For the longest time I told much less skeptical friends, nah, social media, what’s the point? I mean, I’m a writer. Why should I fork out words for free? And shouldn’t artists be paid (spelled R-E-S-P-E-C-T)? Why support the amateurist/crowd-sourcey/something-for-nothing mentality when what we need are jobs, not robots doing our jobs. Heck, I don’t even like getting those “give us free advertising by commenting on your purchase” emails. Pay somebody to come up with great copy, dude! Rilly, what the ducks!!!

Well, times change and people eat their words.

In 2012, I jumped down the rabbit hole and launched this website. Took all of a week to figure out the fun part and within a few months, I could log in without bracing for something untoward. Now, on a week like this, I wonder why I ever worried at all.

Or, should I say, why worry when I have blog buddies like Robbie?

First, let me digress a tad and reveal that in the early days of blogging I worried so much about my digital profile (everything lives forever on the Interwebz!!!) that I diligently clicked through the sites of every Liker and Commenter who deigned to visit me. There weren’t that many so this took a lot less time than you’d imagine.* Basically, I didn’t want to “like” an innocuous photo if the rest of the blogger’s website contained some kind of pernicious content.  (Don’t know what that would be, exactly, but I’d been freaked out after reading so many horror stories.)** Have to say, though, in the nearly three years I’ve been surfing the WordPress blogosphere, I’ve never encountered sites that post Ugly right next to Cuddly. I’ve also never had to deal with all the trash talk that major news outlets and other venues seem to attract. I credit the WP team with sustaining an almost Utopian blog platform where (rarely) a discouraging word is posted.***

Which brings me back to Robbie and her e-home, Palm Rae Urban Potager. Ms. Robbie and I have been cross-commenting for about a year and a half now. Not sure how it started but one of us found the other and through various perceptive observations and the getting of obscure references, we created a connection. Last month, I immediately thought of Robbie when I decided I wanted to do something on International Year of Soils. As someone who gets the whole connection between what we grow and how we grow it, I knew she’d have something meaningful to add. Plus, she’s always been unfailingly kind to her commenting base so I knew she’d be someone I’d be proud to have on the project.

See? On the Net, someone can hear you be nice.

But we can always use more friendly folks rowing in the same direction. To that end, we’re encouraging other bloggers to write/draw/photograph/sing/dance/whatever about the importance of saving healthy soils. If you’d like to be a part of this Blogger Action Day, comment below or on Robbie’s site. We welcome as many voices as possible–the more the merrier, as web veterans know. In fact, after worrying so long about protecting my words, I now know it’s not what I write that matters, it’s the community my writing can build. And there are lots of good blog buddies in that community.

So maybe, just maybe, the Internet is not such a scary place after all.

 

 

 

*Taylor Swift could probably not do this.

**Guess you know it when you see it?

***And the skies are not cloudy all day! 😉

 

Copyright 2015, Lori Fontanes

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January 14, 2015

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