awkward, especially since she probably saw the thing later with the spilled coke all over the nifty plastic tablecloths.

The good thing is that, even though I have now stayed up another hour and a half to write this, and I’ll be paying for it tomorrow, I feel so much lighter, so much freer. Like I’ve apologized for real now, in writing, for all the awkward things that happened today. And that, Dear Reader, is why I write.

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If you haven’t entered the Luvs/Anita Renfroe giveaway yet, the deadline is today at 10 pm. (Well, the deadline is that whether you have or haven’t). Tell me your Things That Must Go! Besides awkwardness.

I should probably save all these tips for upcoming Works-for-Me Wednesday posts, but since Shannon could not be bothered to acknowledge my seven million shout-outs to her the other day (forget what I said about the Golden Rule, okay?), I just might start boycotting the carnival, which will really show her!

I mean, since she only has six million other participants and probably gets to multiply her gross revenue column on BlogHerAds by 60% instead of the lousy 50% I take home get to watch accumulate like sands in an hourglass. Speaking of which, let the BlogHerAd income ignorance come to an end. In the seven weeks that I’ve been running ads on my site, I’ve made 36 dollars.

Which is half a day’s pass to Disneyworld, or one meal at Disneyworld or a princess dress on clearance at Disneyworld, or 9/100dredths of a plane ticket to Disneyworld. And you should note that I wouldn’t need one of each of these things but five, only not of the princess dress. Dick would rather have a Mr. Incredibles costume.

Top Five Four Tips for a Less Klutzy/More Together Life

1. When making Cook&Serve chocolate pudding in your first year of college, and resolving to study while you eat, and to thoughtfully clean up the kitchen and store the leftover pudding in the fridge (because back then you cared about portion control) before you study, LET THE PUDDING COOL BEFORE CLOSING THE TUPPERWARE CONTAINER. Otherwise it could explode all over the kitchen and burn your neck, and you have to go to class with a bag of frozen peas clutched to your esophagus. And people will think you are just trying to get attention and are not really IN PAIN.

2. When speedwalking on the treadmill at the YMCA, and talking to your best friend whom you have not seen in 24 HOURS, and she gets off the treadmill and starts to walk out of the room, DO NOT maintain eye contact with her. Otherwise, your legs might follow your eyes and you fall off the treadmill, which is harder than it looks. It might even look like you are trying to get back on the treadmill, but really you are just trying to GET OFF THE DANG THING but it WON’T LET YOU GO. And then you will get lots of attention from employees who don’t want you to sue.

3. When going to Bear Lake to be the head cook of a Boy Scout Camp and you are almost nineteen-years old and have finished your first year in college and obtained your Open Your Own Restaurant Food Handler’s Permit and have clipped every recipe out of Family Fun magazine for the past ten years, and 569 Boy Scouts are relying on you to keep them from starving, and you have a cookbook and access to Allrecipes.com, do not call your older sister to ask her how to make Baked Potatoes, or she might think you were dropped on the head more than that one time she knows about.

4. When getting the kids ready for bed and your husband is busy “folding laundry,” and the older hooligans are still in the tub, but you got the little one out because she was screaming, but then you forgot about her and started blogging again, DO NOT forget to buy lots of carpet cleaner that morning. Otherwise, theoretically speaking, it might be really hard to clean up the trail of poop from the main cache to the dinner table where she climbed on a chair to graze on leftovers from dinner.

There was one other one, but it was just sad, rather than highly educational. Please share your own best klutz-tips. As you can tell, I need all the help I can get!

****Updated to say****

5. Because it has been pointed out to me (by someone I USED to think of as a friend, see #2), y’all FrumpFighters should kick me out of your carnival because I never actually talk about beautification of the physical body. But I did have one that mentioned makeup, so I’ll put it back in: (Thank me later for this amazingly original tip):

When buying lipstick and reminding your fellow Fight the Frumper that you cannot just write about your favorite lipstick as you have no idea what brand you have ever bought, as you always just buy whatever is on sale at the grocery store (as long as it mentions some form of chocolate in the color or “mocha”), do not leave it in the car where it will melt even if there is still ice on the windshield. Stick with melting crayons and fruit snacks and dumdums and old milk in sippy cups and actual chocolate.

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Go Fight the Frump with real experts at Fussy’s.

You can tell a lot about a person and their blog based on which aspect of blogging: Art (Writing or Photography or Quilling), Business (making money or expanding an IRL enterprise); or Technology (coding or design or web development), inspires their posts. A great blog will usually be artistically rich, income-generating, and technologically sophisticated, though there are many exceptions, and a great blog for me may simply be one that minimizes my angst.

Whatever your goal(s) for your blog, it’s good to explore the other aspects, if only so that if and when your interests or goals change, your blog will be set up to shift/expand more smoothly.

Art of the Blog

The most important thing is not how great your writing is. If fantastic writing were the only requirement for blogging greatness, I’d be on the beach with my new iMac right now. Instead, it’s important to have a hook. Skimpy clothes, great assets, loose morals. NO! Hook! You might be the rancher’s wife or the depressive ex-Mormon or the Southern “Can I get an Amen?” or the Alaskan Family Fun. Hook is closely related to voice: are you Sarcastic, Hip, Queenly, Fussy?

Provide a Service

Second most important is providing a service. That might be plain old entertainment, but honey, you better be dang entertaining if you’re not also offering tips, recipes, advice on baby naming, live blogging of American Idol, or wrong opinions to rail against. Even Dooce, who has never posted a recipe (that I can see) updates her Daily Photo, Chuck and Style sections about four times a week, encouraging people to spend more disposable income on funky knickknacks.

Rocks in My Dryer had a recent post that I cannot find right now. (Note: Get thee a search box on thy blog) about posts. Short is good. Frequent paragraph breaks is good. Focusing each post on one topic is good. Again, lots of exceptions, but overall good advice.

Business of the Blog

Two things here: traffic and subscribers. To give you a basis for comparison, The Pioneer Woman gets about 5.9 million pageviews a month; the lowliest Federated Media parenting author gets 30,000. Page views are generally 2-4 times higher than unique visitors and are what advertisers mostly track, though they might also want to know your subscriber numbers, as that indicates loyalty and signals quality, ongoing content. Sign up for Google Analytics to see how close you are to becoming famous being able to make 5 dollars a month from advertising.

Traffic unrelated to subscribers is determined by your Google (or other search engine) page rank, which is determined by your SEO (search engine optimization), of which incoming links are the most important aspect. For a great primer on SEO for mom bloggers in particular, check out WebMarketCentral. Incoming links are like gold. As one person said, you can shout that your name is Jane @ What About Mom as loudly and often as you like, but Google only cares when others start shouting that you are Jane @ What About Mom.

One non-intuitive thing I’ve learned from my friend Laura is that, when it comes to pay-per-click advertising (where you only get paid if a visitor actually clicks on the ad, like with Google Adsense), you make money when someone comes to your site and DOESN’T FIND what they are looking for, but clicks away on a promising-looking ad.

So which should you focus on? Traffic or subscribers? Both, of course. Ideally they’ll feed each other, though often a post that appeals to your regular readers won’t hook in new ones or random Google searchers and vice versa. Again, it’s a matter of what your priorities are and what kind (if any) ads you run.

Building Traffic

Once you’ve nailed SEO, it’s about getting subscribers to be traffickers too. Get your subscribers to click over to the actual site by hosting a carnival, writing great content they have to comment on, hosting giveaways, contests, or polls; posting something special that can only be seen on the blog, and compiling helpful lists for readers to check back regularly too, esp. if you have a cute button for it.

You can also try the social news aggregators like Digg, Kirtsy, etc. Go to Share This to get an easy plugin for all the main sites. Ideally your readers will submit your stories, but, hey, there’s no law against tooting your own horn. I submitted my own Dooce post (I know, uber-tacky), but it worked!

Also, give Twitter (or Plurk, if you must) and Facebook (or Myspace or blahblah). I’m getting too tired to create hyperlinks. Just type .com after any non-hypered nouns from now on, okay? Also, if this all seems too weird/insane in a really bad way, go read Memarie Lane on the bloggy optimization madness.

Building Subscriber Loyalty

People love it when their comments are acknowledged, almost as much as bloggers like to get comments. You can respond in the comments section or by email. Which do people prefer? I should do a poll. Click on over to vote (Kidding. Maybe later). Some techy-type needs to write a plugin that automatically asks people if they’d prefer a response by email or in the comments section. Of course, we all (you know you do, admit it) dream of the day that the number of comments is just TOO overwhelming to even think of responding to each one. Yeah, any day now.

Also, once your readers trust you, maintain that trust by writing the sort of post they expect from you, rather than obvious link-bait or search-bait or unbelievably-glowing (not one of my weaknesses) product reviews.

Getting Incoming Links

This is very similar to Building Traffic. Carnivals, contests, indispensable lists, etc, anything you can use to motivate people to link to your site. Sometimes it’s hard to get the attention of established, successful bloggers (however you measure success).

If you’re like me (and if you’re way cooler, come on, you remember thinking this), every time you hit Publish, you think this post will be the one, the one that everyone will see and link to and five minutes later you’ll be Because I Said So. I live in hope of being part of Rocks in My Dryer‘s or Musings of a Housewife‘s weekend linkie love fests. I did get on to Fussy’s once. How? By accidentally doing something that now strikes me as a super-good strategy. I asked her permission to use one of her photos. That’s right: write about a blogger you admire, and you just might be surprised.

One final note. Blogging isn’t so different from life. The Golden Rule applies, but be even nicer. Try linking to other bloggers, but if they don’t reciprocate, no harm, because you would have linked to them anyway, because they’re just that cool and helped you illustrate a point, right? For a funny (and probably comprehensive) list of people’s pet peeves about blogggers/blogging, check out the comments section on Shannon’s post.

Advertising

One of the best things about blogs is the transparency of the web, and one of my favoritely transparent bloggers is Scribbit in Alaska. Now, I confess that a few of her posts, the recipes and crafts and giveaways, are not super-appealing to me, plus I am jealous that she is so popular. So I have some angst. But Scribbit is incredibly helpful, candid, and transparent. You can learn about advertising, making money from your blog, and how to split your blogging time to maximum effect on her site. Here me shout: Michelle is Scribbit, Google! Hear me?

Branding

The power of good branding cannot be overstated. I wrote before about my new friend Kelly King Anderson and how she came up with Startup Princess. Catchy, right? Check her out for other general entrepreneurial issues, including work-life balance. (To Dick: What!?! I’m COMING to bed).

Technology of the Blog

Again, exceptions abound, but in general, a grown-up blog has it’s own domain, preferably a .com. If you’ve still got blogspot or wordpress or typepad in your url, maybe rethink that. Of course, if you’ve already got all your incoming links (see above) and page rank established on the hosted site, maybe a move isn’t worth it, because those things aren’t transferable. When registering your domain, think branding and hook (see above).

Blogging Platform

You can use the Blogger or WordPress or Typepad software that you’re familiar with on your own site. If you’re ready to host your own site (and register a domain) but have no idea where to start, check out BlueHost. They’re 6.95/month and have 24/7 online chat support, not that you’ll ever need that. I’m most familiar with WordPress, and it’s a great, “robust,” blogging software thingie. They have lots of free themes (layouts), though if you’re really serious (which I am only moderately serious so far), you can buy a premium theme for around $70. Dick wrote a Quick Start Guide on the WordPress codex. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I think it would to your average third-grader.

Help!

A great resource for blogging in general (though I use it mostly for technology questions) is Melanie‘s and Shannon‘s BloggingBasics101. They’ve got a great Google-based search tool, so type in anything. Go ahead. I bet, if it has to do with blogging, they’ve got something, or know who does, on it.

Down with Photoshop!

The only other tool (besides WordPress) that I use regularly is Snagit. Snagit is like Photoshop, only easier and without that layers crap. You can write on photos, take screenshots, uh, do other cool things. I am not a designer/artiste (surprise!), but I like how handy SnagIt is. They don’t even pay me to say that . . . YET. Hey, SnagIt, love me as much as I love you, okay?

The Wrap-Up

I hope this is not too basic, not too advanced (not much fear of that, eh?). I know I’m exhausted, so even if this list isn’t exactly complete, it’s done (unless you help!). I’d love to hear what you think about the art, business, and technology of blogging. Do you think comments or emails are better as replies? Is Typepad nicer than WordPress? Why do you blog? How much money do you make? I remember when we taught conversational English in Japan and one thing we worked on was appropriate questions to ask of strangers. I never quite mastered that.

If you have any questions for me, please ask, and I’ll get Dick to research and answer right away.

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Oh, and this is what works-for-me. That Shannon! What she doesn’t know about making me a trafficker!

The conference was fun: I got to see my fun Utah blogging friends, Sheri and Laura. (I used to just roll my eyes when I read other bloggers’ rhapsodies about blogging buddies, but now I aspire to that). I also met someone who I was not at all surprised to learn later was 1st runner up in the Mrs. Utah pageant. She just had that Mrs. Utah glow and charisma. Sometimes I get twitchy around pageant-type women, but before I comment on that, I should probably disclose that Kelly King Anderson and I have something in common. Something about beauty pageants, even.

She won Interview at the Mrs. Utah pageant, and SO DID I. At the Miss Salem Pageant, fourteen short years ago. Can I tell you that I couldn’t have been prouder (I mean, unless I’d won the actual crown) to win Interview. You know, because that’s the thinkin’ part, darlin’.

Kelly was on the panel with Laura and me. Her blog/online magazine, Startup Princess, is a good example of serious branding. ‘Startup Princesses’ are women entrepreneurs, and the more experienced women who mentor them with great advice, encouragement, and support are ‘Fairy Godmothers.’ Kelly even attributes much of her site’s success to the simple fact that she was fortunate/bright enough to not call it something dull like “entreprenuering mentorship for mom entrepreneurs.”

So I’ve been thinking about the branding thing, and, too bad I chose a dull name like What About Mom for this site, although it made sense at the time because of that movie What About Bob?, which totally inspired me with the idea of the normal-seeming guy going insane while Bill Murray starts to look better and better.  

It’s probably too late to change my blog to Mommy Princess or Who’s Going to Clean this Room? Princess. But it’s not too late for my friend Tara to come up with a great brand idea for this super cool website she is going to launch and make a million dollars and take me to Europe with her.

She and I were brainstorming on the phone the other day. I came up with smokin’ ideas like Handy Princess and Princess Handyman, because I’m so original and creative that everything I propose is a copy of Startup Princess. 

Then today as we were driving to Grandma’s house, Sally said, “Mom, you know how you were talking to your friend about needing a good title for a blog for someone who’s really a girly girl but also good with power tools?” And I said, Yes, because it was just the other day and my short-term memory isn’t that bad.

And she said, “I have a great one for you. How about: I’m Cool With A Tool.”

Dick and I could not be prouder that our seven-year old is thinking up domain names in her spare time. Watch for her in Miss Utah 2019. She is gonna OWN Interview.

 
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Most of the time I feel really grateful for the money Dick brings home. He also doesn’t complain about his job like he did when he was teaching, which is good because then I don’t feel like telling him to shut up at dinner because AT LEAST YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO LOOK FOR KID SHOES TODAY. SEVEN TIMES.

But house-hunting, even in a housing “slump,” is stealthily depressing. It’s like how I usually feel pretty good about my body, just glad I have shoulders and knees and elbows, but then I try on clothes, or get my picture taken with anomalously skinny people, and suddenly I am plunged into a real slump.

Here’s a great cure for the money-grubbies: Global Rich List (via FMH). Someone asked me tonight how the BlogHer Ads thing is working for me, and I was embarrassed to say that I still have not remembered my password, so, beyond meeting some great other bloggers (like Marianne and Beth) in my “circle,” I don’t really know how it’s going. I’m sure millions of dollars are waiting for me to claim.

I started with BlogHer after talking to a bloggy friend of mine who joked about how she would be retiring soon on her $28/month ad income. So I thought it would be instructive to see how an income of $336 a year (28 x 12) stacks up:

Since I know my bloggy friend has a couple other sources of income, it’s probably only of interest to me that if one were to make just 336 dollars per year from one’s blog, one would be richer than quite a few people in the world. One would also be annoying for saying “one” all the time.

For those who don’t measure everything in terms of blogs(!?!), Wikipedia says that the median household income in the U.S. is $46,326, which stacks up like so:

I just have two words to say about that: Ho-ly Cow.

If only there were a website that could make me feel this positive about my body. It would tell me that, compared to most mammals, like whales and elephants, say, I really look like this:

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I have fought the Finance Frump before, and probably will again, but I hope this helps in the war against all manner of frumpiness!