I’m crazy busy right now between work, helping put together a benefit for this weekend, getting ready to head to Texas for tax season, early Aggie Muster planning, and just keeping up with both mine and my husband’s schedules. So, in that respect, the blog being down was perhaps an odd blessing in disguise. (And the irony of it being down on what I called “SOPA Day” was not lost on me.)

I saw a post on BlogHer that fit this time perfectly, and I thought I’d share it with all of my readers.

The Stages of Blog Failure Emotions by Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity

Read that. Giggle. And know that I was doing several of those for awhile myself.

But all is well! I am back! HUGE thanks to Chalise for working to make sure this came back up for me. Your support and help keeping this blog going on the technical end (not to mention a great cheerleader!) are forever appreciated and never taken for granted.

I honored to be in her list! THANK YOU!!

Now, for the steps of this award:

Share 7 things about yourself.

1) I am planning to write a book about the history of Printer’s Alley in downtown Nashville. I have a serious love for that Alley and the history of it just makes me light up to hear. I’ve looked and looked, and I’ve never found a book written specifically about the Alley. I already have several contacts to interview about it. All I need to do is write my book pitch and, the hard part, find someone interested in publishing it.

2) I have two things I battle almost constantly: tooth aches and sinus problems. The tooth aches are from my deep dislike for the dentist, not to mention the sheer expense of dental work. The sinus problems just are what they are. Fall is always the worst, so brace yourself for an extreme amount of whining in the next few months about my not being able to breathe.

3) I play FarmVille on Facebook. My secret is out. Please forgive me! But, I like how it makes me think and balance time spans in the game, and as silly as it sounds… its just plain fun. Time consuming, yes, but hence the balancing time spans. The goal is to always make it such that I play in my downtime, not when it would take me away from my work.

4) I’ve become a total penny pincher. If I do buy myself something frivolous, like today I bought a couple flowers for my front steps, it has to be on sale. Or I have to have a coupon. Coupons are my friends. I’m not as good at the coupon clipping as some people are, but there is a level of satisfaction seeing a significant number under “money saved” at the bottom of a receipt.

5) Labor Day means MDA Telethon. My nephew has muscular dystrophy, and as such MDA is an organization that is very near and dear to my heart. They do wonderful, wonderful things and Labor Day is their biggest fundraiser for the whole year. While many people are out on the lake, etc. I’m watching that total raise, often with tears in my eyes. My nephew is an amazing kid teen, and I am prouder of him than I could ever put into words. Labor Day is a big day for anyone and everyone touched by muscular dystrophy, and I am looking forward to it!

6) My toenails are always painted, but my fingernails are never painted. Well, except for clear. I don’t know why, but its just something with me. I might go a day or two without polish on my toenails, but its only if I am staying home and will probably be wearing socks at all times. It just BUGS me to not have them painted! As for my fingernails, I just don’t like chipped polish, and I can’t go a day without chipping my nail polish. So I just opt to not wear polish at all.

7) I haaaaate making phone calls. There must be a name for that fear, because I literally will get a knot in my stomach and sweaty palms before making a phone call. Well, when I call anyone besides my husband or my parents. As such, I’m a total text message addict. It avoids my phone fear. Anytime I DO make a phone call, I get a sense of accomplishment. I did it! I beat my fear! Yay! But it comes back every time I pick up the phone. Its crazy. I know. But it is what it is.

Pass this award on to 15 bloggers who you love, think are fantastic or have recently discovered.

1) If Mom Says OK — Gotta love Tara… found her via Weekly Winners; I love all her posts and she’s awesome to follow on Twitter as well.

2) Boy Blessings — Follow the story of a Mom whose son has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The same type my nephew has.

3) Just One Miss — I always enjoy her posts and point of view.

4) Lesley’s Blog — I’ve literally know Lesley since she was born. She doesn’t post much, but when she does, she always amazes me the type of strong woman she’s grown up to be.

5) Way More Homemade — Recipes and she’s an Aggie. How could I not love this!?

6) Life Ain’t Always Beautiful — A mom. A country music fan. An all around very cool lady. Go say Hi to Missy!

7) Just Malia — A fellow Nashvillian! I love reading about the perspective of others in my city!

8) Milk Breath and Margaritas — While I am on a Nashville run, Amy is also editor of the Relationships Channel of Blissfully Domestic, which I write for. Besides, how can you not love a blog with such a cool title?

9) Newlyweds Next Door — I only just recently found this blog, and what I’ve read so far, I love!

10) Not Quite What I Had Planned — One of my favorite Weekly Winners ladies, her blog has pulled me in time and time again.

11) Nashville Musician’s Survival Guide — Eric is a friend of my husbands. I only just learned of his blog this week, but I am so enjoying it. Anyone reading my blog mostly for my behind the scenes posts to the music industry would be smart to check Eric’s blog out, too.

12) Matty Thoughts – I keep forgetting to visit Matty on a regular basis, but whenever I have made it over there, I’ve enjoyed his blog thoroughly. He’s given me wonderful feedback on my blog and for that I am grateful.

13) The Mama of Mojo — I follow her on Twitter and absolutely love her tweets. Is it not expected that I’d also love her blog?

14) The Young and The Relentless — Another blogger I found via Twitter, if I recall. Great life blog.

15) i am lotus — aka Sarcastic Mom. Blogger I quite frankly have a blogger-crush on… which might be weird since her husband and my husband have been friends for years. Even weirder to say I’ve never met Lotus in person. But I think I’m in blogger-love. Now, I just hope I haven’t scared her off for life with this. ;)

Here at Musician’s Widow, August has brought the best blog stats yet, and I thank everyone for the support and reading. I can proudly say I successfully posted every day this month, and I plan to continue that trend forward. It feels good to tackle the challenge of a new post every day, and I think its become enough of a habit and need that it won’t be any trouble keeping it up.

I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my stats for August:

Just over 1,075 page views.

Other than my Home and About Me pages, specific blog posts with the most hits include:

Music business techniques that can be applied in other businesses
Show Stories – Groupie?
At-home pampering

The most common search terms that landed visitors to this blog include:

music business
nashville tennessee cma fest crowd downtown
i love school supplies

Weekly Winners will continue, as well as Show Stories. I already have a lot of blog posts in mind to come soon! Goal for September is to continue increasing my page views and blog popularity.

Thank you to everyone for any feedback you’ve given to me, and I welcome more to post comments. Feedback teaches me what people like and don’t like, but it is also like food for the writer’s soul. I welcome dialogue, and I am always open for suggestions on posts! Is there something you’d like for me to explain and discuss in here? Feel free to let me know! And, again, thanks!!

One thing that’s really risen me up is feeling success is within my reach with my writing dreams. I can see it IS possible. I CAN do this.

For the last few months, I’ve been throwing myself into learning more in-depth about my trade(s). Checking out books from the library. Purchasing books. Reading blog after blog after blog. Reading online magazines. Talking to people who are already doing what I want to do.

If I were to ever allow myself regrets in life, one would definitely be putting my dreams and goals of writing for a living on the back burner for the last few years. I’ve coasted along too long, and today I look around me and realize how much further I could be in my career if I’d only gotten more serious a lot sooner.

I can’t, however, beat myself up for long.  Instead, I am throwing myself into my trade with a sheer determination that I’m not sure I’ve quite had since I wanted to make sure I got accepted into Texas A&M University.

I didn’t have a contingency plan then, and I really don’t have much of a contingency plan today.  I got in then. I’m going to succeed today.

Back then, I did my homework. Today, I am doing my homework.

It’s slowly starting to pay off! I’m SO honored to now be a part of the Blogher Publishing Network as well as writing for Blissfully Domestic. I’m an active contributor to Road Widows, and  I have a separate review blog as a work in progress that I hope to go live with in the next week. I have a secondary “business” in the planning stages, and I’ve signed up with a couple affiliate networks. I’m soon going to be going after clients, submitting guest blog posts, and looking for every possible way to further myself.

This is a no-holds-barred fight to see my goals and dreams come true.

I am open to advice. (Except the kind that goes something like, “Don’t do it!” Too late, I’m past the point of no return.) I’m going to continue “stalking” a lot of other bloggers and authors for every kernel of advice and information they are willing to drop along the way.

It’s a twisty road I find myself running along full speed. In places it been well trodden and smooth. In others, its going to be a jungle. I know this… I’m prepared for it. I can do it.

I still occasionally post in my journal over there. It’s a private space to put my thoughts without fear of being “misunderstood.” However, most days it simply becomes a place to house my twitter posts, and I put my writing energy (and time!) into this blog instead.

That said, the other day I found myself chewing on the difference between what I did with my journal versus what I do with this blog. (Ironically, moments later my husband asked me the difference himself! One of those, “Get out of my head!” moments we have regularly.) The two venues are completely different for me, even as the idea is the same: putting my thoughts “on paper.”

journal – (1:) an account of day-to-day events (2:) a record of experiences, ideas, or reflections kept regularly for private use

blog – a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer

The definitions for journal and blog really don’t go deep enough, for me, to understand the difference, because, for me, they are distinctly different.

Journaling
For me, journaling is a distinctly private thing to do. My journal over at LiveJournal gave me a relatively private venue to post recaps of my days or a place to vent. LiveJournal allows me to select people to see entries if I wanted feedback, or it allows me to keep entries completely private. Entries are more and more private versus “friends-only” these days.

For me, personally, journal = diary. It’s just that journal sounds a little more “grown up.”

My journal over at LiveJournal started out a public forum. Somehow I had these crazy designs that people would be extremely interested in my mundane day-to-day life. yeah, not so much. I did meet the woman who was my maid-of-honor  in my wedding at LiveJournal doing  this, though! However, when I think of that journal, I also think of the ways it hurt me and others through its public forum back then. Lesson learned: some things are just better left PRIVATE.

In the last few years, though, my journaling has gotten to be less and less. Mostly, I’ve put most of my writing energy elsewhere (ie here), and I’ve not felt the NEED to journal as much. I blame that partly on Twitter, since my journal was so often just a recap of my day. Now I do that throughout the day in quick 140-character updates.

The need for my journal remains, though, deep down. Some days, I need to get something off my chest, and the only place I can do it is in the privacy of my journal. It has its place. It will always have its place. But its totally different from blogging.

Blogging
It’s still personal thoughts, personal opinions. Some bloggers simply recap their days, much like I used to do in my journal. Others use it as a social commentary.  Others straddle the line between those two. I suppose you could say I fall in that last group.

When I worked at a newspaper, I had a weekly column. It was the highlight and the stress of my week. I loved the free form nature of my column. It allowed me to stretch my legs, writing-wise.

My column was equal parts thoughts about my personal life, and thoughts on news events — both local and national. That’s where my stress came from: choosing a topic that I felt comfortable writing about for my audience to read.

Today, I don’t stress about topics as much, but my blog is without a doubt the same idea as my column. I straddle that line, writing about whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. Be it personal events, social commentary, news events or just something I think people might like to know. Hence the tagline, “the wife of a touring musicians tells it like she sees it.”

What I love about blogging is that it truly is from a unique standpoint. We all come from different walks of life. We all have a different place in society. However, there are certain events or experiences that encompass us all. We just all view it from our unique perspective. Its that perspective that I think a blog centers its existence. Taking that perspective and putting it down on paper. It’s equal part editorial and news. Fact mingled with opinion, out there for a public audience to read, learn from and debate.

So when someone asks me if my blog is my diary, I can definitely say it is not. Yes, it chronicles my thoughts at a given time, but its not my private thoughts and rants. Its written specifically with a public audience in mind.

Journal vs. blog. Private vs. public.

Its truly, for me, that simple.

Time is money they say.

Words are cheap others say.

These opposing ideals are what seem to be holding me back. And this must change.

Recent topic ideas: new discoveries in my city (I finally visiting the Bluebird Cafe and fell in love with it just as I feared I would), family coming to visit (my brother will never know how much it meant to me to have him and his family come up this summer), roots and wings, and anniversaries of important events.

Perhaps I will go back and revisit some of these topics at another time. But for tonight, I lament the fact that I’ve let these words expire as time flew past. And I realize once again that the dreams I dream mean I need to marry those two old cliches.

Time is money. Words take time. And in my case. Words are money. And every word I write. Every sentence I compose. They all lead me down the path to my dreams of writing for a living.

I’ve migrated from Blogger to WordPress… Welcome to the new Musician’s Widow!!

Snow has hit the Nashville area just in time for Christmas. I know it’ll never hang around long, but it was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever witnessed in all of my 28 years of life.

Blog
I’ve neglected this blog for a long time, simply because I feel I’ve narrowed my field of vision too much. I find myself feeling the need to be cryptic and vague since it is a public account of things in my life and in my husband’s career. Basically, it was a good idea in theory but not in practice. That happens and it was fun to try.

I will be turning this blog in my new column venue. When I worked at the newspaper, I did a weekly column that I enjoyed. It challenged me to come up with a new topic every week. It challenged me to be open and more opinionated, while at all times keeping in mind my readers. I miss it, to be honest, and it is time I went back to it.

My goal will be to write atleast once a week (when life allows!), and to hit on a spectrum of topics as they cross the path of my life. I’m, frankly, excited!! Hopefully, along the way I’ll pick up some readers. And even if I don’t, it’ll be great practice for me in my writing, which is ALWAYS a positive thing.