Scout and I watch Pioneer Woman

This morning Scout and I are watching Pioneer Woman. She has a cooking show now but before that she was one of the original, early, famous women bloggers. When asked about her family’s privacy, she said, “It’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say.” I agree.

I don’t advertise my real name, although it’s not a secret, either. I stay away from talking about my employer – another piece of original women bloggers advice from hilarious Mormon Mommy Blogger dooce who was fired from her job after publicly ridiculing her boss for wearing Prada and being mean. Her advice? “Be ye not so stupid.”

Why am I bringing this up? It’s occurred to me that with 13 years of blogging experience, I’m a legit blogger. And it was so much fun publishing Striving for the Divine: An American Convert’s Early Years in Islam that I’ve decided to try to increase my readership by doing some guest blogging. I’m not planning to ever make a dime off my writing but it brings me joy. After my post about wanting to be an editor in high school and college, it occurred to me that I can be a writer, too, now, and blogging is my forum. I may try in the future for some more formal forms of publication but honestly? I’ll probably get more reach by upping my blogging game.

So, faithful reader, here’s what’s coming: my good friend and legit author Beth Burnett is going to host my first guest blog post later this fall. It’s going to be a more carefully crafted take on my experiences of being obese. Shout out to Dragon who encouraged me to do more with those original posts. I’m going to follow that up with two series of posts here: one about the summer I spent abroad researching female romantic friendship poet Katherine Phillips and then another about my experiences in library school. They’re lively and entertaining stories, and I hope you’ll enjoy them. I’m excited.