If you write it, will they read?

That's an excellent question.

Afternoon, Snarklings. Do y'all remember me? Those of you who have subscribed via email, HOWDY!!! Those who stumbled here through the Facebooks and Twitters, WHASSUP?  I've really missed you guys. I'm sorry it's been so long.

I've decided to blow the dust off of this old website and vomit up some verbiage. Hopefully I will make a habit out of doing this but for now, here's one blog post to start.

Let's catch up shall we?

For those of you who are new, I'm Teri, your Queen of Snark. I've been blogging since 2013 (ish) and have had some pieces published in some books (which is very cool). You can check those out on the right side of this page or on the BUY MY BOOKS page, if you are so inclined, but no pressure.

Still married. Still working for my favorite environmental nonprofit called SkyTruth. Running again. I just finished my 4th full marathon (ok not JUST, it was back in October). Looking to run my 5th later this year. I've lost 70 pounds on Weight Watchers over the last year and change.

My oldest is now 22, my youngest is now 20 and both are baristas!

Still have my Dumbass cat (now 18!! If she were a he, I'd register her for the draft just to get her out of the house), and my pups, Henry and Cosmo are 10 now!! All growed up.

The president is still a fuckstick.

My latest obsession these days is THE CHILD. AKA The Baby Yoda. Dear sweet Lord, Disney you are brilliant. I'm not posting any images because I'm not trying to deal with any copyright infringements, but you have to know how adorable this damned thing is.

I'm also watching $chitt's Creek on the Netflix and have started watching The Avengers series (yes I'm a little behind the times, so sue me) on the Disney+ because it's free. That's how they get you. I got a year of free Disney+ and they had to go and make THE CHILD so damned adorable that there's no way on God's green earth that I won't actually pay for it so I can watch season 2 of The Mandalorian to get my Baby Yoda fix. Well played, Disney+, well played.

A little side rant: last night one of my favorite Snarklings, Jon, sent me a message with a link to an article that said someone had the audacity to photoshop your dumbass president's head on to the Baby Yoda's body and that's just not right. Idiot Son #1 posted the image on Instagram and I want to set them all on fire. They crossed a line. It's just not right. I can't even post the image here without wanting to throw a punch.

That's all I've got for now. I don't want to overwhelm you on my first day back in over a year. Please stop back to see if it takes me that long to blog again. Until next time, stay Snarky my friends.

Been A Long Time.....

.....since I wrote a blog. Actually it's been ages since I've had an original thought. I'm sure that's become obvious to you folks, since you keep getting older blog posts showing up in your email if you're subscribed. If you're not, I promise, I'll work on having an original thought or two before the end of this year.

My friend Phil from The Regular Guy NYC actually asked me if I was still blogging, as did my friend Mike from Papa Does Preach. Yeah, in my head I do still blog. It's getting words from my brain to this page that has proven difficult,  but I'm going to give it my best shot.

Things have been kind of crazy in my corner of the world lately. 19 has gone back to WVU for the start of her junior year. JUNIOR. What the hell? One of my most read pieces, Roots and Wings, still resonates with me and with many other parents, and I'll be going through this process not once but twice next year when 17 turns 18 and goes off to college.

God help me.

Anyway, we've had some highs and some lows at Casa Snarkfest over the past year. I'm not going to lie, my mom's death has had a tremendous impact on pretty much everything.  In the 9 months since she died, the blog has pretty much gone by the wayside. I'm hoping to turn that around but I'm going to need help. What do you want to read from me?  You're probably sick of me going on and on about my pretend boyfriend Mike Rowe.  I don't want to cry the blues about both my girls going off to college next year. I could just post pictures of puppies and kittens but that's been done. Recipes? Beauty and fashion? (hold on a sec....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

Ok I'm back now.

So you tell me, what would you like to see on the blog. I'm taking requests. Suggest some ideas and maybe it will knock something loose in my noggin. Until then, here's a kitten for your viewing pleasure.

Small fish, big pond. So I just keep swimming....

I've got a confession to make. I never thought I'd be a blogger. Seriously, writing never even crossed my mind until I hit my mid-40's. In all honesty, I don't even consider myself a writer. I'm more of a ranter. I like to bitch about stuff, and I do so with humor. That's pretty much my niche.

I was talking to a fellow blogger the other day, one who has an agent. She told me that she's been rejected several times by real, reputable publishers. She said one of the reasons is that she didn't have a platform. In my mind, I'm thinking a platform means you have to stand up for something like one-armed pygmy Korean vegetarian children. I started to worry because I don't have anything like that. She laughed at me and said that a platform means you have a big audience. Like huge. Like 5 digits or more. Huh. That rules me out. I currently have 98 people who subscribed to receive an email anytime I post a blog. I have 145 people who follow me on Google+ (which I still haven't figured out yet) and I've got just over 2800 "Likes" on my Facebook page. Hardly a 'platform'. Barely even a step stool.

As a writer/blogger, I want people to like my stuff. I want people to read and comment on my posts. I am looking for approval and for people to like me. Would I like for MORE people to like my stuff? Hell yes. However, as I've heard time and time again, bigger isn't always better. A bigger audience means more eyes looking at you, more people to judge you, and more pressure to be ON. I've seen some of my friends who have posts picked up by bigger sites like Huffington Post, Reddit or Technorati, and some of those posts have been absolutely skewered by trolls, douchenozzles and assbags with awful comments. Do I want that kind of reaction if I was to have a post go big? No effing way! I hate criticism and rejection. It makes me feel awful, so to have something that I put my heart and soul into go big would be great, but to have it be the target of haters would be devastating.

I wouldn't mind having a bigger audience (as long as they like me). But with a bigger audience comes more pressure to entertain people. The thought of having something actually go viral excites me but it also scares the pee out of me. Seriously, if I went viral, then I'd feel pressure to be consistent with my content. I'd be afraid every time I hit the 'publish' button that my latest post won't live up to the BIG one that got me the BIG attention and the BIG numbers. Being funny, witty, or even thought-provoking isn't something that you can switch on and off. I don't wake up in the morning and say "I'm gonna be a funny bitch today." Most of the things I say that people find funny are a result of a situation I'm in or something that someone tells me about. I write off the cuff. My posts are almost all stream-of-consciousness. I don't prepare stuff ahead of time, I don't outline my material. I just sit down and write. If it's funny, great. If it's not, then no one will like it. But the bigger your audience (IN MY OPINION anyway) the more pressure you have to entertain.

I am happy that I have the audience I have, I'm happy to be a small-time blogger. I don't know if I'd like to be a big well-known author. Maybe I'd like the chance, but more likely than not, I'd succumb to the pressure to please, and I'd quit. So what if I don't have tens of thousands of followers. That's less people to throw eggs at me if they see me walking down the street and yell "Hey, Snarky, your stuff isn't as funny as it used to be." I don't need that kind of pressure. I'm happy to be a little fish in a big pond.

I just wish there was a bigger payment for being a little fish.