Blogging

MONKBOT

What began as a pseudo homage to fifth season American-Idol-contestant-turned-winner Taylor Hicks in 2006 became one of the craziest rides I ever took. Monkbot was a spin-off of the Gray Charles website (now defunct), which helped unite the Soul Patrol (Taylor Hicks' fans) into a online community that rallied behind Hicks during and after the competition. Monkbot began with tracking Hicks on tour, as well as reviewing the sixth season of American Idol. However, the site, ultimately, became about my day-to-day life and the silliness therein. The Monkbot logo was designed by my brother Ben Powers (a graphic artist in Memphis, TN) and quickly became the mascot to those who frequented my site...and was even seen with Taylor Hicks, himself...more than once.  

Below are a few links to and excerpts from the site:


Monkbots Never Really Say Good-Bye

...I wanted to be a Blog Prom Queen.

And for a while, I really felt like a queen. I was praised and lauded and it felt good.

But the funny thing is about the best of plans…

Now, a year later, I don’t focus on how much my writing has improved…nor do I crave praise or adulation. If anything, I see where I have more improvements to make in my writing and…though the compliments have been lovely…I’m more than satiated by the silent numbers that tick over on the hit counter…especially when I see that 200 plus of those daily hits are return visitors.

And even beyond wrangling my ego somewhat over the last year, I’ve learned some valuable lessons from this experience.

I’ve learned that being responsible is more important that brutal honesty. If you were to go back to earlier posts and comments, you would see that I was much looser with my tongue. I felt that being honest meant being free to curse or snark harshly. I felt it made my writing wittier and would draw more people to the blog. But I soon realized that a foul mouth and ugly remarks set a tone for negativity at the site and for other Monkbots. And truth be told, once I started biting my tongue a bit and writing more insightful posts…that’s when the number of regular readers began to grow…slowly…but steadily.

Building on that lesson, I’ve learned that people…all kinds of people…crave to see goodness in the world. Even if that goodness is something as simple as the day-to-day happenings of a silly girl from Mississippi who grows tomatoes and shops at the Kroger and has a sweet little puppy dog named Sadie...