Spread the Love
Welcome to the new and improved “After I Quit My Day Job.” You’ll notice that I’ve replaced the Philadelphia skyline with a background of delightful lavender polka dots. Why? Well, to force you to consider post-colonial notions of displacement and global citizenry, of course! Did you really need me to explain that?
In all seriousness, as I approach the one year anniversary of my return to the US, I’m glad that planning for The Preschool’s Holiday Song Concert is keeping me too busy to think about the fact that I’d intended to observe this anniversary from the other side of the Atlantic—the London side. Since the genesis of this blog, I’ve changed my header photographs from Brighton to Venice, from Venice to Ephesus, from Ephesus to Edinburgh and finally from Edinburgh to Philadelphia in an attempt to convince myself that this—the City of Brotherly Love—is where I belong. But I still have my doubts.
Hence the fact that I’m more comfortable with lavender polka dots and an allegiance to nowhere (and no one) in particular.
In lieu of today’s post, I’ve written a little manifesto on the subject of serial dating, which you’ll find at the top of the page under the heading marked “The Experiment.” I’ve also answered a few more of your questions, so be sure to take a look.
Once you’re done reading “The Experiment” you should probably scroll down and leave a comment (Date #17 has been too busy to email me lately and given that today’s paper was filled with depressing reports on Haiti’s growing cholera epidemic and Israel’s intention to build an additional 1,300 housing units for Jewish settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, I’m in dire need of some fun reading.)
Once you’ve left a comment, you should direct your attention to the bottom of the serial dater manifesto where it says “Spread the Love!” and click on your preferred method of social networking. My site traffic has taken a hit since I’ve stopped posting every day and I find these statistics nearly as depressing as today’s headlines because in order to publish a best seller, you need an agent, and in order to get an agent you have to either sleep with a bunch of guys at Duke and then create a PowerPoint presentation about them, or, you can not sleep with a bunch of guys from Match.com and then write a charming little blog about them. The latter of these options, however, is proving rather difficult so, for your convenience, I’ve compiled the following suggestions for you to cut and paste into your browser when sharing.
1) Check out this blog! Can you believe I went to college with this girl? We always knew Kat was a bit strange… what, with that foreigner she was dating freshman year and that older man she brought to our senior formal. Why didn’t she settle down with a nice Goucher boy while she had the chance?
2) Check out this blog! Can you believe I taught this girl? Obviously she still has a lot to learn.
3) Check out this blog! Can you believe I hired this girl? What a waste of administrative talent.
4) Check out this blog! Can you believe I gave birth to this girl? (I’ll let you finish that one for yourself, Mom.)
5) Check out this blog! Can you believe I dated this girl? Run away. Run far, far, away.
6) And finally: check out this blog! I have no idea who this girl is but I found her blog through WordPress and if you think your love life is a mess, just take a look at hers and you’ll feel much better!
There. I’ve done the hard part for you. Now all you have to do is cut and paste and click “share” and then, when all of your Facebook friends come flocking to The Experiment, I’ll feel much better about the state my world, if not the rest of today’s headlines.
Kat Echevarría Richter 
16 Responses to “Spread the Love”
Love the new look, as well as your “manifesto”. Your new tagline adds a nice flair as well. My wife and I have been reading from China for several months now, and were very impressed with your dedication to writing, your flair for the dramatic, and the originality of your idea.
Unfortunately, just after you confessed your blogging activities to the Man from Marshalls, we felt that the situation became quite unclear and the experiment seemed to fragment (to the point of there actually being no experiment) fairly quickly afterwards.
Not to come down on you (we very much enjoy reading your blog), but are you still conducting any semblance of the experiment? It’s a little difficult to tell. If you want to keep your stats up I suggest being clear in your posts (less vague-ism about how something happened but you’re not actually going to write about it) and defining what exactly it is that you’re writing about.
Apologies if this comes across as harsh, just thought I’d throw you an honest opinion. Thanks for being great! I hope your dream of getting published comes true for you!
Hi John, thanks for your comment. I definitely appreciate the feedback and you’re right, the actual experiment portion of the THE Experiment did take a hit right around the time I started going out with the Man from Marshalls. Whenever I reach the crucial 5th date with someone (Date #4, the Man from Marshalls and the current frontrunner, Date #17) I start to get a bit anxious about blogging about my personal life… and the result, unfortunately, is vagueness on my part and growing discomfort on theirs.
I’m still trying to define what exactly it is that I’m writing about but thank you for your kind wishes in the meantime 🙂
People are so rude, aren’t they? I mean, God forbid, you neglect to generate content ONE day out of the week, and people stop coming to your site.
It’s ridiculous. :-p
By the way, I don’t see any polka dots. 😦
You’re not looking hard enough, Dennis! They’re there. The dots are TOTALLY there. Either that or I was up way too late trying to sort out my widgets with this new theme and I’m now hallucinating…
Ha, okay, fine. I actually zoomed my screen to like 800%, and I finally saw the dots.
Ah, widgets….
BAH, widgets.
Hey, just an fyi for the day you decide to self-host your blog:
You have to search for, download, and install every plug-in/widget individually. When I was transferring Musings over, I had to find a plug-in for the share buttons, a plug-in to allow readers to subscribe to posts, a different plug-in to allow readers to subscribe to comments, as well as a plug-in for every single object on my sidebar.
Holy crap, you have no idea how tedious the process has been….
Anyway, just thought I’d mention that. 🙂
YUCK! Remind me to NEVER, EVER even CONSIDER self hosting.
Ha. I guess it kinda depends on what you hope to do with your blog.
If this is only a take-off point for you to pitch yourself to publishers, then I guess you don’t ever have to worry about self-hosting.
However, if you don’t want to deal with (or are sick of dealing with) publishers and are thinking about self-publishing… well, then you will have to self-host at some point.
Tweeted to my… three followers… that should help.
I think I only have like 6 twitter followers so don’t feel too bad, lol 🙂
Well, new look for new posts, I like that!
I’m gonna make a quick note on my blog with this:
Check out this blog! Can you believe I was teached to tap by this girl? Obviously she was hiding that she had very good writing skills too!!
Oh, dear, I just remember that my readers are french, and that I write in French… well, at least I would have try!
Anyhow, I’ll keep reading, even if it’s just a note a week! (no, please, don’t do that! The more the better!)
I’m sure there are more of us that know you from YFGM than gave birth to you… 😉
Seriously, I only started actually reading this blog recently, although I got some of the gist from the facebook snippets on your posted links. Entertaining and illuminating!
You make a good point, Sam. How about “Can you believe I’ve threshed with this girl?” 😉
I love your blog, but I’m afraid I’m none too keen on the new look. Sorry Kat! It was so nice with the black and white and bright pictures!
I do like the “can you believe I’ve threshed with this girl” line though. Going to use that one in future…
Hmm… well, I generally get bored with the appearance of my blog every few weeks so perhaps the next one will be more to your liking 🙂
So basically, you wear your blog like you wear your outfits. 😉
“Check out this blog! Can you believe I gave birth to this girl? (I’ll let you finish that one for yourself, Mom.)” Hmm…let me see, how can I finish this one, if you are not “Finished” yet? But as for tweeting, just put your tweet settings to automatic “accept” or something like that and you’ll get more followers, I did it when you asked me to tweet your blog, as I used monitor my followers, as I did not tweet anything “follow” worthy. But now I do, 😉
–Your techno mom