Welcome Magic Carpet Riders! Looking for my One World One Heart Giveaway? Click here to go to my open house post and the giveaway!
The One World One Heart event is primarily designed for the artist and crafter community. Everyone has been extremely welcoming to me and I think it may be fun for many to happen on a "different type of blog" on their blog hop but Everyday Bliss doesn't fit the same profile as most of the other participants. As a relatively new blogger (start date 9/14/09), I had never heard of this type of event and even though I am not a typical participant I was very excited to join in. I figured what could it hurt? Who knows, I might even win something. Well we haven't even gotten to the "winning" part of the event (you have until February 15 to check out the more the 1000 participating blogs and join the fun) and I feel like I have hit the jackpot. I've met so many lovely people. I feel I am well on my way to making some great new friends and suddenly more then 50 people are following my blog. It has been amazing.
Participating in this event engendered my curiosity about similar events. Is Lisa, aka A Whimsical Bohemian, who came up with the idea, the only one doing such a thing? What about different kinds of blogs? Are there different events, contests or giveaways happening there too? Ah ha! This is exactly the type of Inquiry I wanted! What about other blogs like mine?
Turns out that the blogs like mine question was more difficult then I expected. Are there other people conducting experiments like mine? What "TYPE" of blog is mine? When I started this project it was designed as a one year experiment. Sort of a 365 day type project. So I started there. It turns out that 365 day projects are quite numerous but for the most part that type of experiment is about doing a specific something every day . Draw a picture, cook in your crockpot, wear a brown dress, and the most common of these take a photo every day. My friend Elisa is doing her own 365 photo project, see her's here or in the Everyday Bliss sidebar. These endeavors are interesting and laudable but still resonate as a bit different then mine.
I'm not doing any ONE thing each day, except to hopefully increase my experience of bliss. In addition to keeping me honest (making a public promise in the blog to play this game keeps me following through) I am hopeful that my blog provides inspiration to others and that a community of people who support and encourage each other might develop over time. Since I have based my experiment loosely on Ben Franklin's I thought perhaps there were other versions of that experiment. I did find an interesting quiz and many refer to his experiment and suggest following the ideas but I didn't really find anything like my experiment. Besides, I went and made up all my own virtues and have a completely different scoring system so mine is actually quite unique.
My friend Jeff has been doing a Julie/Juliet kind of thing with Martha Stewart in his My Year of Cooking Fabulously but I don't think he has any great designs on developing a cooking blog community, but then again who knows, with his recent appearance on Martha Stewart's show perhaps he'll be getting his own show! The closest thing to my blog is probably Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, although her year long experiment is already complete and has written a best selling book about the experience . So she isn't likely interested in playing any blog games to boost her blog's traffic.
I just realized that while my little inquiry has netted no new blog fests to try it has led me to my own personal ambition to create a vibrant online community. I really have no idea what that looks like or even what I should be doing, except continuing my project and seeing where it leads. Community is next weeks virtue so it is a perfect place to continue this inquiry!
Next post: Inquiry week comes to close
My 13 bliss virtues: joy, order, creativity, passion, whimsy, serenity, inquiry, community, romance, gratitude, moxie, humility, surprise
