It’s Time For Halloween!

Fall is now upon us an the Halloween season is upon us!  I figured that I’d have a little fun with this site and do a quick redesign to celebrate the Halloween season.  Let’s face it, Halloween is fun, and all throughout October, I’ve got several treats for you, including Halloween and horror themed articles planned, as well as four tracks for you to listen to that should put you in the Halloween spirit!  But without further ado, let me get to the main point of this article.

See, my introduction IS relevant, because what I am doing with my blog is fairly unique.  Not very many bloggers take the time to “dress” up their blogs for the holidays, but why not?  Your blog is a reflection of you and your perspective on things, so why should it always look and behave in the exact same way.  You don’t go out into public dressed in the exact same way every day do you?  Of course not! (Unless you’re weird)  So why not let your blog “change clothes” every once in a while?  Even if you’re just changing the colors around a little bit, just give your blog a little personality.  Start treating you blog like a living thing!

Treat It Like A Living Thing?

Yes, treat it like a living thing.  Treat it like your kid if you’re really close to it.  Or at least treat it like a pet.

This is the exact same advice I’ve offered to people who are learning to edit video or produce music… treat your creation like a living thing!  But what do I mean by this?  I admit, the concept is a little vague, so let me delve into this subject a little deeper, and we’ll explore the things that living things need in order to survive and to be happy.

Your Blog Needs To Breathe

Every living thing needs to breathe.  We all need oxygen to live, which is the very most basic need that all living things have.  Oxygen is needed to metabolize and to creat new cells, and without it we will die.  So if we’re to treat our blog like a living thing, we need to make sure that it is breathing!

Simply put, you need to update your blog on a regular basis.  If a living creature suddenly decided to stop breathing, it would eventually die, and the same is true for your blog.  It will die if you don’t provide regular updates.  The more regular they are, the better!  And likewise, your blog doesn’t need to hyperventilate and “breathe” excessively.  Just make sure that you are providing regular updates at a predetermined interval, and your blog will be on it’s first step to living!

It Needs To Be Fed

Food is necessary for living things to obtain nutrients that the body needs to live and grow.  Without food, we wouldn’t have any energy to do the things in life that we want to.

So in order to “feed” you must strive to have a ready supply of “food”.  Your blog craves information as a source of nourishment, so make sure to constantly be reading and learning about the niche that you write about so that you can write more and more intelligently on your subject, and always try to read as many points of view as possible so that your blog can “grow”.  As the cliche goes, we are what we eat, so if you are constantly feeding your blog high quality information, then you will find that it will grow into a source for high quality information!

It Needs To Drink

Water is necessary for live for a variety of reasons.  For starters, it helps to break down food and move nutrients around, which in your blog’s case will help to circulate it’s information and ideas around the blogosphree.  Water is also necessary to flush out and cleanse our digestive tracts, so the same is true for our blogs.

So how do we “water” our blogs?  By providing regular maintenance and making sure that your HTML, CSS, and plugins are all working to the best of your ability.  Coding errors can hurt our blogs and stifle their success, so make sure that you stay it and always be striving to improve on the way that your blog is built and ran.  This includes the usage of plugins, which have the ability to either improve the functionality of your blog, or slow it down.  And having too many plugins slowing your site down is the equivalent to having a digestive tract that desperately needs to be cleansed!

It Needs To Be Socialized

No matter what your existantial beliefs are, you will probably agree that all living things are designed to be social.  It’s no coincidence that the survival of living for almost all living beings depends on sexual reproduction, meaning between two creatures.  Very few living things reproduce asexually (which means having one parent)  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that your blog needs to go out and get laid, but I AM demonstrating that socialization is built into the fabric of living things!

So make sure that your blog is getting socialized.  Get out there and comment on other people’s blogs, and discuss the ideas that those blogs are bringing up.  Maybe some of those other blogs will “come home” with yours and they’ll be nice enough to comment on your articles.  And after a little bit of socialization, who knows where the new relationships will go?  If your not out in the world meeting people and finding others to bond with, then you’re not living much of a life.  The same is true with your blog.  I would however like to point out though, that Swollen Thumb Entertainment is not currently looking for any serious relationships.  It’s just looking to have a little fun right now!

It Needs To Have Fun Every Once In A While

And speaking of fun, most living things need to have fun as a form of stress release.  After the basic needs of a living creature are met, the next thing on the agenda is recreation, so maybe it’s time that you let your blog have a little fun every once in a while instead of always being so serious?

Just like most people who are overly serious don’t come across as attrative, blogs are the exact same way!  People like people who have fun, and they like blogs that have fun as well!  As far as what it takes to have fun, I can’t answer that for you.  Everyone has their own definition of what they consider to be fun, so every blog will have it’s own definition as well.  Maybe allowing the blog to “dress up” for holidays like mine does, or putting out a silly article every once in a while?  Whatever you do, just make sure to have fun doing it!

And It Needs To Have Freedom

And finally, one of the most innate needs that all living things have is to be free of bondage and to have the freedom to do the things that it wants to do.  There are many different theories concerning why we seek freedom and aren’t simply content with having our basic needs met, but it is a simple fact that human beings and animals all desire to roam free and to not be confined to a small space.

So don’t isolate or confine your blog.  Let it stretch out and have room to grow.  Let it explore and possibly “find itself” in the process!  Don’t pigeonhole your blog into a small niche if it wants to experiment with other topics.  Don’t give your blog too many rules that will prevent it from maturing and becoming great.  Don’t try to be a control freak and moderate and censor all of the comments that other bloggers leave on your blog!  Simply put, don’t try to control your blog too much.  Allow your blog to grow into the blog that it was destined to become, and not the blog that you envisoned it to be when it was born.  Like I said earlier, treat your blog like you would a child, and respect the direction that it wants to take in it’s life.

Living Life

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you to rething the way that you treat your blog.  So many of us take such a boring approach to our blogging, and aren’t using our creativity and our wits when we sit down to create content.  But not only that, but sometimes, like any other art form, the answer is to just let the blog become what it is going to become.  Painters don’t always have a clear cut vision of what they want to paint, scuptors don’t always know exactly what their statues are going to look like;  musicians are known to improvise when the inspiration kicks in, so why should your blog follow a linear path?  Simply put, it doesn’t have to!  Let your blog live it’s own life, and try to learn to respect that.