Tracey in Maine

You can read more about this very special place here.

Learn more about this lovely place here.

After moving from New York City to Chicago and getting married, Rachel Bertsche realized that her new life was missing one crucially important thing: a local best friend. So she decided to go on one friend date every week for a year, and she documented her quest on a WordPress.com blog at MWFseekingBFF.com.

But before Rachel even started the blog, the 27-year-old writer put together a book proposal based on her search for a local BFF, and successfully pitched it to agents, and then editors. She says, “After I sold the proposal, I decided to start a blog so that I could have a place to document my journey and some of the research I was finding. I also wanted to start building a community and to engage with readers.”

It’s now been over two years since Rachel first launched MWFseekingBFF.com. So did she accomplish her blogging goals?…

Once in a while, it’s important to stop, catch your breath, and look at your accomplishments before you move on to the next thing — to put a stake in the ground that says, “I made it this far!”

Today, we’re rolling out a couple of notifications to help you celebrate your blog activity milestones. From now on, whenever you hit a milestone for how many followers your blog has (5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and beyond), you’ll get a badge:

We also created badges to celebrate when you receive lots of likes from visitors:

In addition to celebrating your achievements, we wanted to notify you when you’ve had a particularly good day for receiving likes or new followers. From now on, we’ll let you know of your best days for such activity:

Keep in mind that we’ve only started counting your best days this March.

We all blog for different…

It was the owls that first caught me, dark eyes so wise and brilliant with life.

Then I noticed the other little birds, dark bodies reminiscent of the sparrows of my Virginia youth.  The artist, Angie Pickman, is based in the midwest of Kansas. I don’t make it out that way very often and so when I see glimpses of her work in my email box via her blog I am thankful for the internet for allowing me to see such creative beauty made out of black paper.

Without ever seeing her blog posts about music, one can sense the lyricism in Angie’s cut paper work.  I’ve told her — and I am being sincere — that she has redefined my sense of black paper and negative space.  Given that she does post on occasion about music and that her paper cuts titles sometimes refer to birdsong, I asked her…

 

… I am finding paper so fascinating this year. 😉