Freshly Pressed Part Deux
Last time I was Freshly Pressed, I didn’t know about it until I was flooded with views, comments and likes. I frantically rushed over to the post that had been FP’d to make sure all my ducks were in a row. I didn’t see the warning email.
This time, I got the warning email yesterday. It immediately put me in a great mood. I was walking around whistling. Male wondered why I was in such a good mood when I had been homicidal just 24 hours previous. He was about to chalk it up to “special monthly lady time” or “totally pants-on-head insane” until I told him that I had been FP’d again. He said he didn’t know what that meant. In fairness to him, he is cramming for the LSAT tomorrow and it’s all he can think about. He doesn’t have room in his brain for things as realistically small to the rest of the world as being Freshly Pressed. His “I don’t even know what that means” was a reality check. It’s a big honor for us, the writers of blogs, but to them, the non-writers of blogs, well, it doesn’t mean terribly much.
Male knows I have a blog and has even read some of it–mostly the posts about his adopted daughter, the dog–but I don’t push it on him. He’s not a regular reader. In fact, no one I know in real life is a regular reader. That would just be creepy. My friends all know I have a blog and they have even read parts of it. I have left them links to stories they are a part of like The Montebello Incident and Public Service Announcement, and they have enjoyed them greatly, but they don’t read it regularly (as far as I know). Once in a while, some smartass will say, “Are you going to write that up on your blog?” I’m always surprised that they even remember I have one.
I quite like my anonymous readership. I am fond of all the little icons that appear on here with comments and likes. There are people I’ve “met” through blogging of whom I’ve become quite fond and can’t imagine not knowing. I read their stories and they read mine. I’m not sure that I have any readers who are not bloggers themselves. We’ve built a nicely insulated world for ourselves on the foundation of our words. Their opinions mean the most to me anyway as they are objective and my friends, as much as I love them, are not.
So, I got the email: “Congrats! We’ve picked your post ( http://fishofgold.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/dear-santa-claus/ ) to appear on Freshly Pressed on the WordPress.com home page. We really enjoyed it, and we know the rest of the WordPress.com community will too – it was a lovely reaction to The Daily Post’s prompt. It will appear on Freshly Pressed in the next day or two, so get ready to welcome your new readers.”
Holy crap. Once again, a post I dashed off in something like ten minutes was FP’d. Why does it always seem that the posts you put the least effort into are FP’d? There are some posts on here that I put a lot of work into, that I’m proud of even, that seem to get little to no recognition, but a letter to Santa Claus is the one that’s picked? Okay then.
I woke up this morning expecting to see a flood of fair-weather fandom, but there was nothing but my usual devout peoples. Thank you, usually devout peoples, for being there whether I’m FP’d or not.
Now, we wait and on comes the dithering. Maybe they changed their minds and don’t want to feature me after all? Maybe they decided a grown woman writing a letter to Santa Claus was indeed rather silly. Maybe they spotted a typo I didn’t see after reading it for the nth time since I got the warning email. Maybe they don’t love me after all. Sadface.
But, this is all nonsense. The fact is, it doesn’t matter whether we get Freshly Pressed or not. Sure, the recognition certainly is nice, not to mention the attention, but really, it doesn’t matter. I don’t write for any of that anyway. Even when this blog was lonely and unvisited by anyone all through 2009 and into 2010, I still wrote. I wrote for no one but myself. And while I love, adore and stalk my faithful audience, I will continue to write for myself until I can no longer do it for whatever reason (or I’m paid a bajillion dollars to stop).
16 Responses to “Freshly Pressed Part Deux”
Congrats!!!
well done, and here’s to many more of them :-)
Yeah! Many congrats! I think that WordPress is always skewed toward certain titles. I read so many awesome folks who’ve never been fresh-pressed, but most posts are getting noticed based on clever titles and pictures. There’s no way for editors to read the sheer amount of volume produced on WordPress… All of that said, you already know I think you’re a good writer.
As for the anonymity, I think the less folks who read your blog in real-life, the better. Writing is fairly introspective, and I wouldn’t really want everyone I know reading my blog. I have 5-10 real-life friends/family who read my blog, but only two who read it regularly.
Thanks! I think you’re probably right. They’re looking for quick and dirty. I have also read many posts that I thought should have been FP’d, but weren’t. I think everyone I read should get the recognition, but I’m biased like that.
Yay FP’d! Congrats! I made the mistake when I started my blog to tell it to A LOT of real world people, and now I just want to take it back, gosh! I appreciate my bloggosphere readers much much more, mainly because I know they’re not judgemental, and won’t embarrass me in front of other human beings by mentioning my silly and/or insightful posts. Aaanyhow, many congrats again!! :D
I’m still way too shy to ever do self-promotion. I slogged through years of nobody reading this blog at all because of it, but now I’m glad that’s the way it turned out.
Congrats! You deserve to be FP’d (is that even a real term?) I agree with you about RL friends knowing about your blog – it can never be quite as open an honest if you know people who are reading. And they tend to correct your spelling and grammar when they see you and that is really annoying :-)
Probably not a real term. :)
Well, even if Freshly Pressed cannot be used as a verb, the acronym which can be used to coin a new word can! Congrats on being FPed!
((Honestly, linguistics and morphology is fascinating. LASERs and SCUBAs are all originally acronyms, but we treat them as nouns when in fact they are much more complicated than that. In some ways, I suppose Freshly Pressed can become the verb FPed. Or maybe I’m being insane. :) Congrats again though!))
When you read posts you think should be featured on FP, please feel free to bring them to our attention! You can tweet links to @freshly_pressed, and we’ll take a look.
Good to know!
Cool! I didn’t know we could do that.
And to my favorite blogging goldfish- congrats! – from (hopefully) your favorite blogging dino. :)
Thank you, dear. You’re definitely my favorite dino.
I started reading your blong because of the letter to santa, so just so you know you gained one new reader through being FP’s :)
Yay!