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This past week I read more posts that mom bloggers wrote about how dumb their husbands are and I wondered what is wrong with these women.

It is not the first time I have seen posts like this nor will it be the last. It is a phenomena in which some people think it is cute, clever and or funny to write a post about how dumb their spouse is.

And to be fair, I have seen posts written by men about their wives that cross this line too, but not as many. What I can’t remember seeing are posts by gays in which they badmouth their partners/spouses.

Don’t know if it is because I haven’t come across it or if it is because it doesn’t happen.

I Don’t Understand This

If you know me in real life you know I am mostly unfiltered. I speak my mind pretty openly and share my thoughts but I do it to a point.

You will rarely hear me talk about certain personal matters because there are boundaries and because it is unfair.

When you supposedly love someone why do you think it is ok to write posts that make them look ignorant and moronic. Some stories are funny and sometimes it is ok to talk about something someone did because it was kind of silly.

Sometimes you read these posts and are confident that the subject would laugh and consider this teasing and sometimes you wonder about the line because it comes across as being mean spirited.

So I ask myself where the line is and do people even recognize when it is being crossed?

Too Much Information

Have we reached a point in time where too much information no longer exists?

If tell you about the woman who caught me with her tooth while simultaneously stabbing my “lower package” with a fingernail and how I howled in pain is that funny.

BTW, that didn’t happen. I don’t howl.

No, really, it didn’t happen. I am just unfiltered.

But even if I wasn’t making that up I didn’t say who I was talking about because sometimes you just need to keep some things to yourself.

Sorry Eddie Snowden and Julian Assange, I don’t believe that sharing everything with everyone is good. Sometimes those leaks hurt people far more than they help, but I digress.

Hard Stop

One of my favorite things about blogging is how it serves as a place to share our thoughts and how you can capture a snapshot in time.

What that hard stop refers to is I am not going to go back and edit this to try and make it look any more polished than a quick 13 minutes of writing.

It is just a moment in time, capturing some thoughts.

But I will link to several other pieces that I had thought about weaving in here because I thought it was worth tying them in one capacity or another.

• Plagiarism and Stealing
• Will the Zombie Apocalypse Ever End?
• Job Titles Are Not Impressive
• Twitter, G+, Facebook Wall, Who Is the Noisiest of Them All?

Yeah, I could have taken a few more minutes to tie them in but I want to see a movie and have to run to make sure that I get there on time.

It is the weekend and sometimes the best thing we can do is disconnect for a few minutes and not worry about fans, followers, readers or circles.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is get out and spend time in the real world doing things with people you care about. Try it sometime, you might like it.

You might have something more interesting to write about that doesn’t consist of complaining about how fat your spouse is or the biological weapon they released in the bathroom.

When I am at my best I dance without worrying about what I look like and write without concern for what I read or sound like. I know that I do things differently from  most people. I know that I have spent most of my life standing on the outside looking in.

Guess what? So have most of you.

It took me a while to catch on and realize that the cool kids didn’t know a damn thing more about life and living than I did or do. I am proud to say that I never spent much time trying to be like them. Some of that was because I didn’t care and some because I couldn’t.

We didn’t have the money for me to wear the same clothes or go on the same trips so I couldn’t talk about some things without sounding like a silly poseur. Maybe that is when I started to become more cynical and grew a bit harder or maybe it happened after I had my heart broken a few times. Not really sure and I don’t know that it matters.

What matters to me is simple- family and friends.

What matters to me is doing things that feed my heart and fuel my soul. That is where my focus is and what I spend energy on.

I Know Who I Am

I know who I am. I know that there is a fire that burns inside my belly at a temperature that thermometers can’t measure. I know that I used to think of myself as being the easiest going person around and that one day I realized I am not quite who I thought.

I am intense. I come on like a freight train. When I play contact sports some people complain because I hit…hard. It is not because I am trying to prove how masculine or tough I am. It is because I have a body built for demolition and not for grace.

When I am going three quarters to full speed it takes a bit of doing to turn and or stop. Sometimes that means that I bump into people. When you outweigh someone by 80 pounds they tend to get the worst of it.

It sucks to get hit by the bigger truck. I know because it has happened to me a lot. When I play ball I usually get stuck guarding the bigger guys on the other side. All we can do is try our best not to hurt and get hurt.

But you can’t play the game without taking a chance. You can’t carry the ball up the middle and expect not to be hit. You can’t live life locked inside a box and expect to get all that you desire.

Take a Chance

I am excited and a bit nervous. I keep hinting at some of the potential changes going on around here. I keep dancing around the topic because until some things are certain I don’t want to speak more about them. Call it superstition.

I call it opportunity. I call it a chance to start a new chapter in my life and an opportunity to begin writing a new story. I call it crazy making because it is so close I can almost touch it and so far away that I can’t quite reach it.

Forgive me for the continued sports analogies, but it reminds me a bit of my last basketball game. I missed the shot I took and grabbed the rebound and missed it again…three more times.

Let me sum it up for you. In less than a minute I missed a shot from corner three point line, got the ball back and missed three under the basket. Got fouled three times and didn’t manage to put it in.

That irks me- but I didn’t quit. I just passed the damn ball and my team scored.

The lesson there is that when the door is locked you don’t have to break your hand or foot trying to break it down. There are alternatives.

Don’t Write For Traffic

I don’t blog for traffic or for accolades. I write because I have to. I write because I want to become a better writer. I blog because it offers a way to improve my writing and because there are business opportunities tied into it.

But mostly I do it because it brings me joy and when I am on my game it makes more than my soul sing. It brings me peace of mind and that is priceless.

I make a point to review my “About Me” page quarterly. There is no science behind that number. It just made sense to me to check it on a semi regular basis to see if it tales the kind of tale I want it to tell.

Every so often I need to look at it and make sure that it is in sync with the goals I have in place. I take some time to read the description I wrote about myself and the blog and take a look at the posts I linked to.

There are 14 posts listed below. My stats show that my “About Me” page is among the most heavily trafficked pages on my blog. So I need to ask myself if the 14 posts below are telling a story that I still want told.

As the year goes by I try to make a point to note any posts that blow up. If I have something that is really popular be it comment and or pageviews  I will often include it. But I also make a point to grab posts that I think are examples of my best writing.

So here I am, evaluating it all again. It is well after midnight so I am not going to make a decision about these links now or those that aren’t included, but I expect I will make a decision soon.

1. A Father Describes Parenting
2. A Father’s Burden
3. Inside the Blogger’s Studio- A Dream, Er Nightmare
4. The GermoPhobe
5. What I Dream About
6. I am In Love
7. Becoming a Dad
8. Grandpa
9. Donuts
10. Save The Last Dance For Me- 75 Years of Marriage
11. An Uncertain Certainty
12. Four Generations & A Wedding
13. The Best Thing My Father Ever Said To Me
14. 1 Foolproof Way To Become a Better Writer

Are there posts that aren’t included here that you think should be?

Friends if you want to really get something out of this post you are going to need to listen to Stairway to Heaven…played backwards. If you don’t understand how that corresponds to the headline than you are too young to be reading this post and probably not old enough to use social media.

Dammit, I forgot that social media is a young person’s game. Hell if I ran some stuffy old organization that needed a social media presence I would go out and hire a teenage gril because everyone knows that teenage girls are social media experts, next to mommy bloggers. Oops, I am probably going to be assaulted by angry mommy bloggers now who will tell me that what I just wrote is offensive.

Listen up ladies, dad bloggers have all the power and we don’t take crap from anyone- we give it out. Really.

Ok, now that we got the opening nonsense out of the way let’s talk turkey about how to make social media work for you. I lied when I said that I have 666 devilish ways to become a social media superstar because you don’t need that many.

Really we could boil it down to three but we are not going to hit those yet because there is a fundamental problem that has to be addressed first.

Why Are You Doing This & What Do You Hope To Accomplish?

It sounds obvious but you might be surprised by the number of people/businesses that are in social media because they think they should be and not because they have a plan or goal in mind.

Reminds me of an old line that I hate but I’ll share it because it is applicable. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”  When you establish a goal you provide yourself with a foundation that you can use to build a plan of action to achieve your goal.

And that my friends brings me to my next point, popularity is not a plan. Want to know why? Watch the video below that my friend Ruth made.

True Power In Social Media

The easiest way to measure true power in social media is very simple. Will people respond to your call to action. What happens if you ask them to click/buy/read/tweet/like something? Will they do it or will the overwhelming majority of them click, surf and move on.

It really doesn’t matter how popular you are if no one responds to your call to action. But like Ruth said, popularity isn’t necessarily the best metric to use to determine success. Comments aren’t currency either.

So my question to you dear reader is simple, why do you blog and what do you hope to accomplish?  Have you established goals for yourself/business? Do you have a plan? What does “success” look like to you? Money? Community? Actions? New friends?

Share it in the comments and let’s talk about it.

P.S. In the near future I will be publishing my own eBook about blogging/social media where you can find more of my thoughts/ideas on this. Sadly you won’t find the missing 663 devilish ways to become a social media superstar but you will find lots of other cool stuff there.

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