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No matter how confident you are in yourself: your talents, your appearance, the choices you make in life… we all have insecurities and self-doubts. We all stop to question ourselves at times, as we should. It is only via second guessing our instincts that we can ever hope to evolve into something better than we are. It is only through questioning our existing patterns that we can ever hope to develop new ones.
It isn’t paranoid to think that there are people out there who would love to see you fail. I admit, there are those out there who I would love to watch fall flat on their faces because I want to see proof that karma does in fact exist. Smug grin playing across my lips, eyes dancing. Nothing to say but, “ha!”. I’m almost positive there are those who feel the same towards me for whatever reason. This is a symptom of the human condition. A fact of life.
People will absolutely talk about you. People will hate on you. People will criticize what matters the most to you. People will play on your vulnerabilities and life will poke holes in your confidence. You will be let down, you will be betrayed, and you will be disappointed.
Don’t let the bastards wear you down. For every disappointment life will offer you an opportunity. For every person who looks down on you there will be another who will admire what you do. For every heartbreak, you will love again. For every betrayal, there will be someone who has your back through everything you go through. For every smug grin, there will be an adoring smile.
And you know what? If not… FUCK EM. We all hold within us so many variables that we can’t possibly expect that other people will understand us all the time. Or at all. Examine what “normal” really means. It’s the median, the average. I used to say all the time, “It’s hard being in the 98% percentile.” Arrogant a bit, but… it’s true. It means most people won’t get you. Most people don’t have the capacity to.
If anything, it’s cause for celebration.
Updates and such:
For those of you who might be following my progress and for the sake of my wanting to get it all down-on-pixels, I thought I would do an update post on what’s been going on with all my projects.
A few weeks ago I added my various websites to Quantcast. What’s cool about Quantcast for someone like me is that it allows you to create a network of your websites so you can see your overall reach and ranking, rather than just that of your individual sites like Google Analytics or Alexa. It also shows you in depth information about the demographics of not only each site in your network but your network overall. Great information to have for your advertisers.
When I first “Quantified” my network, my ranking was somewhere around 260,000+. This was very encouraging and exciting for me and I started to work even harder. Posting more consistently, using all my little tricks to aggregate every post on every site. As of today, my “Alana Joy Network” (ok I didn’t know what else to name it, STFU! lol) ranks at 140,961. (UPDATE: 139,172 138,534) I can’t believe how much my ranking has jumped in such a short amount of time! There is nothing like seeing your hard work pay off. Nothing. My current goal is to break 100K by the end of the month.
I’ve had CoutureCult.com since 2007 but in recent months have finally brought it from Blogger, where it was born (before I knew any better!), over to Wordpress, where I now live and love. After the move and redesign, I added more categories: Still covering fashion, but now also decor, design, and beauty.
LifeOnBlast.com… well you guys have been there from conception of the idea to launch to now. It’s been about 5 months since the launch. Time does fly, doesn’t it? I wanted to create a space on the internet where the focus was on authenticity, art, and subculture: rather than the shallow dredge of fake braying that inspired me to do something… “differently” (grins). I am still perfecting my angle as far as my own videos, but this site has actually brought itself the the forefront as far as rankings go. It’s doing the best out of all of them and that makes me feel so damn warm and fuzzy inside.
As some of you may know, LifeOnBlast.com also has a social network, the “Collective”, which I run on the KickApps platform. When I first launched I was working very hard to cultivate the social network and encourage my readers to join. A couple of months into this process, KickApps became invaded with spammer bots that use scripts to register bull shit accounts where they then post a million links for the sake of SEO. I have been in contact via Twitter, email, and phone calls with the SVP of marketing at KickApps and he is personally assisting me with getting rid of these accounts and helping to come up with ways to prevent this moving forward. They have the KickApps team working on my site from the back end. They are deleting the accounts for me! Once this is done, I will yet again be doing my best to promote the social network and encourage people to register and get involved.
This Tumblr, which I have always felt to be more my little corner of the internet to share the things that make me think or smile or laugh to myself… I threw that on there too because I guess technically… it’s part of my reach. My residential internet real estate: the rest being uh… commercial properties.
I’ve recently started another blog, TwoPointOh.me. There’s only a few posts on there right now as I literally started it last week. I wanted a place to share tips and my thoughts on all things 2.0: social media marketing, blogging, design tools… etc. This site is still being “Quantified” so my Quantcast ranking does not include this site yet (which is fine since there’s practically nothing on it yet~!)
A couple months ago I became Co-Managing Director for Girls In Tech’s LA chapter. I was beyond flattered when Robyn Cohen asked me to come on board and I have a lot of ideas for our events for this coming year. I will also be teaching some workshops through Girls In Tech, for those who are just getting into the space.
Yesterday I reached out on my Twitter looking for contributors for all of my sites. I think adding other writers to the mix will bring some fresh perspectives, more well rounded content, and will make things more interesting for the readers. Additionally, more posts = more pages to aggregate = more page views = even higher rankings: quicker!
I am beyond moved at the response I have gotten. Seriously. Some really excellent writers have asked to be involved in each site and I really can’t wait to get everyone organized. That any of them are interested and wanting to bring their talents to the table also feels like a pat on the back from each of them: your peers appreciating your work enough to want to add to what you are offering… it’s very validating. Humbling. EXCITING!
I just really wanted to share where things are with all of you. I have to say: I have a very loyal love for Tumblr. Unlike other blogging platforms, Tumblr really *is* a community. I have 1,149 Tumblr followers as of today. There is a certain type of person who is drawn to Tumblr and the platform really does allow you to get to know each other via reblogging, liking posts, the ability to ask questions etc. I feel I have really gotten to know a lot of you. I’ve seen your comments on my other sites, I’ve heard from some of you on Twitter, I’ve emailed with some of you about my sites and some of the topics I’ve posted about… I will always have a special love for Tumblr. The platform, the people… ok I’m getting all mushy now… Stopping.
Before I go… I’d like to open the door to any Tumblr readers who might have an interest in contributing to any of my projects as well.
If you are interested, please email me at: missjoy@mac.com
xoxo
Alana Joy
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
❤ Metric: Help I’m Alive ❤
Help! I’m alive. My heart keeps beating like a hammer…
Hard to be soft: tough to be tender.
