Bleh?

If you have superior analytical skills, you may have deduced I am a bit of a feedback junkie. My parents were big on self-esteem when I was a kid, and we grew up in a very positive environment, with lots of praise and blatant ego-stroking. In school, my mom used to put little happy faces beside her signature when I scored well on a test or assignment, and I still have some papers I wrote in university that I brought home specifically to show her that ended up with the same happy face on them. It’s become a deeply ingrained part of who I am, resulting in a strong need for external validation. Even my director at work has me pegged, and is free with metaphysical pats on my head, knowing they are the fuel that runs my engine.

Blog, of course, also feeds this needy engine of mine. Comments are the ultimate form of validation – not only do you tell me that you understand what I am saying, and that you are dealing with the same sorts of issues, but you tell me you like what I have to say and how I am saying it. That’s some heady, powerful mojo!

Like so much else in my life, I should have been happy with success and left it at that. But no. I found this site called the Weblog Review, and I couldn’t resist. I read a lot of the reviews, visited a lot of the sites, and absolutely could not resist, so I submitted my site. Looking back on it, it kind of reminds me of those sites that were popular a while back where you post a picture and people rate whether you are hot or not – except on an intellectual level.

The review itself isn’t so bad. There were actually two reviewers. The first one seemed to get me and where I was coming from – surprise, surprise, she seems to be a mom, based on her screen name. She said I was witty and a good writer – I should have stopped reading right then!The second reviewer was a little less impressed, but not unkind either. “Bleh” is how she summed up her feelings, which is understandable when you go to her own blog and are assaulted by the giant animé grrrl. We probably wouldn’t have much to say to each other at a dinner party, either. So no harm done, overall they give me a review of 3.5 out of 5, and I’m pretty happy with that, plus it gives me a little spike in traffic, so it should all be good, right?

Sigh. The other feature on the Weblog Review is that other people on the site can vote to rate a blog that has been reviewed and that’s the rub. As of today, 11 people have voted on my humble blog, giving it an overall rating of 2.1591 out of 5. This means that more people don’t like it than like it. Hmph.

So, once again our heroine learns the hard way not to ask questions if she won’t be happy with the answers. Humility hurts.

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