I see you over there, trying to slink away. "Maybe if I duck into this Shutdown diary, or that I/P one over there, brillig won't notice me" I have two chronological kids (as opposed to kiddie-pool kids :-)) so believe me... I noticed.
Or maybe you're the type that only hangs out in the community diaries. Safe, learn a lot while building friendships, and they're reliable. They show up each day at a predictable time, you're following the tag, and it's part of your routine.
Well, I need all of you, for just a minute. Pull up a chair and across the dkosagnocchi let's chat. If you're in a rush, just click one of the links below and skip to the comments :).
One time contribution: click here.
$5 monthly contribution: click here
$10 monthly contribution: click here
$20 monthly contribution: click here
To send a donation via snail mail, the address is: Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
For all that everyone who knows me proclaims me a social butterfly extrovert, I am actually extremely shy. I'm that person who hangs near the food at parties, hoping someone will talk to me over the cheese cubes. I'm nervous about arriving too early. Or too late. Or wearing the wrong thing. Or any of a thousand different things that I saw so neatly described here.
When I joined the site back on September 24th, 2004, I was really quiet. I didn't post much at all, taking three weeks before I screwed up my courage enough to make my first comment. The first C&J Post I can find in my 11K-plus comment history was on January 12th, 2005. The first actually labeled with "C&J" was the following day. The interesting thing when I read back is... I already knew the format to use. Had my cheers and jeers bolded, and most importantly, said this:
CHEERS to all you C&J regulars that make my mid-morning break that much more fun.
I'd clearly been lurking and reading, before I dipped my toes into the warm waters of the kiddie pool
(No. I don't want to consider why the water's warm when kiddie pools are filled with a hose full of ice-cold water. LALALALALA.). And I'll bet I'm not the only one who found there voice by watching the safe, fun, informational, snarky space that is Cheers & Jeers.
My first meeting with Kossacks in real space happened thanks to C&J. My life includes people near and dear to me because of Cheers & Jeers. I went to my first Yearly Kos because of Cheers & Jeers, and participated in the first C&J Deathmarch to Dinner event (Bill and Michael have the signed T-shirt to prove it!:)).
Cheers & Jeers was the first of the Community Diaries. As so many others before me have said this past week, Bill found the formula for making a diary series work. As you look at the other Community Diaries here, ask yourselves how many of those were started by folks who do or did hang out in the kiddie pool at one point. Yeah, it's a lot. I've been writing since 2007 for another Community Diary series here, Top Comments, and for the past few years have been chief TC-herder. I would never, EVER have considered doing so had I not had the C&J experience. Those of you who know my writing at all, know there's almost always a healthy dose of snark in every diary. What can I say, it's how I was raised :).
My eldest daughter attended her first Netroots Nation last year. Mr. Brillig and I warned her: "You'll likely get greeted and probably hugged by a couple hundred people you don't know. They know you. Just deal." She did get greeted, hugged, and dealt well :). Where do most of those people know of me, and by extension her? Yeah. Cheers & Jeers, or Top Comments. Interesting how many TCers are also C&Jers, don'tcha think? :)
Bill in Portland Maine made it possible for me, and likely thousands of others just like me, to find my blog voice. It is a safe space to voice opinions, to open the window to who we really are besides a uid and a name. And when real life circumstances in the form of needing to enter the job-search ranks nearly silenced Bill's voice here, so many of us refused to let that happen that Bill became the first (and if I am remembering correctly, still the only?) front-pager funded entirely by his readership. It's that time again where we say to one another "This is important to me, to us, and to our entire community. Don't let this voice be shut down." (See, you were waiting for me to say shutdown. I know you were :-))
I don't get to C&J nearly as often as I want to these days. Damned Life, getting in between me and my laptop at crucial hours every morning. But it doesn't matter- when I'm able to get online, I know it will be there. And to make sure it is each and every day, I'm renewing my monthly subscription to help support one of the most talented writers on the site, and two of the most amazing people I am blessed to call friends. I hope you'll do the same.
One time contribution: click here.
$5 monthly contribution: click here
$10 monthly contribution: click here
$20 monthly contribution: click here
To send a donation via snail mail, the address is: Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.