Life in the Middle Lane

I opened my email this morning, after trying unsuccessfully at work to stay on task for more than an hour at a time.

The first thing I opened was a brazen message from Ryan Paugh asking members to write a post about our #brazenblogcrush.  I briefly thought about doing it and decided that if I DID write a post about my brazen blog crush, it would have to be about the funniest married lady on the planet; my dear friend, Marie at McKinney-Oates Cereal.  I have been crushing MADLY on this woman since Rebecca at Modite linked to her a few months ago.

I was immediately sucked into her hilarious stories about her family and her husband.  After about a week, I had to find her on twitter and facebook and every other social media platform. (I mean, how else am I supposed to stalk her, if I can’t find her EVERYWHERE)

Her’s is THE ONLY blog that I comment on, and then check back later to see if she replied to my comment. Her’s is one of the few blogs that I read every post and comment on if I SQUEEZE out any bit of relevance.  And sometimes I comment just to say I love her and I think she’s funny. Cause I do.

Then the second piece of email that I opened this morning was a pingback from my website.  Since I rarely get linked to, I had to immediately see what this was all about.  Lo and behold, my buddy has already written her blog crush blog about me.  I was am flattered and humbled.

And then I thought, I can’t possibly write my blog crush about her now!!! Then I look like an obvious brown-noser (which I am, but I don’t want to look like it).

I had to pick someone else.

So I picked my new blog crush; Alex at Social Butterfly.

Apparently, I’ve been following Social Butterfly for a while.  But for some reason, after the initial site perusal, I never made it back over.  Then a couple of weeks ago, again while trying to stay on task at work, I succumbed to my Google reader.  I realized that it had been a while since I culled my feeds, so I started deleting blogs that are either boring, irrelevant to my life, or haven’t posted in a while.

I clicked on Social Butterfly to see what it was, (yes, it had been that long), and read a couple of her posts.  Then I read a couple more.  And a couple more.  Then I started clicking on the links in her posts.  The title for one of her posts is now on my vision board and is the title for a post I’m working on for CU.  And it made me rethink my thoughts on career/relationship balance.

After about an hour, I sat back in wonder.  I was already in love.  Actually I don’t know if I love her, or just want to be her.  As I read through her stuff,  I was getting more and more impressed (and more and more excited).  After I read all her new posts, I went back and read some of her older stuff.

This girl is brilliant.

Her writing is so passionate and professional and engaging.  She writes about social change the way I want to write about community development.  She’s a writer that inspires me as a writer.  So, duh, she didn’t get culled from my reader.  She got bumped from the “career” folder to the “read every day” folder with Marie and about 4 other blogs.

Yep, she’s that good.