Things I'd love to do here

I love reading other blogs, particularly parenting and crafting blogs. I love reading product reviews and entering giveaways (the latest, a great one for any potty-training parent like myself, is over at Our Ordinary Life and is a giveaway for a Sesame Street 1-2-3 Learn With Me Potty).  I'd love to get into product reviews  and give giveaways, but I'm not quite sure how to get started with that.  I've signed up with BzzAgent, but I suspect that it'll be awhile before I start getting anything regularly to review through them.  Especially since I'm not one that wears makeup and that's a lot of what they have up there right now.  And I'd give away things here but I don't have a ton of money to do so.  If anyone has ideas for how I can start with these kinds of things (and doing ARC reviews are something I think would fit well into this blog well), I'm always up for suggestions.

I'm also thinking of trying a daily or weekly "Great things I've read" link-up.  I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and find great things like giveaways, reviews, advice, stories, etc.  I want to try to start sharing them.  More time in front of the computer?  Maybe not the best thing in the world.  But if I have these "must dos" that I'm planning on, then maybe I'll spend less time futzing around.

I'll be honest.  I'd love to have a popular blog.  I'd love to have regular commenters and people sharing their own stories or thoughts.  I'd love to get answers to questions I pose.  I'd like to have something engaging enough that I could use for a weekly link-up or blog hop.  I'd like to know that people are reading what I write.  I don't feel like I'm getting any of that much lately.

Now, that doesn't mean I'll stop blogging.  Not everyone can turn their blog into a thousand-reader-a-day blog.  I understand that.  And I've always got hope that I'll be entertaining to SOME people, at least.  Plus, a lot of the time I AM writing for me.  I've got thoughts and feelings I want to get out.  I've got memories I want preserved somewhere.  I want to keep track of things that I'm doing and writing them down helps me do that.  It's a help for me.

But there's still enough of me that's the insecure girl of my youth that wants to be liked.  And there's still the cruel part of myself that whispers that having no comments means one of three things: no one is reading, people don't care what I write, and/or people are following the "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" adage.  Yep.  I still seem to have a few self-esteem issues.  I'm trying to work on those.

I've got to remember that I'm still finding my place with this blog, and I'm still tweaking it.  So... keep an eye here if you like to read what I write.  Share what I write with others if you think it's interesting.  Tweet it, link it on FB, pass it along in your own blog.  Things here will continue to evolve and change, just like I do every day.