thatgirlisfunny.com

Adventures in living a healthy, juicy life

by Cheryl Ragsdale

One year of blogging under my belt!

I didn’t even know what blogging was about when I first started. I had an idea that it might be fun. Turns out, it’s a lot of work.

But along the way, I’ve been challenged, frustrated, enlivened and I’ve found my voice online.

I’m still a bit shy about video (vlogging). Surprising to think of me as shy, but I do have areas of my life where I’m not being a She-Warrior.

“Thank heavens!”

I don’t mind being in front of the camera. It’s just that I think my voice sounds weird – which results in me being nervous and then, of course, my voice sounds weird.

Getting used to the sound of my own voice seems like a challenge worthy of a woman stepping confidently forward on the “yes, I’m in my 50′s” direction.

The image to the right is taken from a powerpoint slideshow that has been set to music and loaded onto youtube. It’s called the “Bright Red Hat” and was sent to me by my long time friend, Lisa Mead, who came to Boston to visit me not too long ago.

I have a bright red hat. Let’s visit some of the interesting places where me and my red hat have gone this year.

Interesting Things That Have Happened Along the Way

Lance Ekum, from the JungleofLife, has invited me to participate in several of his fun projects.

The first video project was about people dancing in their cars. I agreed, with reservations. As you can see from this still image taken from the video, I get shy. Let the steering wheel get all the attention this time till I get used to it – lol!

I’m especially pleased with his most recent video created in support of the Levity Project.

http://thelevityproject.com/ The Levity Project is a social movement creating change through public acts of play, laughter, and celebration. Our goal is to create a global community in which people come together to create an upward spiral of global positive social change.

The Levity Project created the Micro-Movement concept in which people from around the world take part in an event with no time or location barriers. We see it as an online flash mob. The idea behind the micro-movement is that what starts with one can touch many.

Look for me around 2:25 minutes in (not speaking, just smiling).  Enjoy the radiance!

One World, One Smile Video

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thatgirlisfunny Quiz

My first Quiz!  Just for fun, this quiz determines what type of reader ThatGirlisFunny is attracting.  Here’s my result below. There are 9 simple questions. Spend a couple of minutes and see which category you fall into. No information will be collected about you by me because I didn’t pay for the service.

The quiz is located to the right of this post midway down the sidebar.

I’ve taken the quiz twice and received a different answer each time.

Guess it just depends on your mood.

Um, no, unfortunately, that’s not me happily smashed between two hunks.

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Something Off my Bucket List

You know how you make a list of goals or fun things that you’d like to do before you “kick the bucket”?

Well, my list has more meaning – more urgency, perhaps – as I make my way through my 50′s.

I have “appear in a commercial” as one of my “wouldn’t it be funny if…” entries on my Bucket List.

Guess what…it happened!

NHL Holiday Dec 2009

No, not for the National Hockey League…

This commercial is licensed to appear on the NH Lottery TV page for one year.

Look at my 20-something “husband”! That made my day – lol!

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Kenny Florian Trivia Game

Speaking of twenty-somethings, Life at FloMAC – Florian Martial Arts Center – where I train in Brazilian jiu jitsu and Muay Thai kick-boxing, has been fun. Lots of laughs, love, physical adventures and mis-haps.

For the complete video collection of the Life at FloMac and the UFC Fighter, Kenny Florian Trivia Games, click the links below.

Wait, is that my bright red hat again? Lol!

• Florian Martial Arts Center – Life at FloMAC Video Series

• Results Kenny Florian Trivia Game – UFC Fight Night 21 – Florian vs Gomi

• The Official UFC 107 KenFlo Trivia Game!

• My UFC 107 Weekend with the Boyz

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Guest Post Give-Away with Genuine Health

My very first give-away was a “Genuine” success!  I’m still not sure why Genuine Health thought it was a good idea to trust me to develop a give-away that would drive traffic and promote their quality products.  They gave me three $150 gift baskets to give away near the end of last year (2009). I’d only been blogging a few months!

I set up the contest with three winners – one for each category:  best comment, best guest post and best “stay young from the inside out” health post submitted (you didn’t even have to write it, just find it).

I was very surprised at the low participation in the two easiest categories: find a link and write a comment.

So surprised, in fact, that I dropped the link request – due to lack of interest – and created two guest post winners.

That turned out to be a fantastic decision.

• Announcing the Genuine Health Gift Basket Give-Away Winners!
• 51 Must-Know Habits for Staying Young – from the Inside Out

To this day, six of my Top 25 Most Popular Posts were written by guest authors participating in this give-away.

My original give-away announcement has 3,008 views (as of right now).

My 6 guest posters have received 21,987 views.

That’s a total of 24,995 views!

Since that time, one of the guest contributors, Hayley Forster, has written seven more posts. Six of those posts are a series covering her recent adventure preparing for and actually completing the Tough Guy 2010 Challenge.

The Top 25 Most Popular Posts list on thatgirlisfunny is located in the footer, third column over from the left, underneath this post).

Success with generating guest posts for my blog gave me courage to approach BlogCatalog. Jason Teitelman made a request to the BlogCatalog community looking for people who wanted to be Blog Advocates – people who would write about and promote other people’s blogs.

I sent him an email.

After awhile, he wrote back and said YES! Wow!

Jijo Sunny from mextena is one of the bloggers I chose to feature. Flattery will get you everywhere! Here’s what Jijo said after his post went live, “Her blog is really impressive and Cool. Check it: That Girl is Funny. Nope… That Girl is Rocking ”

Here’s his post to commemorate the occasion:

Find me on The BlogCatalog Homepage

http://mextena.com/im-so-happy-today-to-see-my-face-on-blogcatalog-homepage/

I felt him smile all the way from the other side of the world.

You can read all of my contributions – as well as some top notch articles contributed by my blogging buddies – on this link: thatgirlisfunny on blogcatalog

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Being accepted to publish on BlogCatalog gave me a push to spread my wings and establish myself as someone who could write about Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

I approached Mitch from SportsChatPlace.com. He allowed me – along with Hayley Forster – to publish our fight picks and opinions on UFC events.  That was a really fun experience. I got so excited that I got a few things wrong in my first post (left out a few important details), but Hayley was there to fill in the missing bits and a dynamic duo – the battle of the fight pickers – was born.  We haven’t written anything new for SCP recently – too busy!

Both Hayley and I send Mitch a heartfelt thank you for giving us the opportunity to get our feet wet on an all boy sports channel.

Next stop for major guest posting potential is KennyFlorian.com.  I train with Kenny and his brother, Keith Florian (I train mostly with Keith) at Florian Martial Arts Center. Kenny invited me to post on his site about mixed martial arts from a girl’s point of view.  You can see what I’ve written so far:  thatgirlisfunny on kennyflorian.com

All that talking about mixed martial arts earned me the opportunity to appear on the cover of Don McGrath’s book called “50 Athletes over To Teach Us to Live a Strong, Healthy Life.

I’m a big fan of guest posting.  Isn’t it funny how one decision leads to the next and the next and the next?

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Breaking New Ground

Being busy…isn’t everyone?

Even so, I started two new blogging ventures.  One is called AspiringFempreneur, a blog for female entrepreneurs or fem-preneurs as Life Coach Susan Liddy, my partner likes to say.  I haven’t been spending as much time there because I’ve been busy with my new social bookmarking project called  TGIF Links.  This is something I need to get back into my schedule for Blogging Year 2.

TGIF Links

…just like digg only smaller.

My new major project for Year 2 is to create a really fun and social bookmarking site to assist bloggers in generating healthy, juicy backlinks.

A link back or back link is a critical currency online. Search engines notice who is linking to whom in order to determine placement on those so important google pages, for instance.

There are many ways to create backlinks.

Social bookmarking is an acceptable way to increase the number of links pointing back to your site. Digg, stumbleupon, Mixx, Mr. Wong are some very popular bookmarking communities.

Now, I’m adding TGIF Links to the list. I hope as part of your visit today, you’ll go over to TGIF and drop a link or two.

I would love for TGIF Links to become your favorite tool for maximizing your online linkage opportunities.

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Thanks to everyone who has offered their friendship and support over this past year.  I look forward to Year 2. Expect much more video from me as I tackle my fear of speaking (sounding stupid – why would anyone want to listen to me anyway) on camera.

Imagine the possibilities!

What will you take on this next (school) year?

September always feels like the beginning of a new year to me.

Comments please! The comment box is over on the right hand side of this post.

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