Hello, Mamas and Papas, Nannies and Mannies, Aunties and Uncles, Teachers, Principals, Child Therapists, Camp Counselors, Merry-Go-Round Operators, Chuck E. Cheese Employees, Voiceless Beings Embodying Oversized Disney Character Costumes, and Anyone Else whose daily world is inhabited by the Little People—you know… KIDS,
Here it is! My very first post on Konga Line, a blog of all things BEASTLY in children, including my own 9-year-old who has granted me permission to write about him (provided I change his name to Max). “Does this mean you don’t like kids?” he asks me.
I do like kids (a lot of individual ones anyway), and I do a lot of proud beaming on Facebook. But I’d like a special place for reports on irksome behavior and the spillage of bodily fluids from imperfect children. Meltdown stories are tremendously entertaining to me now that I no longer have a terrible two or thrashy three under my roof (plus I won’t be subjected to teen meltdowns for a few years). This blogsite is meant to be a space where parents and caregivers commiserate, vent, and maybe enjoy a healthy dose of schadenfreude.
I went digging through my journals for material the other week—my son age 1 to 2 was hilarious. And now that I am no longer scrambling after a toddler, I actually have time to post all these old drawings and entries. I also want to write about my son “Max” now, as a 9 y.o. His self-assigned pseudonym reminds me of the fellow in Where the Wild Things Are, but he actually chose that name because when he was 3, he went through a Max and Ruby phase and introduced himself to everybody as “Max.” In this blog, I also want to complain about the playground pipsqueak hogging the spiny thingmajigger, as well as the caterwauling tater tot on a 10-hour flight (oh wait that was Max age 1). Most of all, I’d like to hear from YOU through comments and stories you might email me.
So welcome to my Konga Line. To Mamas everywhere, may you have a Happy Mother’s Day. May you be granted the privilege of lying in bed all Sunday morning, and may your Mother’s Day breakfast be extraordinarily edible.
Welcome to the blogosphere!
thank you! I didn’t know you had a blog, too! One of the things I want to do is link to people’s sites whenever they comment or contribute. (I might have to figure out how to do it.)
Congrats on the launch Colleen! I think you’ll have a lot of fun networking with others in your space through social media, commenting, and meet-ups. It’s a long process to build a presence on the web, but starting your site, publishing content at least once a week and gathering all your work for display is a fantastic start.
The one thing you will notice when you first start is a sort of emptiness because not as many people have commented, social shared, or visited your work. We are our own worst critic and we also tend to think our work is amazing. So we question why don’t we get more love. Everything just takes time. This is one of the reasons why I started the Yakezie Network. It’s like a support network for new bloggers. The Yakezie Forums might be able to help you a lot too with inevitable questions that will come up. There are even Yakezie teams that are formed to specifically support each other during the seasons.
More than half the battle is just surviving consistently long enough so that someone, somewhere out there will give you a break. You never know!
Let me know if you’d like to write a guest post one day on FS. Good luck!
Cheers,
Sam
Thanks a bunch, Sam, for your good wishes and advice. As I learn about social media I am impressed by the amount of good will and wisdom perfect strangers are willing to impart if you just ask. I will definitely look into Yakezie–up til now I had no idea what it was tho I had heard of it before.
I would love to write another guest post for Financial Samurai. Perhaps about the spending habit of children: allowances and saving and what they spend their money on?
Colleen, I had a ball reading your first entries. You have a gift with words, you know precisely how to tweak the right expressions so they conver ecactly the right mood. Potty propaganda. Gotta remember that one: it hits the nail on the head. Keep posting. I’m a fan already!
Thank you, Edda! Hoping to have a lot of fun swapping stories and complaints with other folk.