Nominated for 9Rules – Not Worthy

According to Ping Six and 9Rules, Lorelle on WordPress has been chosen from among 700 entrants as one of the preliminary 111 finalists for inclusion in the 9Rules Blogging Network. Wow! What an honor.

According to 9Rules, in order to qualify for inclusion in 9Rules, your site must have some of the following elements:

• A passion for the subject that you are writing for.
• Quality writing.
• Consistency in writing quantity.
• Topics that fill a niche within 9Rules.
• Clean, easy-to-read, and matches content design.

I feel like some hack old movie star telling the media that it is “just an honor to be nominated”, but in this case, it’s true. 9Rules is hot. It has changed the face of blogging today by attracting and promoting top level bloggers on a variety of topics who continually work to raise the bar in blogging and writing. 9Rules bloggers consistently make us think. They make us challenge our thought process and our opinions, whatever the topic.

I can only say one thing about the honor of being among those under consideration for inclusion:

I am not worthy.

That’s not humility speaking. That is fear. If I am chosen to be part of the 9Rules blogging network, I will feel a greater sense of responsibility to you, my readers. I will have to work harder. I will feel added pressure to live up to some kind of expectation. It is a responsibility as well as an honor. And part of me fears it.

Having suffered a lifetime of haircuts from hell, I love Ray Stevens’ “The Haircut Song”. The last part of the following lyrics have been running through my head since the announcement:

…He started cuttin’ my hair and preachin’ at the same time.
I mean he’s a wild man, scissors and razors a’flyin’ around my head,
he’s talkin’ about the liquor and wild women and music and sex
and the evils of dancing and the music business in general.
Then he looked down at me and he said, “What do you do for a living?”

Now, I’m not ashamed of what I do for a livin’.
Workin’ bars and casinos, around liquor and wild women.
I just play my piano, sing my little songs.
I looked him right in the eye and I said,
“I run this church for loggers…”

That’s me. I’m not ashamed of what I do here. I just write my little blog, talk my little talk. I want to look 9Rules in the eye and say with great gusto, “I’m the best damn blogger on the planet.”

But I can’t. So I’d say, “I have this little blog on WordPress.com. It’s free, and not much of a thing, no trouble at all, I just babble on about WordPress and some bits and pieces about blogging, saying not much at all, and certainly nothing anyone would every care about or notice at all.”

Okay, I wouldn’t ramble. Honestly, if I get one of those famed email invites, I will probably say: NOT WORTHY NOT WORTHY.

Later That Same Day…

I told my mother about this post and the nomination for inclusion in the 9Rules Network. She’s very proud, of course, and she brought up an interesting point I’d like to share with you.

She told me of receiving several high honors when she was young, early in her career, and how she responded to two of them differently. “Back when I was full of myself, I knew I was good. I was the expert. Since I was so good, why should I bother? Everyone knew it. They’d just told me so. I didn’t have to prove anything. Then I started getting careless.” She got sloppy and lost the accreditation and soured her reputation. It didn’t stop her, but she learned that there is a price for arrogance.

“In later years,” she explained, “I received another very high honor, one I felt I didn’t deserve. Things were different. I now had to earn it. I had to work harder, stay more focused, and live up to their expectations. I had to prove to them and others that I was deserving of the honor.”

This is the responsibility that I’m talking about. It’s a burden. It’s an obligation. Whether or not I “deserve” it isn’t as important as how I feel about it and what I’m going to do about it. Such an honor isn’t about “sitting back on your laurels”, it’s about working even harder. I think that’s a point worthy of consideration. They’ve announced that the email invites will be going out later this week, so I still have time to digest this and consider what this may mean.

What do you think inclusion in 9Rules would mean for you if you were invited?

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