The Blogathon is over… I’m rested… And I’m ready to talk.
I slept on this. Twice. I’m not sure how to word what I want to say, but I’ll make an attempt.
Where were you?
I couldn’t attend BlogHer this year due to our lack of financial resources. I was bummed about it because I wouldn’t get to see my friends. I was starting to feel really morose about it, and decided to do something good to offset the bad, because that helps my mental state. That’s why I decided to do Blogathon this year. I could do good, and have something to occupy my mind.
I wrote about it on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, every social network I have, and emailed everyone I know (except for my husband’s family.) I reached out several times. Supposedly, this is my community. Had all the people that I’m friendly with, worked with, worked for, and are actual friends with given just one dollar each, I would have had a hell of a lot more money to give to my charity – the whole point of the Blogathon.
Want to know how many of you put your money where your mouth is to support your “friend?”
One. One shiny, pretty, lovely blogger who shall remain nameless.
Here’s the breakdown – I was able to raise $125 for Fisher House. A charity that I picked because I believe in it, and because I felt the reach went far – non-partisan, non-religious, and helped a cause my husband believed in (the least I could do, since he took over here for two days so I could participate.) To give you some scope on that number, 144 blogs participated, and $44,060.37 in total were pledged. This wasn’t a small thing.
So who gave?
My mom (of course.) Another lady who I hadn’t seen in 19 years until recently. She doesn’t really know me anymore, just gave of her heart. Two fellow Blogathoners who were moved to contribute for their own reasons. And the beautiful blogger I already mentioned.
Internet… I thought we were friends? I write in this box thing, and people communicate with me. They commiserate with me. They cry with me. They work with me. They laugh with me. I thought I had found my “tribe” as several bloggers have correctly put it.
Look – I know most of my people were at BlogHer. I’ve been there. I know it’s crazy, I know you’re busy, I know you’re overwhelmed. But I certainly had been putting this out there for longer than BlogHer so that’s no excuse.
Except for that one beautiful friend (and yes, I do consider her a friend) my tribe let me down. And I think I realize that maybe the internet isn’t my friend after all. And that maybe I was deluding myself into thinking that I was part of a community. Because I did the Blogathon three years ago, and you didn’t let me down then.
Maybe I’m just crying over spilled milk. But it doesn’t feel that way to me. And yes, actually, my feelings got hurt. This blog isn’t a job. It’s been a springboard to some other things, but this is not a problog. This is my cyberspace home. My journal.
Internet, are you telling me it’s time to breakup?
Wow. I’m feeling really sucky right now. Yes, with the insanity that was BlogHer I didn’t see any of your posts or tweets over the weekend. I was mostly offline for days and I’m catching up today. I vaguely remember something about it earlier last week but I didn’t pay attention. Just didn’t. And I’m sorry for that.
Great post! It sums up a lot of how I felt about Blogathon this year as well – and I didn’t even participate!! I wasn’t going to tell you, but given this post, I’ll go ahead and let you know – I am going to donate $20 towards your charity and that of one other blogger who particularly impressed me this year. So you actually earned $145 this year. =) And not only that, but you gained at least one new faithful reader! =)
And this is NOT directed at Annette, but I think BlogHer is a poor excuse for not donating because I saw plenty of BlogHer ladies still posting to their own blogs during that whole conference. And sponsorship opportunities were open BEFORE BlogHer ever started.
If anyone says the economy is their reason, even at my most broke a few years ago, I still gave $5 to a few blogs that participated in the Blogathon. This year I’m giving a total of $40 to two bloggers. Not a lot, but it’s something. Better than nothing. I know the economy is bad, but charities in particular are really suffering as donations drop off – but their services are being used even more. So this year’s Blogathon was actually pretty important to some of those charities – even if they only earned a few hundred bucks from it.
Anyway, I just wanted to come back and tell you again how much I enjoyed your posts and that you’ve gained a faithful reader as a result.
Please email me with a link to donate to them.
I’ve been feeling horribly that I couldn’t contribute last week. May I explain?
We’ve been on vacation. Not one that we actually paid for-went on passes to my parent’s house. Ate peanut butter, if you know what I mean. Last week when my husband got paid we were a little behind so had to catch up and we were both going out of town. I paid bills and had to watch $ for the week. Now that we’re all home and caught up I have access to our $ and accounts and would love to donate to FisherHouse.
Please don’t hate me!
Please send me a link, or can I paypal you? I haven’t got much- you know that the only reason I went to blogher was on a sponsorship. We couldn’t even pay all the bills this month. I’m horribly sorry and embarrassed. The week before blogher swept past me in a haze and I was offline for a good part of blogher. I had every single intention of donating, but I haven’t read blogs since before I went away and it went right off my radar.
Please accept my apologies.