It is that wonderful time again when a small but fierce group of bloggers attempts to take over the blogsphere for a day with Bloggerstock!  Well, I like to think so anyway.  This moth happens to be the one-year anniversary of Bloggerstock, which is pretty exciting.  This month I have the pleasure of hosting the founder of the Karaoke Blog Ring of Death, and the blogger behind Sara Swears A Lot.  She is always entertaining and often her writing does the title of her blog justice.

I won’t dwell on the theme for this month, basically the idea was to dig through your old journals and pull out something fun and share it.  I will let Sara share her take on the topic.  So, without further ado, here is what you have been waiting for:

The theme for Bloggerstock this month was “before there were blogs” AKA in the old, dark age that sucked. I was lucky enough to find an old notebook from when I was in 4th grade. Most of it was boring as shit, because apparently I was the lamest 4th grader in the history of ever. But one entry made me realize that I’m the exact same girl today that I was ten years ago.

“My friend Josie and I got into this big argument and aren’t speaking. I’m mad at her. But then I thought two things. Who am I going to play with? WWJD? I talked to her today. We both said we were sorry at the bus stop. Besides, who’s pool would I use (J.J.) Just joking. I like her because she’s just fun to play with. She’s a very good friend.”

Riiiiiight, 4th grade Sara. That’s super believable. If that J.J. hadn’t been there, I might have thought you were being a selfish brat, but nevermind!

I also like how your first thought is that you’ll have no one to play with, and your second thought is pondering what Jesus would do in your situation? I’m not sure how often Jesus got in fights with friends who had pools in their backyard, but let’s be real for a second, 4th grade Sara. Everyone loves a pool. And I’m pretty sure Jesus would have done the same exact thing in your situation.

If you’d like to read what K. Syrah (www.shoesneverworn.com) has to say for Bloggerstock this month, check her out on my page! And a big thanks to Alex for putting so much work into this blog ring. I know it’s way more stressful than it looks!

With any luck, if you are looking for my post on this month’s topic, you can find it over on Bobby’s blog.  If you enjoy bloggerstock and would like to learn more about it or get involved, you can just pop over to our site Bloggerstock.net.  Any information you could want is there.

With that, happy blogging!

So there is this really cool thing that I discovered thanks to Island Gal over at NYC Island Gal and that is a German organization that is working on neutralizing the carbon footprint of the blogsphere.  This is a pretty interesting concept, and the fact that it is free makes it even better.  Sure, many hosting services off the option to host your site on “green” servers, but usually you end up paying a premium for that service, and in the end, shouldn’t being green be something we just do and not have to pay for?

I can’t really tell you what else this company in Germany does on account of the fact that their entire website is in German.  I am not really sure how to even get to the english part of the site that talks about the project other than via the links that I have seen.  As soon as I started clicking around the site I was back in German.  I suppose then this would lead many to wonder if they are even legit in what they are doing.  I can’t speak to that, but as the program is FREE, then we, the end users, don’t have anything to lose other than one blog post.

So here is what these guys are doing:  First, you write a post about them (like this one), then you send them an email, and they will then plant a tree for your blog in a forest in California.  They also would like you to display a badge on your blog, which is fine with me.  Why does this work?  Well, according to them, the average blog produces around 8 pounds of carbon every year.  The average tree scrubs about 11 pounds of carbon each year from the atmosphere.  So by planting one tree for every participating blog, you actually neutralize more carbon than the blog produces.

Why do blogs produce carbon?  Well, you have to consider that no matter where your blog resides, be it on blogger or wordpress.com or on your own server or hosting account, that machine uses a lot of energy to host your blog.  Most of us are not on dedicated servers, even those of us who are self hosted are usually on a communal server in a server farm somewhere.  So, not only is the server itself using energy, but it takes a lot of energy to maintain the servers and keep them cool and functioning.  This all contributes to the carbon footprint of your blog.  I suppose you also have to consider the energy used by your own computer when you write posts as well!

If you want to read more and see the quoted research that all this information is based on, you can fid it here.  I didn’t think that I needed to take up too much space quoting them.  As I said before, they sound pretty legit about the whole program, and any little thing we can do to make an impact in helping out our home seems like a worthwhile cause to explore.  So, if you are interested in joining the cause or finding out more information, here is a link to the organization.

Just a few easy steps to make it green:

1. Write a blog post about the initiative + insert your favorite button
2. E-mail the link to your post to [email protected]
3. They’ll plant a tree for your blog in Plumas’!

A few people from the 20SB gang got to chatting the other night.  The conversation started with some talk of 20SB’s blog-swap, which sounds like it should be a fun event.  We were thinking though, that creating a regular event  along similar lines that linked a bunch of bloggers together would be a really fun thing to try.  Thus, Bloggerstock was born.

The basic concept behind Bloggerstock is to create a blog-ring where every participating blogger writes a post that will be posted on one of the other participant’s blogs.  All the participants will blog about the same thing.  Every time we run an event we will pick a theme, post title, opening line, etc. that everyone uses as the basis for their post.  The idea is then that you have a whole host of blogs with posts of the same title/theme.  If we got enough people together maybe we could even give the search engines a heart attack for a day.

As opposed to a traditional blog-swap, each blogger would write a post for one person and receive a post from a different person.  Each blogger would link back to the post on their blog from the post they write for the next blogger.  This is how the ring is formed.  Thus, Blogger A writes a post to be posted on Blogger B’s blog.  Blogger B writes a post for Blogger C and so on.  In the post that Blogger B writes for C, she will include a link back to A’s post on her (B’s) blog.  It sounds a lot more confusing than it actually is.  in any event, this method of linking should create a ring of linked blogs.  Everyone gets a chance to share followers and hopefully pick up some new ones.

So, for the first Bloggerstock event we have chosen the title “The internet is eating my…” This should be an interesting one and I am not really sure how to attack it.  I could go at it like one of my normal musings which I am sure would be interesting.  There is plenty to say from that angle.  There is also the angle of complete fiction that could also be fun.  Not sure what I will do, but I have some time to work it out and get some ideas down on “paper.”  I am glad that I have some time to work on it so that I can come up with something good.

I don’t have as much time to come up with a good post for the 20SB Blog-swap, but I don’t think that should be too hard.  I would imagine that since I can generally find something to write about.  It is unfortunate that it isn’t on a Friday when i would normally share a photo.  I mean I still could, but I would have to find one that I could actually have something to say about.  Not terribly worried, it all works out in the end, it’s a mystery.

In any event, if you are interested in Bloggerstock, just click one of the links in this post.  If things go well this first time we will open it up to everyone in the future!

Last night I was catching up on shows that had piled up on the DVR.  It happens pretty regularly especially when we get into hang, focus and tech weeks at the theatre. So, after watching the Ugly Betty episodes and the Project Runways we got to the Episodes of House. I believe that it was the second to last episode of House where he was treating a blogger who blogged pretty much everything about her life and even asked her followers for advice.

One of the interesting ideas that this blogger mentioned was that she felt like it was easier to connect with her followers than it was to connect with people in person. She said that she found it easier to be honest and to really speak her mind on her blog than it was to do that with even her husband. It really made me wonder how many people find this to be the case, and how many people blog for this reason.

I work in a profession that really is all about interpersonal relationships. Even behind the scenes, everything we do in theatre is about communicating with other people (especially the audience). So I don’t usually feel like I have issues connecting with people. I don’t claim to have zillions of friends, but I have plenty of friends who I know in person and I also have a contingent of friends who I only know via the internets. I don’t feel like I divulge any more or personal information with the friends that I have made online.

Personally, I don’t think that a relationship formed entirely online, no matter how well you get to “know” someone online, do you really know them? There are plenty of people who I have “known” for a good while in an online way, but I think that it would really make for a much stronger relationship to know some of these people in person. It begs the question, does meeting someone in person change how you relate to them when you go back to your online relationship?

It was also suggested that “real” privacy is a modern idea. In that years ago when people lived in small towns and not in cities, everyone knew pretty much everything that was going on in the town. There are still alcoves where this still happens like in small departments in schools or in summer camps or the small towns that still exist. The concept of privacy though is what makes blogging hard for some people to understand. We put a lot of ourself on display every time we post even if we are not writing about our lives. Why?

Some people just like to have a creative outlet for posting poetry or short stories. Some people actually do blog about everything that happens in their lives. Some people blog to share their art, photos or opinions. All of these things though, show some insight into the personal aspects of a person’s life. Why are we fascinated with sharing this with the world or whoever stops by?

We are social creatures. Maybe we need more connections and more public lives than what we actually live today. Maybe we seek these connections in the online world because we don’t get enough of them in our day-to-day lives. I certainly don’t have the answers, I just know that I enjoy blogging and finding things that move me to write about them.

…Faith, God, Prayer…

It sounds like a list of tags, but they are themes that I seem to come across often in the blogs that I read.  I don’t have an issue with this, I just find it interesting how much and how many people publicly talk about these things.  I don’t know why it surprises me because since moving to Utah I have had more conversations about religion and faith than I probably have ever had before.  Sometimes I feel like any time you meet someone new out here the conversation inevitably turns towards religion at some point.

I consider myself to be a practicing Jew and I align myself with the conservative movement.  I feel like I have a pretty good Jewish education that probably stems mostly from the ten summers that I spent as a camper at a Jewish summer camp.  I enjoy going to synagogue, I help lead services, and I like to expand my knowledge base.  I am by no means an expert, but I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on most of the concepts.  I don’t let my religion dictate my life, but it certainly does influence some of the things that I do from day to day.

One of the things that I find most interesting are the cases where people “find” religion or faith as a result of dealing with something in their lives like an illness or death or something.  The question that it brings to mind though, is: “What is religion doing for you now that you have ‘found’ it?”  I firmly believe that people who convert to a religion make “better” members of the religion than people who were born into it, but how do people who find religion compare?  What is it about a person’s situation and their seemingly passed over religion that draws them back to that religion?

There is certainly nothing wrong with finding religion and taking what it offers.  One of the biggest things that religion gives people is a sense of belonging.  Religion is the foundation for many great communities, communities that support their members when they are in need.  At least I hope that is the case!  I certainly have been happy to find such a strong, albeit small, Jewish community in Salt Lake City.  I mean this is one of the only places in the world where a Jew could be considered a gentile!  the Jewish community here helped me out when I was new to the area, made me feel at home, and it still does.

Personally I find it interesting to discuss religion even though there are some aspects of some religions that I don’t agree with and really just don’t make sense to me (sometimes religion in general falls in that category).  Sometimes I find the people who say that god or Jesus gave them the power to go on a little hard to swallow, but if their faith gave them something to grab onto to keep going, that is a good thing.  Everyone, no matter where you live or who you are, should have the right to believe whatever they want.  This of course is not the case, but it should be.  However, it should be noted that the flip side of that sentiment is that no-one has the right to tell someone else what to believe.

It is the issue of what you believe and what you think other people should believe that is the source of much of the contention in the world.  There are too many people who think that what they believe is the only answer and they insist that everyone else believe the same thing.  I live in a city filled with people who believe just such a thing, it is literally their mission to bring as many people as they can into the fold over the course of their lives.  Their rite of passage is to go on a mission somewhere in the world to spread their faith.  What gives them the right to tell another person that said person’s beliefs are wrong?

Personally, I think that the best stance to take with religion is that there is no reason to insist that yours is the right one or the only one.  If there actually is a right and wrong religion then in the end, everyone will figure it out!  No need to try to shove it down my throat now when it is really impossible to know if there is a right and wrong at all.

So where does all of that leave me?  I am not entirely sure how I got here on account of I just kinda put my thoughts out.  I have been intrigued at how god and religion seem to play an important role in many people’s lives, or at least the parts of their lives that they blog about.  My religion and beliefs certainly play an important role in my life and they have made me who I am today, I have just never felt like some divine force is leading me through life.  I don’t challenge what anyone believes, they have the right to believe whatever they want and I respect that.  I just find it interesting to see what people believe and how it affects and drives their lives.