{"id":512,"date":"2006-10-08T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2006-10-08T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/512"},"modified":"2010-05-30T22:32:29","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T20:32:29","slug":"i-talk-too-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/512","title":{"rendered":"I Talk Too Little"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or, talk about my life in the Netherlands to little,\u00a0according to\u00a0my second blog review that\u00a0just came in from Avitable at IT2M<\/a>, owwie!<\/p>\n

I’m braindead and can’t figure out how the heck to get a link to my specific review so I’ll quote it here, even though it pains me to do so.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine if Dorothy Gale kept a blog when she was in Oz?\u00a0 What if, instead of discussing the talking scarecrow and cowardly lion, she spent her time talking about her outfit, her dog, and how fat she was getting?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Canadutch<\/strong> feels like to me.\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to make the title of your blog Canadutch<\/strong>, the description \u201cA Canadian Girl in The Netherlands\u201d, and use your about me to discuss a new language, culture shock, and your struggle to adapt, why is your blog so fucking mundane?<\/p>\n

It started out two years ago exactly as you described, but now it\u2019s blah blah, blog traffic, blah blah I\u2019m fat blah blah snore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have a serious issue with people who spend half of their time posting about getting traffic to their sites, pimping renters or other stupid shit like that.\u00a0 Why is traffic so important to you?\u00a0 If you have an interesting blog and if you communicate with other people who have interesting blogs, you will gain an audience of people who actually enjoy your blog, not a bunch of random morons who are clicking in their desperate attempt to get more credits.\u00a0 It\u2019s frakkin\u2019 pathetic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OW OW OW OW!!!\u00a0 It hurts it hurts!\u00a0*Rubs bum that is incredibly sore from the ass-kicking*<\/p>\n

Some points I agree on and others I don’t.<\/p>\n

I won’t apologize for writing about my weight struggles because that is something that is a major soft spot for me at the moment.\u00a0 It is a direct result of a quite serious depression triggered but the culture shock and lonliness of moving here, and has in turn made life even more difficult after a long fight with infertility.\u00a0 I write about it here to keep other people I’ve met online who are dieting up to date, and as a way to keep track of it myself.<\/p>\n

What I do agree on fully is the whole blog traffic thing.\u00a0 Not that I am necessarily obsessed with getting people to my blog, that’s not really my motivation for getting so deeply involved in sites like Blogexplosion, Blogmad and so on.<\/p>\n

It’s no secret that I live a relatively lonely life here in the Netherlands.\u00a0\u00a0 I have a few friends but no truly close friends like I had back in Canada.\u00a0 I don’t get out much and sadly, the bulk of my connections are online.\u00a0\u00a0 After years of escaping into the world of gaming, with Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft… a few months ago I quit gaming cold turkey and I’ve found myself sort of lost.<\/p>\n

It has made me more active and caused me to get out more, not being at the computer gaming all the time, but I still crave the interaction and online social circle.\u00a0 When I found these blog traffic sites I enjoyed getting to know people through their blogs and them getting to know me.\u00a0\u00a0 Granted, the bulk of these sites are just people giving 20 second clicks, but there are others who aren’t that I chat with regularly, and they are the ones that have kept me coming around to these sites and getting involved in them.<\/p>\n

There are some aspects of it that I don’t enjoy and had planned to dump anyway, and avitable was quite right about that.\u00a0 Pimping renters, for example… I don’t enjoy it.\u00a0\u00a0 I find that I have to wait and wait until a blog comes up that I’d actually want to say anything about and then it seems like I just finish posting about one and the week is up and I have to post about another.\u00a0\u00a0 If it was montly, I may continue but I just find it too much to be doing this weekly.\u00a0 I agree with Avi 100% that the rental thing has got to go (plus I won’t mind having it gone from my sidebar).<\/p>\n

He is also right that I haven’t been writing about life in the Netherlands that much lately and there is a very simple reason for that.\u00a0 It’s depressing.\u00a0\u00a0 My life is not at all what I imagined it would be and I suffer terribly with depression.\u00a0\u00a0Not just due to the culture shock, lonliness and missing my family… but also because of recent issues like infertility and other medical problems that have come to light.<\/p>\n

For the last few months (since May) I have been on anti-depressants.\u00a0 After a horrible winter I’ve been trying to claw myself back to something that resembles something that a normal human being could call a life.\u00a0 It’s not perfect but I’m getting there… and that’s a major reason why I haven’t been writing so much about the ‘Canadian in the Netherlands’ aspect of life, because I’m still trying to learn<\/em> to love it.\u00a0 After seven years it almost feel like an impossible feat.<\/p>\n

When I write about it I tend to lean towards the negative, the struggles and heartaches I experience daily.\u00a0\u00a0 This makes it more difficult for me to keep myself positive.\u00a0 If I had more positive experiences here I’d write about them, but in all honesty, I rarely do.<\/p>\n

Also, it gets hard to bare your soul like that.\u00a0 At first I didn’t mind but after a while the comments start.\u00a0\u00a0 People who have never been in my situation or who are simply different people with different abilities to cope who feel that since they are able to enjoy life here, that there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to as well.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, all in all I wish there had been a little bit more good about my site in this review, but what can ya do.\u00a0 I’ll just have to take my knocks and learn from it.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s time to start getting honest again about life, the things that are going on with me as far as how I’m coping with life here, my medical issues and so on… when I’m ready, I will.\u00a0 For now I prefer to just keep it light though.<\/p>\n

Oh well, at least the folks at Ask and Ye Shall Recieve<\/a> liked me!\u00a0 I think I’ll go read that review a few (hundred) times and lick my wounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or, talk about my life in the Netherlands to little,\u00a0according to\u00a0my second blog review that\u00a0just came in from Avitable at IT2M, owwie! I’m braindead and can’t figure out how the heck to get a link to my specific review so I’ll quote it here, even though it pains me to do so. Can you imagine …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[883,878],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-blog-stuff","tag-blog-reviews-and-awards","tag-blog-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4932,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions\/4932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}