Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time there was a beautiful gypsy princess with a lot to say. Ok, she wasn't all that beautiful, and she was only a gypsy in her soul and her pedigree was about as far from royalty as you could get - but would you have been as interested if I'd said, "Once upon a time there was a frumpy middle-aged suburbanite with a blog"? I thought not.

So.

So the (ahem) beautiful gypsy princess told her stories for over a year, even though no one was really listening. She spoke at length about her feelings and her struggles and sometimes just about the day to day experiences in her frumpy suburban/beautiful gypsy life. Since no one was listening, she was unencumbered by rules or obligations or social niceties or censorship. She spoke from her heart.

One day in her travels she fell upon a group of people who seemed eager to hear her stories. The only requirement was that she listen to theirs in turn. What a wonderful group this was! They quickly embraced her to their welcoming bosom. Before long they were inviting her to join in their games and their parties - some even offered her gifts and awards in return for her pledge of loyalty or a few kind words about them when she relayed her stories to others. She happily obliged. It seemed a small price to pay for the ever increasing audience her stories were attracting.

But then something happened.

She noticed that she was no longer speaking from her heart. She was playing a game and she'd never really been good at games. She was never going to win. She became unhappy. Despondent. She considered giving up storytelling altogether. She stopped listening to the stories of others - even the ones whose stories she loved - because the whole storytelling gig had lost its luster.

She was tired of spending hours a day with fluffy nonsense and was more than a little embarrassed that she'd produced more than her share of it. But when she tried to silence her voice, she found that she could not. She decided to continue telling her stories on her own terms. She vowed to no longer speak only for her listeners, but to return to speaking from her heart.

This decision cost her many followers - I mean - listeners. She didn't care (much). She was being true to herself and it felt good. It was freeing. She didn't care if anyone else felt the same way or not.

But then two beautiful, kind, and excessively smart princesses from a neighboring village organized a group of storytellers who indeed DID feel the same way. The gypsy princess was delighted. They asked her to join their merry band and throw off the shackles of group mentality for the pursuit of blogs - I mean stories - of substance. (I realize the inherent irony involved in joining a group to escape the shackles of group mentality. It's like rain on your wedding day, or the smile on a dog or something. Wait. I think one of those is religion. Anyway.)

Those two princesses were the lovely Pam and Sandy and their village is Words of Wisdom - a brand new site for showcasing what they believe to be blogs of substance. I am honored and thrilled that they consider my little venture to be worthy of that accolade - specifically, the accolade: Blog of Note (or BON if you want to sound like an insider, and I know you do...) The only criteria is that I link three of my favorite posts. I don't know if I'd call these three of my all-time favorites, but they are three relatively recent posts that I kind of like.

If You Can Read This, Thank a Teacher is a post about - um - reading, and teaching and thankfulness...

I'm Not Like This is a self-reflective post - a real navel-gazer.

The Bon Jovi Mom is thrown in here because I'm not all about tooting my own horn or studying my belly-button. In my basest (and arguably happiest) form, I am a squealy fangirl.

So if you're stopping by from WoW (another of those insider acronyms - now you're in the loop) - thanks! I hope to swap stories with you again very soon. If you're not, you might want to give them a visit. Tell 'em a beautiful/frumpy gypsy/suburbanite named Mommakin sent ya!