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Friday, August 15, 2008

Friday Blog Roundup

The fine ladies of Bridges have a project for you (I will call them the fine ladies until we get our first male editor. We're currently at 27 editors...all female. Not that we have anything against guys. It's just the way the cookie crumbled). We are calling it 100 Words and it's just what it sounds like. Every once in a while, we will ask you to write 100 words on a given topic and submit them for a loop of posts. What do I mean by a loop of posts? Each paragraph will be its own post and a new post will load at regular intervals depending on how many people participate until the screen is filled with a mosaic of original thoughts all on the same topic.

We are doing the first one to mark the day of September 11th. Not everyone is from the US at Bridges and not everyone experienced the day in the same way. Therefore, we are asking for anything--your reaction; a memory; a story about a person you lost; an image--from that day. However you would like to use your 100 words (or a comparable image space if you'd rather work with a photo or drawing).

How long is 100 words and does it really have to be 100 words? Yes, it really can only be 100 words. And the editing will be sloppy, literally cutting off the post on the 100th word if you don't edit it to the correct amount (you do not have to use every word, but you can't go over 100). Just to give you a sense of size, see the paragraph below, which is 100 words.
So, just in case you were wondering what 100 words looks like in terms of length, this paragraph is 100 words. I checked it with that fancy word count feature on Microsoft Word (and you may want to do this too) before cutting and pasting it here. The posts are going to be set to upload once every fifteen minutes or so throughout the day, creating this long mosaic over a 24 hour period of the experience of 9/11. Oh—and if you don’t wish to present 100 words, you can also present one image. So this is 100 words.
Let's say you want to participate because you think this sounds very cool and you want to be a part of the very first 100 Words at the Bridges site. Here is what we need: your blog name and url (if you want to submit your entry to run anonymously, please let me know. If not, it will be linked back to your blog). The 100 words or an image. All emailed to me. By August 30th.

I know, I know, that isn't a lot of time. But I need to be able to layout every post to run on the 11th. Oh--and if you ever wrote a 9/11 post on your blog and want to take a paragraph from it as your submission, that is fine too. It is fine if it has already appeared elsewhere.

So that's the little project of the moment. We'll announce the next 100 Words in September.

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Not to get all Bridge-y with my kumbayaness, but have you also swung by the Friday Open Thread at Bridges today? Last week's was amazing and a really cool conversation started. Please go add your thoughts on how you see the world. I can wait. Go over. But make sure you come back because I have a bunch of cool things I read this week.

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And now, the blogs:

Zee at This is NOT What I Ordered had a post about having a lot to say and not much to tell. I don't know--that first line really struck me with its wistfulness because it is a feeling so familiar. That desire to want to sit down and type something--connect with people over something--and being to overwhelmed by the topic at hand to actually start. The other line that struck me in this post came after a description of the depression that ate at her earlier in life: "Which sounds so neat and easy packaged into one run-one sentence like that, but which—as anyone who has ever escaped fruitless angst and melodrama knows—was anything but." And if that line is not enough to make you click over, I promise that the last line in the post will make you hold your breath.

JuliaS at Life After Infertility and Loss had a post called "Colour My World" about the idea of the new normal; the normal that comes after the crisis that sometimes looks somewhat like the normal that came before but is also sometimes emotionally or physically deadly (though appearing innocent). She describes her life after loss, "In many ways I have become stronger and more compassionate; in other ways - I am weaker, more fragile in a sense and afraid. An oxymoron if there ever was - fragile strength." It is a sweet, sad post.

I am not certain if this is an infertility blog, but regardless, there is a lot to grasp onto in Life in a Photograph's post on crash crying. She writes, "Sometimes you have to cry. An emotional, gut wrenching release. So strong that in the end you're sobbing shakes your entire being." It's a cry that is all to familiar and made me want to throw my arms around her after I read the post.

Project Progeny has a post about drifting and faith. And the difference between taking a hands-off approach and allowing yourself to drift vs. charting your own course, even if that course is far away from the shores of faith and into the open sea. It is a perfect analogy and you need to click over to read the whole thing; at the very least, to experience the perfect peace at the end of the post.

Lastly, Baby Smiling in Back Seat has a post about that feeling of being in a race that comes with infertility. Actually, she recently had a post on the same topic and now writes: "In that post, I concluded that it’s no longer a race, but a relay in which we and the other infertiles can help each other reach our respective finish lines. The race is back on." The racing feeling comes from her SIL's announcement that she wants to have kids soon--the SIL who has never even been at the starting blocks prior to this heat. You will laugh through this post and nod your head a lot.

The roundup to the Roundup: swing by Bridges to participate in the True View Open Thread and start your submission to 100 Words. Oh, and have a great weekend. Though I'll see y'all Saturday night for Show and Tell.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the 100 words idea Mel. September 11th brings back so many memories for me it was tough putting them into just 100 words. Mine have just been sent.

Lori Lavender Luz said...

I included the loop/mosaic/quilt to my latest post.

Love this idea.

Meka said...

I just wanted to say I enjoy your blog. I found it from the coming to terms blog. Reading other blogs about infertility has helped me so much so thank you! Hope you don't mind me commenting.

Anonymous said...

I just submitted my 100 words and I have to say I could do so much better with a few more words. Especially with the chosen topic. I hadn't ever written about that before but needed to. Thank you.

In Due Time said...

Love the 100 words idea, too lazy to count so I googled and found this:

http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/freebies/word-count.htm


Hope it helps anyone else that is too lazy to count, too.

Anonymous said...

I will be posting on September 11th with the 100 words post. I'll email you the link.