Dooce

I have been kicked off my own other blog site. I did this myself because I already posted there once today and I take issue with multiple posts in one day. There has to be some level of restraint or I'd be dumping the contents of my brain out all over the place all the time. This site is currently one of my outs.

What I really want is to do a blog review and it might have been better to have done this on the primary site but I think the blog in question already gets a fair amount of traffic and my little push probably won't make a world of difference.

During my blog surfing this one blog kept popping up linked on other people's sites. Initially it seemed as if there was some kind of relationship between the random blogs I surfed; after all, there are interwoven blog communities all over the place. What started to catch my attention was the fact that some of these sites had absolutely nothing in common. Except for this one link.

So I went digging. I do that. I kind of felt a little stalkerish but honestly, blogs (unless locked) are in the public domain. If you're going to post you might as well accept you're going to be read. By complete strangers trying to put puzzle pieces together and figure out what's what. Like I said, I do that.

What I found was far more interesting than the possibility of an unusual blog community. What I found was a woman who's been posting since 2001 and has managed to actually make a living at it. I also discovered she no longer takes comments or publishes an email address (well, sort of). If you really want to make contact you have to mail an actual letter, with a stamp and everything. That could be a problem as I'm no longer exactly sure where the stamps are or how much is postage for a regular letter? OK, that's not entirely true, but still.

So, without further ado, here she is:

http://www.dooce.com/

Sometimes you will see her linked to somebody's site as Heather, but most times it's just Dooce.

Dooce has an entire history on this blog and she's pulling no punches. You want to read about her intestinal difficulties? I believe Poop is it's own topic. You want to read the most amazing monthly letters to her currently 44 month old daughter? Well they're filed under Leta, Daily, Newsletters, and Parenthood with the added bonus of some of the most stunning photographs I've had the good fortune to view while waiting for a database to finish doing it's business (Poop! I yell at the database. Poop now!) (I last left off on the entries concerning potty training the dog Chuck and I have a sneaking suspicion I may find more such entries when I get up to the time when Leta might reasonably be expected to use the toilet.)

I've been reading from the beginning forward. It only took me a few months worth to realize that not only did her advertising change with each page but that the majority of her footer ads are based on probable keywords in the current post.

Amazing. Well, OK, maybe not so amazing, she was, after all, a web designer of some sort prior to being fired for blogging about her workplace, but still. Amazing.

Also, a wonderful read. Go to it and enjoy. (and don't miss the about page; very enlightening)