By Denny Lyon
photo by benimoto at Flickr
Thank you for befriending me at Triond!
When I first arrived at Triond just two months ago I could hear the echoes of my own footsteps when entering this site and was quite puzzled and downright disoriented at the lack of ongoing conversations here. Eventually, I found some of you and you found and befriended me. Your kindness and consideration have gone a long way to helping me feel more comfortable, so thank you! Hopefully, the feedback folks will consider my suggestion of a Welcome Center for new people to interact with the older members who can bring them up to speed as to the culture, how to link their writings, what those bookmarking sites’ cultures are like and more that I still don’t know about.
OK, I’m a bit on information overload at the moment about all these bookmarking sites but things are beginning to fall into place and gel finally. As the fall winds approach with crisper cool days they also visit an inner reflection.
Photo by Ahmed Rabea of Bahrain at flickr
To those of you who are wondering, here is a bit of introduction about me. Dad was from old family WASP Kentucky and Mom was from proper Spanish family New York City. I grew up internationally from two conflicting regions of the country as well as Protestant Baptist and Catholic, who are battling denominations inside Christianity, to reconcile, OK, synthesize. Call me a living paradox.
American Southerners have this thing about being polite and kind even to strangers which is why I’m writing this thank you in the first place. Honest gratitude and good manners have served me well when traveling or living overseas and people often think I’m a local, quite surprised to find out I’m an American. To me that is the ultimate compliment. Even actor Sydney Poitier, the first African-American to make it big in Hollywood, attributed his success to his mother’s teachings about courtesy. Now that’s “people skills” in today’s jargon! As everyone knows from their life story, there is always more to tell.
Kentucky horse race - Photo by Velo Steve at flickr
I thought long and hard about making this a public write rather than only sending it in private email to my friends list - as that was the original intent. Soon, I realized maybe people even newer and more perplexed than me might actually benefit from this write.
To me, it is additionally important to say thank you to those beyond my friends list who have supported me. Many of you took time out of your day and away from your own writing to place comments on some of my writes as well as send me private email that was so appreciated. (Truly, you have no idea!) Feedback from fellow writers of any stripe is so important if we want to grow!
As I was clued in by my friends list, I now regularly go see what my newsfeed has of your writings, sometimes digging deeper into older writes (because I often prefer your reads to what is on the Hot Content List anyway), and make sure I return your courtesy commenting. OK, out of curiosity I would have done it anyway. Yet, because I was informed this is part of the culture, I diligently make sure I’ve commented on all my friends’ writes every week with the personal goal of at least four writes per person. Haven’t figured out yet if that’s too much or too little but time will tell. You know me I’m always up for suggestions, so suggest away if you have a better method!
I have finally figured out how to give reviews on StumbleUpon which in that culture is supposed to be very important. One of the people on my friends list actually put up my latest poem on StumbleUpon before I had a chance to link it on a Sunday and doggone if it didn’t get 200 hits in one day, my personal record for a poem. Maybe it had something to do with the fact he was a day ahead of my time zone in America and it was Monday for him in the Philippines.
It sure shocked me when I logged on later that day and saw so many views for just a poem! Thank you, honey child, you are a love and it is much appreciated as you know who you are! First I stopped to go to StumbleUpon and write some reviews for him now that I finally learned how. Then, I took his example of promoting someone else’s work and did the same for a friend on my list in the off chance he had not linked what should be an award-winning fabulous poem. I was surprised to find he had not linked it to StumbleUpon, so, of course, I went ahead and did it in his stead. I was so glad I could “pay if forward” as the saying goes. From the Idea Woman: Maybe we all ought to consider taking one write of everyone on our friends list every month and help them promote it? That kind of cooperation could turn Triond into one hot prospect on the market.
