The Next Installment of Sunshine

This next installment of The Wild Mind’s picks for the Sunshine Award, will, like the last be completely astounded that they received an award from me.  They will likely not even know I’ve been reading them and, well, an award from me to them really isn’t going to change their blogging world all that much.  However, since the whole point of this venture is for me to name others that have shone a little light in my world, I’m picking them whether they like it or not. Hopefully, they like it instead of not.

The first up tonight is Amy Whitley, over at The Never True Tales.  Incredibly fun to read her anecdotes of life with young children is really enjoyable to me.  Plus, I really like her writing style and her blog layout and, yeah, the title doesn’t hurt her blog any either.  I have The Never True Tales on my iPhone and I read her whenever I can.  Good times.  Go see for yourself!

My next pick for the evening is another fun mommy blogger who’s been on my blog roll for quite some time. In fact, she was one that I crossed paths with early on in my blogging efforts.  She’s Mir at Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.  She’s funny, creative, and she’s traveled the divorce route like I have.  She’s now remarried and writing about her adventures in her own heartwarming way.  She makes me laugh and inspires me to keep going though I really can’t hold a candle to her (and many of these other bloggers I esteem) in the writing department.  Well…at least not yet.  Just wait.  I will grow up into my writing self someday.

New to my blog roll is a single gal who certainly has it going on.  Jolene at To Be Determined shares her single journey in a candid, honest, forthright manner.  It is like reading her personal journal and that’s pretty fun.  I find that her experiences in the dating world are similar to my own though we have some very different demographics between us.  I hope you’ll consider paying her a visit or two or three.

My last notable of the evening is Mrs.. Squirrel over at Hollow Squirrel.  She is really one of the very first mom bloggers I stumbled upon in my web wanderings.  She makes me laugh till I hurl every time I read her.  She isn’t afraid to call it like it is.  I love her blog.  I hope you will too.

That’s seven of the ten Sunshine Awards announced.  Stay tuned for the final three sometime later this week.

P.S.  Really, I’m not intentionally dragging this out, but it’s killing me to do this and get an entire household ready for a week, not that I mind.  I actually love having the privilege, but I have to budget my time.  I’ve got to do some lesson planning somewhere in here too.  Oh and dinner, yeah.  Somehow I’ve also got to figure out what I can quickly destroy for dinner tonight.

Procrastinatory Paring and Sharing

So, today, in my usual procrastinatory (is that even a word) I decided to go through each of  the links on my blog roll in an attempt to clarify two things.  First, I wanted to see if the bloggers were even still active.  I mean, no good sending you to someone really cool who hasn’t written anything really cool since last year…or the year before.  I hate that when that happens!  I find a blogger I love reading then realize I’m reading something that happened years ago and this person, for all digital intents and purposes, no longer exists. I usually figure this out after I’ve posted a comment only to realize that the last person that commented commented over a year earlier.  Yeah, doltish, really.  I’d like to spare the handful of readers who do troll silently through my musings here the angst of that experience. 

The other thing I’m trying to do is pare down the blog roll.  When I first started this blog (has it been a year and a half already?), I put people on that were interesting to me then.  I had goals, kinda sorta, in mind for what I wanted this place to be and those people made my blogroll because they seemed to fit the criteria for the kind of resource I wanted to provide my readers.  Yeah, well…things change over time.  Bloggers change, their blogs change, goals change, life changes, we change and I have definitely changed over the last year and a half…I think. Yeah, I have.  I’m still sorting a lot of stuff out and trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and where I want to be doing it, with whom I want to be doing it, why I want to be doing it are still all up for grabs (well, mostly) but some things have been sorted.  The upshot of the sorting is that I’ve decided that I only want certain folks on my blog roll.  I have reasons for this.

No! No!  It isn’t because I have these elitest, exclusivist or exclusionary tendencies (like some of those really big name blog-for-a-living types that I’m really jealous of because I haven’t made their blogroll yet let alone produced a blog like theirs, but okay!).  It is because I think  it simply reveals WAY TOO MUCH of my ADD tendencies when I have stuff from all over the universe listed that has nothing to do with anything I’m doing here.  Not that I’m doing anything here that is even remotely relevant to the real meaning of life, but it’s sorta fun for me…most of the time.   Even so, I think it is time for this little bloggy to grow up a bit and look a little more…um….what’s the word I’m looking for…respectable?  Ordered?  Thought out?  Put together?  I don’t know…something like that. 

I have a really easy way of determining if I want someone to stay on my blog roll.  If I know them in real life and they are a family member or close friend, they’re automatically in.  Well, unless they request not to be.  That’d tell me something now wouldn’t it?  If  they are just someone out there in the blogosphere then they have to meet two criteria:

• they have to be posting regularly and recently.
• I have to get the “I want to be like that when I grow up!” reaction when I read them.

Oh, wait, there’s a third…

• they have to be on a topic that I perceive my readers (whoever they are because they don’t often identify themselves but I know they are there because my stats say so unless the stats lie!)  would be interested in.  I’m still trying to sort all that out.

Anyway, there you have it.  The reason why some of you might find your names missing on the blog roll and why others will find they’ve been added.  Mostly those who have been deleted so far are folks who aren’t writing anyway and probably don’t care.  If I deleted you and you do care, post a comment.  Everything’s fixable, well, mostly everything.  If you wander in and like what you read, let me know.  If you have a blog and you’d like to be added let me know that too.  I’d be glad to visit your place and take a look around.

Off I go to peruse postings and look at links while avoiding adult responsibilities like laundry, dishes and dealing with other diverse forms of dirt.  I’ve come across a few great bloggers who still rate and need a shout out.  Well, they don’t need it, they are mostly doing fine without my recognition.  I need it, because what they said, how they said it, what they experienced, resonated with me in a way that I feel is worth voicing.  Look for me to share these folks with you in the days to come.  I hope you’ll visit them and find them interesting too!