Google Doodle on Labor Day

Welcome to my garden!

Why does a domain of one’s own matter?  Why indeed?  

On this Labor Day, 2020, I’m sharing the Google Doodle, showing of all things, the labor we invest in building things.  Like domains.  Presence.  Community.  Perspective.

Certainly from a marketing perspective, one could argue that it’s far more important than you think…It’s space that you own, with metrics and Search Engine Optimization that you control.   You might choose to complement your voice with Facebook or you might choose to avoid that medium altogether.  It is a marketing tool that helps you share what you prioritize with the audience you want to reach.

It’s a place to find your voice, to practice your writing, to build your thoughts, extend your neurons.  It is a place where you get to be you without being accountable to anyone else.  

It is your platform – one that allows you to evolve at the pace that works for you.  

It’s a place to build your presence.  I think about Leo Babauta of Zen Habits when he first started writing his blog, had only his mother as a reader.  I have been following him and his personal journey for over 10 years.  He has used his blog as a vehicle to share his message of change – for becoming the person he wanted to be – his identity evolving as he wrote the story of who he wanted to become. 

It’s a place to build your community.  Writers write for themselves and they write for others.  I have been following Cal Newport and his message of focused work for over 5 years.  

It is an opportunity to travel to new places and enjoy the eye candy. 

It is a place to learn about events that are timely in our lives.  As a result of the race discussions this summer, I realized that I don’t have a very diverse inventory of blog feeds.  So I have just started following a blog on Anti-Racism.  Today’s post was about critical race theory – I would never have come across that in other venues – this allows me a brief journey into areas previously unknown to me. 

But why a blog in an educational program?  For all the reasons above and more…

As Washington State University’s Mike Caulfield lays out, it could be a garden.  And a garden is something that requires cultivation and fertilization.  It is a place where the honeybees and the hummingbirds stop by and it’s a place of refuge and sustenance.  It could be a place to bring students to help them grow and to encourage them to build their own gardens.  

But really, I still think it’s for me – to build my own personal garden, with the plants that I like and the data that I think is important without having to justify my thinking to anyone.  I’ve been using the word ‘sandbox’ a lot because that’s more in the vernacular of building websites.  But ‘garden’ feels more appropriate.  There are seeds sown and cuttings shared and a cross-pollination that just wouldn’t happen in a sandbox.

So come visit my garden – I’ll appreciate the company.  

3 thoughts on “Welcome to my garden!

  1. I don’t want to be repetitive, but I have to say as a garden I really appreciate the garden metaphor. I can honestly say that it has taken time and patience to create a garden that I enjoy and some years it is better than other years. I believe our domains are similar. We take care of them, we can change them, sometimes we post and it is exactly what we want to say and other times we struggle to share what we mean. Yet when it all comes together it is still what is in you.

  2. I really love the comparison to the garden. My attempts at gardening during the quarantine remind me of the way I treated my first domain – with a lot of love and detail at first, and then when a few weeds sprang up, I told myself I’d pull them out later. I never did. I am hoping to start fresh with this new domain and be more attentive because like you said it is a place of your own. A domain is a wonderful place to practice writing and build thoughts. The reference to the passerby bees and hummingbirds also got me thinking that there are people who check on the domain, so it is important to have it be well done. Thank you for your wonderfully, well-written post.

  3. Hi Catherine,

    I really like the garden metaphor and tending to one’s blog in that manner. I think it helps me think about how I can go for long periods on my personal blog without posting, sort of like how gardens can lie fallow or be inactive over winter or other seasons.

Leave a Reply to Morgan Mitchell Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

css.php