To qualify for the blog contest at TheWeBlogZone, I have to write a post why I think I deserve to win it.
(Author’s Note: Please read the next post for the details of this contest.)
Here are my main points why I think I deserve to win this contest:
I need to take my blogging to the next level.
I have been blogging for only 70 days and already I feel the constraints of a hosted blog platform. But pundits will say I should have started with WordPress on day one and while their reasons are exemplary, let’s not go into that.
Some background. The blogging virus caught me when I had read Jehzeel’s blog. I did not know I was already infected. I kept coming to his blog to read his latest post. When there was a new update, I’d dig deep into his archives. Consequently, I started commenting on his post and from thereon we kept exchanging emails about blogging. He offered to host my blog. For free. The only thing I had to do is to get a domain name.
I had found a new found love: blogging. But I took the opposite route by registring with Blogger. It took me a while to visit Jehz blog again because I was ashamed of my stubbornness. But he did not take it against me. We’re still good online buddies.
Through these three months that I have been checking in on my blog neighbors, I always feel inferior about my blog. They have WordPress themes to die for. And marvelous plug-ins and widgets. I can only stand along the picket fence with mouth open in wonderment. I’ve been keeping up a carefree facade but deep inside I always feel like a poor cousin among my online friends. After all, I have been living under the bridge at the pittance of Blogger.
Image by Sailing “Footprints: Real to Reel” (Ronn ashore) via Flickr
Why should I be ashamed when I am not hurting anybody in the course of my blogging?
I know. I have been faithful to my blog – posting every other day. But faith and perseverance is not enough.
I have been studying to better my craft: subscribed to the big guns in the blogosphere, sitting practically at their feet to learn as much as my feeble brain can. But passion is not enough.
I have sacrificed many things so I can sit every day at my desktop so I can blog. Gave up prime time television. Which meant no more 24. No more Lost. No more American Idol. Gave up online gaming (I miss you, Nortrom the Silencer. LOL). But sacrifices are sometimes not enough.
I have been writing my own content. They may be a little skewed, a little off-putting sometimes, or juvenile and this I concede, but they are my own. They are not scraped materials from some obscure underbelly of the internet. Forensic blood spatter experts will tell you the microscopic stains on my posts are mine alone. But originality is not enough.
Unless I take my blogging to another level.
I need to be taken seriously as a blog author. I’m blogging on borrowed time, living under the pittance of Blogger. Any day, any hour, my blog can be taken off the blogosphere by Google. And Google doesn’t need any earthshaking reason to do away with my blog. It can do so on a whim. Maybe down the road, for some quirk of fate, I will hit it big with Digg, driving monstrous traffic into this quiet blog. And Google will have been alarmed about the traffic spike and might have pulled the rug from under Sa Labas ng Mandaluyong. No amount of appeal can bring it back. You’re a splog, Jan, we’re sorry. End of discussion.
I have joined the blogging world without much thinking. I thought my enthusiasm was enough. Seriously, who will remember Sa Labas ng Mandaluyong? That’s quite a mouthful and bad for the palate. It’s obscure. What does it mean? Unless you’re a medical personnel from the mental institution in Mandaluyong City and goes about town with a straitjacket and a zapper. But you’re not. You have no time for this inside joke. Sa Labas ng Mandaluyong is a joke gone stale. It’s not enough if I want to be taken seriously as a blog author. And I do need to be taken seriously.
To sum up, let me borrow some words of wisdom from Friedrich Nietzsche, “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
Winning this contest will give me the opportunity to do just so. A good start so I can rightfully claim the privilege of owning myself.
Invitation to you, dear readers. I’m lusting to win this contest, but I’m inviting you to join me. If I don’t clinch this, I’d feel less crestfallen if one of you can take it home with you. Elmot, Joji, James, Lemuel, Adrian,Jade and Yatot - this is for us, guys.
Come on, let’s make this our project.
Related Post: 10 Traits of a Die-Hard Blogger
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