Let's BlogOff

This is the 48th Blog Off topic we’ve introduced and it’s also the last. Painful though it may be, it’s time to just admit that this bloggery phenomenon has seen its day in the sun and at this point, it’s in the rear view mirror.

Gerard and I have been carrying this thing and as our professional lives have intervened, it’s become more and more inconvenient and there’s been less and less a return on our efforts. As the social web’s matured so have we. Not just Gerard and I, but all of us who’ve participated since all of this started in August of 2010. We hope that we’ve made a difference in our participants’ lives but it’s time to call it a night.

All of the archived blog posts will live on in a new website and you can find it here. This means everybody’s links will remain live ’til further notice and maybe forever. What it means too is that this website’s going to go away after we wrap up this Blog Off.

We’re sad about this of course, but it’s just time to chase down other interests and opportunities.

Many thanks to everybody who’s ever participated in #LetsBlogOff and thanks for your willingness to go along with our at times crazy ideas.

So for the next Blog Off, let’s write an obituary for the Blog Off. What did you get from this exercise and what would you have done differently had you been at the helm? What new bloggers did you meet through this exercise you’d have never met otherwise? What do you plan to do next?

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Less than a thousand years ago, some idiot climbed into a leaky boat and sailed off toward the edge where the sky met the water. His friends pleaded with him not to go, that he would fall off the face of the Earth. But he went. And he returned.

Eighteen years ago, The Shawshank Redemption was released that had what I consider the best line ever. “I’ve convinced you to come this far. I’m hoping you’re willing to go just a littler bit further.”

Where is the edge of your world? Did you ever take a step beyond that horizon?

Treat the theme any way you want and publish on your blog post any time on Tuesday, April 24th. Then, send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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Spring is in the air, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. And spring means flowers; or the promise of flowers depending on your gardening prowess.

Tell us your favorite flower story. Do you like flowers? Do they make you sneeze? Do you have a favorite? Or maybe you have a least favorite.

Treat the flower theme any way you want and publish on your blog post any time on Tuesday, April 10th. Then, send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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The Girl Scouts do their best this time every year to make sure we are stuffed to the gills with cookies. Boxes of those cookies — complete with pleading, eager young faces feeding us a side of guilt — are everywhere; at the office, in front of the library, at your grocery store.

What the heck, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

This week, the Let’s Blog Off is all about cookies. Do you love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Bake ‘em? Or give them away as holiday presents? Here at the Let’s Blog Off offices, we are not shy about the fact that we have sometimes paid good money to unsuspecting travelers to act as mules bringing us dozens of peanut butter chocolate and brown sugar oatmeal raisin cookies from Levain Bakery in New York City. But that is probably a story for another day. Right after the intervention.

And we’re back!

Write your favorite cookie story. Or recipe. It doesn’t really matter how you treat the theme. Just make it delicious. Or not, your choice.

Publish on your blog post any time on Tuesday, March 27th and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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In an era where everyone who’s anyone publishes content to the internet, the English language is being abused like never before.

While it’s true that English is a remarkably adjustable tongue, there are some rules. We pride ourselves around here with our strict adherence to AP Style. Even that changes with alarming regularity.

So it led us to the next Blog Off topic. What grammar offense strikes you as the worst? Which abrogation of the rules that govern our language rub you raw? How many variations on our communal language can you tolerate before you say enough?

Let us know and be sure to weigh in on March 13 for the next installation of the Blog Off.

Publish on your blog post any time on Tuesday, March 13th and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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It’s that song that gets stuck in your head that some call an earworm.

You can read a tweet with some lyrics snippet or hear it briefly while on hold or as you pass by a local shop. Sometimes a brief listen to a radio station as you flip the dials will put a song in your head. And you can’t get rid of it.

That is all the prompting we’re giving you on this one. We hate to be the ones stuffing any tunes in your head that you can’t easily get rid of. Tell us a story about your favorite earworm or a time when you had song in your head or even when you didn’t. White noise is music sometimes, right?

Publish on your blog post anytime on Tuesday, February 28th and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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It’s been said that the most powerful sense is the scent. It has been used by retailers to enhance the shopping experience, by perfume-makers to make you feel more attractive and restaurants to enhance a dining experience. Smell even stole the show in the movie Annie when she was saying goodbye to Daddy Warbucks for what she thought was the last time. She pressed her face into his coat and said, “I’m making a memory.”

What smell brings you back to a time and place?

Publish on your blog post anytime on Tuesday, February 14th and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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Around the Let’s Blog Off offices, we’ve been reading a lot (and talking a lot) about the Great Depression and the huge body of literature produced during the years after the stock market crash and the beginning of World War II.

Most of us around here had grandparents who lived through those years and we grew up with living reminders of what it’s like to be comfortable and then have that taken away. The generations that lived through those years were marked for life. Some people came out of it stronger and some people were simply broken by it. It’s easy to get nostalgic about past generations but that’s a trap. Life was as hard and disappointment as bitter as it is now.

It got us thinking about intergenerational relationships and how elders influence the generations that succeed them. So our question for this iteration of the Blog Off is this: What stories from the generations that proceeded you are the stories you hold close? What story your grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt or elderly neighbor stands out for you? How do these stories affect your daily life now?

If you want to delve a little deeper, what stories are you leaving the younger people in your life? For all of the technology available today, human culture’s still passed from generation to generation verbally.

So where do you fit into that?

Publish on your blog post anytime on Tuesday, January 31st and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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Maybe I’ve read one too many “letters to my 16-year old self” or perhaps the pangs of regret have been nipping at the heels of my mortality as I feel time rushing by at double-time each year I age, but this struck me as a great theme for a Lets Blog Off when I found myself whispering it into the unresponsive darkness at 3:27 am last Monday.

Yeah, I know. A bit melodramatic. But man, if I could turn back time to 3:26am on Monday…

What would you change if you could turn back time?

Publish on your blog post anytime on Tuesday, January 17th and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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Be sure to add the table of bloggers to your post and it will build automatically for this #letsblogoff, copy/paste the JavaScript below at the end of your post. To be included on the table, you must display the badge on your blog post AND tweet to @letsblogoff AND publish between 12:00am and 9:00pm US-Eastern time. (New rule; we like sleep too)

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Between now and Tuesday, enjoy the earworm this theme has been giving us. And no, we have NOT been blasting this video at ear-shattering decibels throughout the LetsBlogOff offices…. maybe…

It’s a new year. Just like with every year, January brings with it the promise of a new way to go about doing things and a new way to look about life as you know it.

January derives its name from the Roman god Janus. Janus had two faces, one that looked forward and and another that looked backward. It’s difficult to look ahead without assessing the past or at least taking stock of where you are now. That’s the function Janus played –he looked forward and assessed the past at the same time. That was his role in the Roman pantheon, the abilty to look back and ahead concurrently.

He guided over transitions and was the patron god of doorways; be they literal, abstract, sacred or profane. Janus looked over both plantings and harvests and his control of time ruled even Jupiter.

Excuse my segue into classical mythology, but what does Janus hold for you this year? One of the most interesting aspects to Janus is that his influence wasn’t considered to be automatic. Janus required the active participation of everyone he presided over.

Janus is gone these days of course. However his legacy continues in the sense that modern people look forward to a new year with an eye on where they’ve been. Every new year brings with it a new opportunity to change the way things are. What’s going to be different this year from the way things are now as you look forward?

Honestly and without invoking any old and discarded Roman gods, what are you looking for in this new year? How are you going to change life as you know it and make something different happen in the next 12 months?

What accomplishments are you looking forward to this year and what milestones do you expect to pass? How are they going to be different from the accomplishments and milestones you’ve already passed?

Join the rest of the Blog Off gang on Tuesday, January 3rd and weigh in on this topic. Let us know what the new year has in store for you and more importantly, what you have in store for the new year. There’s a difference you know.

Publish on your blog post anytime on Tuesday, January 3rd and send a tweet to @letsblogoff (and fill out the form here if it is your first contribution) so we can pick it up and add you to the list of participating bloggers. Be sure to visit all the other bloggers to see how they tackled the theme. Retweets and comments are always appreciated. Remember to use the #LetsBlogOff hash tag in your Tweets. The editors reserve the right to accept or decline any submissions.

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Be sure to add the table of bloggers to your post and it will build automatically for this #letsblogoff, copy/paste the JavaScript below at the end of your post. To be included on the table, you must display the badge on your blog post AND tweet to @letsblogoff AND publish between 12:00am and 9:00pm US-Eastern time. (New rule; we like sleep too)

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