The Journey of 1,000 Posts…
Today is 1 July. June is Avatar Blogger Month is complete! Can you believe it? I know some of the peeps in the photo below, and some of the other avatar bloggers who weren’t able to be in the photo, can’t believe it! We survived! Some of us did 30 posts. Some of us did more than 30 posts. Some did less. But what matters most is: we survived 30 days! Pat yourself on the back, you’ve reached the avatar blogger month finish.
Blogging :: Community
What I love most about this photo of 11 of our happy avatar bloggers, is that 2 of us weren’t even official participants in ABC! But we were avatar bloggers at the gym when we took the photo, so of course everyone should be in the photo. Some of us worked really hard to do 30 posts in 30 days. Some of us stressed over it. Some of us felt bad if we didn’t achieve 30. For me the best value of a challenge is to challenge myself. If I challenge myself to do 10 pull ups by the end of the month, it doesn’t matter that Trilby can do 100, or that Fiona can’t do any, it’s just my challenge. At the end of the month, whether I can do 10 or 9 or 11 doesn’t really matter, all that matters is that I tried. Even when I was lazy and didn’t feel like it, I tried. Even when it was hard and I wanted to stop, I tried to do one more. And if I never got past 5 because the kids were crying and I had to go feed them, that’s legit too. Challenges shouldn’t be about shame or failure, they should only be about trying to reach a little higher. No one can do it all. This world is filled with so many more places than I’ll ever be able to see. There are so many more worthwhile challenges than I’ll ever be able to attempt. Probably we all try to do too much. For me, what matters most is being present. I’ll never do a lot of things, and I might only do this thing for a little while, but for as long as it lasts, I want to really be here.
[box type=”download” style=”rounded” border=”full”]Here it is! Your final gold star for participating in Avatar Blogger Month! 
Now for any of you who completed 29 or fewer posts, please do not make me slap you by asking if you still qualify to put it on your blog or anywhere else you like! The “30” is for Days, and I hope by now you know that at least for myself, the only thing that really counts is participation. Shame and guilt are a waste of time. They’re minutes of life you can never get back. Be honest. Do your best. Keep moving forward. No one can ask for more than that. Make the best of whatever cards you’re holding. Or if you’re cards really suck, then invent a better game! The “30” star is a .png with transparency. Click on it to bring up the full-size image, then right-click that and save as. Use the transparency to put it on top of something else, or just use it as is. But whatever you do, ENJOY IT! It’s a fucking gold star! How great is that!? [/box]
Avatar Blogger Month Finish
For the past month I’ve had the joy of giving some attention to the couple dozen avatar bloggers at the Avatar Blogger Crossfit gym. I wish I’d given so much more attention! Still, it’s been a true pleasure to read your blogs and hang out with you at the gym. 1 July is the end of the official Avatar Blogger Month, and ironically, today is also the end of Google Reader. If you’ve transitioned from Google Reader to something else, please leave a comment below and LMK what you’re using, and I do hope you’ll include iRez on your list. If you weren’t a Google Reader or anything else user before, I encourage you to become one today. If you’ve ever taken any kind of writing class, you’ll recall that there’s always more reading than writing in a writing class! You might write 5 or 10 thousand words, and read half a million words!
Write :: Read
Reading does a couple of great things for a writer: it teaches us to write better, and it helps build a community of writers. New and better expression. Connections to people we share values with. With the demise of Google Reader I thought I might use Bloglovin’ as my new reader. I like it a lot. But at the suggestion of Berry and others I tried Feedly, and I like it even better. If I set it up right, hopefully I’m now following all of you on Feedly. One of the really cool features of Bloglovin is “Friend Activity” which lets you see posts your friends have “liked” and also Friend Profiles which lets you see blogs your friends publicly follow. Those are really cool advantages for Bloglovin, but I guess I’m still going Feedly for it’s slightly stronger interface.
Don’t Be a Stranger!
Yes, it’s the avatar blogger month finish. Yes, our official challenge is complete, but the gym isn’t closed. The Linden Endowment for the Arts “Artist in Residence” (LEA / AIR) that Alice in Cornelland and Avatar Blogger Crossfit gym are a part of runs until the end of July. You can still come workout on the treadmills and other machines. You can still come decorate your workstation.
I promised everyone who participated in ABC their very own treadmill to take home, and I’m making good on that promise today with the opening of the Alice in Cornelland FreeStore. You’re welcome to come take a Treadmill Desk, use it, mod it, share it. You’re also welcome to leave anything you’d like to share at the AiC FreeStore. I really like full perm objects because they give not just a thing to use, but also they pay forward with creative possibilities for all. But feel free to leave stuff with any perms you choose or that might be dictated by materials you’ve incorporated. The only AiC FreeStore requirement is that it be “sold” for L$0. (and not be copybotted stuff, bla bla bla)
Thank you all so much for sharing June with me. It’s been so much fun. Best of all was meeting all of you and learning a little about your diverse interests and perspectives. It’s all just been go great. Thank you. I love you guys.
Vanessa Anne Blaylock
1 July 2013
LEA11, Second Life
L I N K Y . L I N K Y
• SL-URL / LEA11 Freestore
• iRez / June is Avatar Blogger month
• iRez / Avatar Blogger Month – Participant List
• Agnes Sharple / The Tree of Missing Avatars
• Strawberry Singh.com / Google Reader Alternatives
• Bloglovin / Vanessa Blaylock
• Blog Reader / Feedly
• Online Media Signals / Why Bloggers Should Read Blogs
• The Guardian / The Best Advice for Writers? Read.
Agnes Sharple
Botgirl Questi
Bumblebee (Wendz Tempest)
Canary Beck
Carissa Arthurine Somerset
Eva Marie
Fuschia Nightfire
George Coghill
Ironyca Lee
Jeremy Owen Turner
Joseph DeLappe
Kathleen Cool
Katie Vizenor
Krista Hoefle
Kristine Schomaker
Lizzie Gudkov
Aero Bigboots
RMarie Beedit
Marmaduke Arado
Isabella Medici
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Nathan Shafer
Pixel Reanimator
Ravanel Griffon
Scarlett Luv
Strawberry Singh
Tabitha Raincloud
Toni Tyldesley
Trilby Minotaur
Vanessa Blaylock
Xue Faith
Yordie Sands
Yay more gold stars! Thank you so much for running such an awesome and inspiring challenge, I had a blast! <3
OMG Berry, what a wonderful month, and what a real pleasure having you be a part of it. I guess I discovered your blog 2 years ago when you did “What’s Your Digits 1” and we performed VB26 – Average, which was inspired by it.
• http://strawberrysingh.com/2011/04/12/whats-your-digits/
• http://irez.uk/portfolio/#vb26
And then for the past year iRez has been privileged to have you contributing some of your amazing photographs.
What anyone paying more attention than me would have already realized 2 years, or at least 1 year ago, is how hard you work and how much you give. To be honest I didn’t fully appreciate that until Avatar Blogger Month. The tutorials, the challenges, the amazing photography, it’s just incredible Berry!
There are few who work as hard as you do, and sometimes working that much can lead to a sort of arrogance about it – I can’t think of anyone who is as hard working and generous and gracious about it all as you are. Thank you so much for everything. You’ve touched so many with your generosity.
gaaaahhhhhh you’re gonna make me cry. Thank you so much. I don’t really see it as work, I just enjoy it so much and it’s really selfish on my part because in turn it really gives me back so much, something to be proud of, somewhere to go to vent or share my innermost weird thoughts, who better than to torture my readers with all that stuff? 😛 But really, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You have been so supportive and encouraging and I’ll always appreciate that. <3
Thank you, merci, gracias,,,, even thought my time stamed my last blog July 1st *grumbles* .. Was a lot of fun and great meeting the other bloggers. :))
That’s awesome Daallee! Thanks so much for playing! 😀
I was going to comment on your blog – but I couldn’t – do you have comments turned off?
Anyway, in WordPress, when you’re in page edit mode, in the right hand column, near the top you’ll see: “Published On:” bla bla bla….
If you click “EDIT” you can change the Date/Time to anything you like, past or future. You might occasionally want to backdate a post as you wanted to here. Even more useful I think is to “future-date” a post, aka “Schedule” a post. If I write 3 posts on Tuesday, I can “Schedule” them to publish at 6am local time on Wed, Thu, and Fri. Then I can take off on holiday, and my *massive audience* (hahaha) will still get their daily MEEE goodness! 😀
(and, of course, I’ll take my iPad with the WordPress App on holiday with me so I can speedily reply to any comments that might come in)
This was such a good event, even if I didn’t get to do all of the days in the end! I enjoyed giving it a try though, and I met some interesting people in the process.
OMG Anarya! You were warned about saying you didn’t finish… SLAP!!!
You’re the only one who knows that… so just shut up about it! 😛
I promise you all anybody else knows or cares is how nice it was to have you around.
One thing I’ve learned doing performance art in both the physical and virtual worlds is… take the heat. What I mean by that is…kk… actually I stole that line from Harry Dean Stanton in Sixteen Candles… “take the heat”
But what that line means for me is that no one can really help you… that’s not exactly true of course, there’s lots of peeps who’d like to be helpful and often can… but when it comes down to the line… confessing your fears to peeps who can’t help you.. doesn’t… help you… What I learned is that if it’s my piece… if I’m going to call myself the “Artistic Director”… then I’ll do my best… get all the great help I’m able to… but half hour before the performance, when there’s nothing left to do but worry (hahaha, or more likely run around like mad) I might as well just keep that worry to myself and tell everyone it will be great… and it will be. I’ve never had a piece be a total fail. Sometimes they maybe could be better, but they always manage to work.
IDK if this analogy’s really getting me anywhere… but what I’m trying to say is… don’t apologize because “I only did ‘X’ or ‘Y’ number of posts… I failed… woe is all…” Instead just say, “I blogged my ass off! What an amazing experience!” and leave it alone. And that’s all true.
HAHAHA… you only whined for 1/2 a sentence and now I’ve got, like, 5 paragraphs telling you not to! SEE, I suck more than you ever will! Unless, like, you’re a vampire… then you probably suck more than I do! 😛
One of the best challenge I’ve done so far! Thank you for all your hard work! I really didn’t feel like 30 days has passed that quick and it became a big part of me. Big thank you hug!!
(psst… Aarya… are you still using Twitter? I think your Twitter profile lists your OLD blogger blog address)
Yessy, I agree! I remember back around 10 June thinking, WOW, this month is gonna fly by so fast. I know for a lot of peeps it was a big project to get however many posts they did, done. Still, time always has a way of flying.
Anyway, it was so great to meet you Aarya! I love your style and I hope we can hang out in-world sometime soon!
xoxo
I sniffled a little when I did my final post…how pathetic is THAT? lol But truly, this was a fantastic experience and I’ll proudly wear my gold stars, not just as a badge of honour for completing the challenge but as a testament to the thousands of bloggers out there who share their views of our world with others. Avatar Bloggers RULE! \o/
Word Sistah! ABs rule! Oh yeah! The other kids WISH they were us! 😀
That was awesome! Thanks for the star!
You’re so welcome LIliana! Thank YOU for being part of the glorious adventure! Let’s meetup in-world sometime soon. Maybe go $hopping or something! 🙂
xoxo
Ohhhhhh a star! I will have to steal it and put one on my diary! 😀
Well I have bad news for you. It could only be “stealing” if it was “private property” or something like that. And since it is pure, open source, incorporeal creativity, it can’t really be stolen, it can only be shared, remixed, and moved forward. IKR! Life sucks! Fuckin hippies with their fantasy “share everything” mindset! How can you “steal” without private property! WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO HARD!??
Anyway, whatever with all that, YES! Since you did participate, and are STILL participating in July (rock on) you should totally “take” a copy and put it on your diary, blawg, forehead, or anywhere else that floats your virtual boat!
xoxo, Smartypants Blaylock