Nice Job Badges! | June 29

It’s Friday, June–

Wait, it’s not Friday, June 29? What do you mean it’s Monday?

Fine, point taken, but you try reading every blog post in your WordPress reader during a week that involved both moving and a 1,200 mile (1,930 km) road trip! Essentially, it has been the busiest week ever. Therefore, I’ll be posting the new section of Dysontopia tomorrow instead of today.

Anyway, despite it being a Monday, it’s time for Nice Job Badges! These are five blog links this week that deserve a high-five and a “nice job!”

THINGS:

• If someone makes an amazing post one week, then makes another the next, I will feature them two weeks in a row.
• I will not typically feature the same blogger twice on one list, unless I’m really blown away.
• The posts will all loosely be from the current seven day period.
• They are in no particular order because they’re all great.
• Hey, you should totally put the badge on your recognized piece with a pingback to this post!

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The Thing About PTSD | A Geeky Gal

After my first session, my therapist dropped the bomb on me. Yes, I have anxiety, but I have PTSD also. I felt like a train screeching to a halt. What? How? Me? Why? I was confused and couldn’t understand. I only came for my anxiety. I didn’t ask for this.

I was honored to help design for Megan’s post, as she delves into her own experiences with PTSD. It’s really a powerhouse in exploration of an issue which doesn’t have the recognition it requires. An automatic for a badge, it’s a piece you should just go read right now.

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Hello, World… Again! | Livid Lightning

Once I topped 500 followers on Twitter, what should have been a happy accomplishment had the opposite effect on my weird brain. My mind just snapped and I fell into complete self-destruction. I didn’t deserve any of this success or to be a part of such a great community, so I deleted everything.

I was really sad a few weeks ago when I scoured the internet to find barely a trace of LightningEllen’s existence. I felt such a relief when this amazing blogger popped back up in the social sphere. What is effectively a reintroduction to blogging by LightningEllen is also an interesting exploration of how human brains can be chaotic at best. Go welcome Livid Lightning back into the blogging realm!

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Prince Edward Island: A Place I Always Return To | HideNGoShauna

I don’t have any family in PEI, but this island has been a place that my family has traveled to together for many summers. Sometimes it was just me, my sister, my parents and our dogs. Other times our grandparents and cousins, accompanied us, and we made so many fun memories.

I love a good travel blog post, and Prince Edward Island locations have often been featured over on @gladtopographies. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go, but newcomer HideNGoShauna has done it for me! And it looks so beautiful and fascinating, especially in the summer. It was like a vicarious mini-vacation for me during a terribly busy week.

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Content is King. Or is it? | The Art of Blogging

I think it’s smarter to say that content is indispensable. It’s what people go online to find, and it’s what Google loves. There are only a few online marketing models that don’t require valuable content, and those few are getting tougher by the day, and result in no long-term assets.

I got a new follower this week, and it was all-star content development guru The Art of Blogging! It’s such a simple concept — a blog about making blogs better. Reading through their stuff, it looks like Jordan read my mind about hating the phrase “content is king.” Deriving from the inaccuracy of the phase, the writer gives some superb advice on the mentality a blogger needing to develop good content. Namely, that content and marketing are not mutually exclusive concepts. If you’re a blogger, go check it out!

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The Shoes | Stories I’ve Never Told…

Desperate times call for desperate measures. For the entirety of the next day, I kept my shoes off while I was outside, and I left the shoes on the porch during lunch. Nobody spoke of any foul smells, but I knew the evening would be my real challenge.

Let’s end on a very entertaining, low-key note. There is no fancy prose, no elegant poetry, no thousand-plus word reviews. It’s just a story about stinky shoes. And it’s one of the most fun things I’ve read all week. As a society living in an age of constant technological feedback and instant access to stats, we desperately need to tell more stories about stinky shoes.

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Did I miss any links you think deserve recognition? Do a Nice Job by sharing them with us in the comments!