It's all happening!

TopBlogMag is moving!
We are morphing!

We are becoming much much more about you and your own blogs!

Top Blog Mag is now...

Blog Nosh Magazine!

The new site is currently under construction, but will be up and running soon. Come over, check out the details that are posted so far, including the new theme behind the site, and let me know what you think!

Thank you for all of your support, your patience, and your enthusiasm.
Delicious things are in our future.
-Megan

Issue 29: Opportunity is a Bird That Never Perches

Note from the Editor:

***TopBlogMag is under major renovation/ demolition/reconstruction. Bear with us.***

How often are we presented with an opportunity and we hesitate a moment too long? Poof. It vanishes before our eyes. It slips through our fingers.

Or we never even recognized it in the first place.

Are your eyes open to the opportunities around you? Are you waiting for them to fall into your lap or are you poised to pounce at the first, well, opportunity?

Here we are, two issues in from the point that I pounced on the opportunity to take over TopBlogMag and I am still scrambling to pull it together. So many ideas being fleshed out, so many designs being prepared to implement. I could have used two or three months between the moment I accepted the position and the moment in which I actually took over.

But that wasn't the choice I was given.
So here we are.

And I love it.
I am accepting the changes and embracing the opportunity. So are our writers.

Debbie from Missives from Suburbia offers a glimpse into the reality that is online dating and how being open to opportunities, no matter how unlikely they may first appear, can be the gateway to unexpected blessings.

John from altjiranga mitjina writes about an opportunity that he did embrace but that managed to slip away anyway.

Karen Rayne from Adolescent Sexuality finds herself given an opportunity that she didn't even realize she was looking for, but a valuable one worth exploring, nonetheless.

As our Featured Post and Blog of the Week, Amie from MammaLoves... sums up my feelings about opportunity precisely, with a bit of speculation about the paths opportunity leads us down... as well as those paths not taken.

Finally, I am seizing the opportunity myself to share with you a guest post I originally published as a spur-of-the-moment guest blogger on Queen of Spain. The Queen of Spain is a rock-solid blogger in Southern California... yeah, that Southern California. The one in the news all the time right now. The one on fire.

Along with hundreds of other families, the Queen of Spain recently had to evacuate her home. As I write this, her home has remained mostly unscathed, however hundreds of other families have not been so lucky.

This is our opportunity. It is our chance to lend a hand to those in need.

Below are a handful of links to relief agencies benefiting families that are suffering due to the fires in Southern California, courtesy of the Queen of Spain.

Additionally, I am linking to the American Red Cross, an organization my family accepted help from after Hurricane Katrina and to whom I will be eternally grateful. I saw firsthand how they use their funds. It was astonishingly comforting and effective.

Visit the links. See if there is anything you can do. You would be amazed at how far just a little help can go to comfort families who have lost everything. It is a wonderful opportunity to step up.

In the meantime, join in the conversation. Read this week's submissions, visit the author's blogs, then join in the discussion. Post on your own blog about this week's theme, send me the link, and we will feature it in the "Joining In..." feature at the bottom of the page. Be sure to check back often to see who has joined in. Opportunities abound this week, however...

Opportunity is a bird that never perches. ~Claude McDonald
************


Santa Clarita Valley Disaster Coalition

Southern California Wildfire Resource Page
(a comprehensive list of relief organizations in
the devastated Southern California area)

Note from the Editor.

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
~Kurt Lewin

We are one step closer to realizing my revamped version of Top Blog Magazine. You have all been very generous with your suggestions and comments, making some points crystal clear (see poll results below). To say the least, it is encouraging to see how invested you are in this process and the final product. Encouraging and exciting.

As we are still in transition, you will see very few of the proposed changes this week. Despite my lofty goals, it is apparently not possible to change everything right out of the gate. Believe me, I've tried. That's why I love that Kurt Lewin quote. This is absolutely a learning process. Apparently, I also have a bit of a learning curve...

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
~Epictetus

Miss smarty pants here has a few things to learn still. In the meantime, you'll have to make do with the ever-so-slight template change (bye, bye, yellow! we'll miss you!) and wait with baited breath for the new banner and other design element changes. All new buttons are on the way, as well. Who doesn't love some new blog bling?

Content changes will be more gradual. More than anything, you set the pace for that.

The poll results are split evenly between your wanting to submit content from your own blog's archives and wanting the challenge of themed creative writing submissions. I am hesitant to set hard and fast rules for content, so for now I'm going to keep it simple:

Consider this an open call for submissions from your personal blog's old archives. This call applies to current writers for TopBlogMag, as well as anyone else that would like to become a contributor. We'll iron out the guidelines more specifically later, but for now, please pull posts that are at least one month old. Do you have something you are particularly proud of or thought deserved more attention than it received at the time? Send it in.

Make your submissions strong, as they could determine the direction of an entire issue.

In short, the way the submission assignments have worked in the past is that an email is sent out to the current list of writers each week, usually assigning a particular theme to five or six writers on a rotating basis. From now on, regarding open submission calls versus assigned writers for each issue, that may fluctuate on an issue by issue basis. Depending on the backlog of republished archive submissions received, we may have some weeks where there is no open call and other weeks where there is nothing but assigned writers.

If you would like to be added to the writer's list for TopBlogMag and receive the weekly emails regarding submission calls, just send me your email address and link to your blog, along with a brief note detailing your interest. I am looking for fresh voices, men and women, all niches. If you think you wouldn't fit in, chances are you are exactly what I'm looking for right now.

And then I have to take a deep breath.

Change is risky. Growth is dangerous.

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
~Anais Nin

Change. Risk. Growth. Our writers had plenty to say on this matter.

Read their stories. Visit their blogs. Along the way, if something inspires you to write, post it on your blog and send me the link to be added to the "Joining In" featured section at the bottom of the page. If the spotlight isn't shining on you this week, grab it and shine it on yourself.

Take the risk. Push your limits. Bloom. And please do let us watch.

***

Megan from Velveteen Mind

Metamorphosis.

When I first heard of TopBlogMag, I thought it would be an online magazine of the top blog posts out there. I pictured a sort of culling of the best of the best of contributing blogs. A virtual one-stop-shop for new blog finds.

In some sense, that is exactly what I found. However, rather than republished posts from blogger's archives, I found creative writing challenges. Daring bloggers to be writers. Daring writers to step out of the comfort zones of their usual content.

I immediately signed on.

My name is Megan Jordan, from Velveteen Mind, and I'm your new editor, as well as the new owner of TopBlogMag. I am endlessly grateful to Heather for handing me the reigns of her work. She will be missed as editor, but will be enthusiastically welcomed as a frequent contributor. An understatement, indeed.

This week's issue is more or less a pseudo-issue. An un-issue. Or, more precisely, a call for more issues. We are in transition and I am calling on you to speak up, step up, and tell me where you would like to see TopBlogMag go from here. Heather has done a fabulous job, so I'd hate to let her down. Let's make her proud. Even better, let's make her totally jealous of the amazing heights we can take TopBlogMag to in the days to come.

TopBlogMag is a magazine written by you.

Now is your opportunity to make it a magazine designed by you, as well.

What new features would you like to see? What are your favorite current features? Anything you'd like to see go? Content changes? Style changes? Rather see me leave it just as Heather has it now? Well, uh, good luck with that last one. I'm a tweaker.

In the feature boxes below, I'm going to launch a running poll offering up some of the top suggestions. Play along. Vote for what you would like to see added and what you would like to see discontinued. This is absolutely unofficial, but it will be fun and truly helpful to gather an idea of what direction you would like to take.

Don't see your idea listed? Leave a comment or send me an email and I'll add it to the "Brainstorming" feature.

I'll start. That's my job now, right?

The biggest content change I hope to make is that I would like to open up the submission process to allow you all to submit posts from your personal blogs' old archives. Have a solid post you were particularly proud of but that didn't garner the attention you felt it deserved? Now is the time to dust that baby off and give it new life at TopBlogMag.

Opening submissions to include republished content will be the boldest step toward my original impression of what an online magazine titled "TopBlogMag" must be.

At its most simple, I would love to see TopBlogMag as a magazine of the top blog posts available. Stumble across a powerful post in someone else's archive and think, "More people should read this!"? Encourage that blogger to send it our way. Building your own "favorite posts" page for your blog and want a more powerful way to highlight your true favorite? This is your platform.

At the core, I would like TopBlogMag to reward bloggers for
writing their best content on their own blogs.

So many of us spread our writing out among several different sites, frequently farming out our best work to what we perceive as more popular sites, all in a hope to find new readers. Unfortunately, that means that we occasionally neglect our current readers. We drag them all over the internet to read our brilliant musings, when all they want is to cozy up in a familiar place where they can count on the good stuff to be delivered.

If we can create a magazine that highlights both creative writing challenges and our own best work from our own best damn blogs, then we'll have something. Something collaborative. Something beneficial. Something dynamic.

So, tell me, what is TopBlogMag to you?

Note From the Editor

Secrets, love them or hate them we all have them, but the question today is should they be used as blog fodder or not? We all know it is easier to tell things to people you don't know, people whose reactions don't affect your immediate life, but where does the moral line stand with blogs? Is it the same as telling a stranger in a bar?

Should you reveal your secrets, things that you wouldn't tell the real people in your life for fear of hurting them or embarrassing yourself, to your readers? And can they ever be truly anonymous secrets?

If I was to create a blog with no pictures, no real names or real places, wouldn't the people that knew me know it was really me anyway?

Should a friend or family member stumble across your blog and recognise you do they have the right to be upset about what you have written or should blogs come under the same rules as diaries - ie if you read it you have no right to be upset about what you find in it?

Let me know what you think and don't forget, if you have an idea for a blog post on this weeks theme, secrets, simply email me the url and I shall put a link to your blog in the joining in box below.

Note From The Editor

The 7 deadly sins:

• Lust? Check.
  
• Gluttony? Check.
  
• Greed? Check.
  
• Sloth? Check.
  
• Wrath? Check.
  
• Envy? Check.
  
• Pride? Check.
  

What can I say? I'm a sinner.

Or at least I would be if I believed in God.

I think it would be fair to say that I have committed every single one of these sins and then some at one time or another (possibly 2 already this morning) and might even have made up a few more to add to the list, but what does this say about me? Are these sins really relevant in the modern world? Are they still considered deadly sins? Does the fact that I have committed them make me a bad person destined for the gates of hell?

Personally, I believe not (especially the gates of hell thing being an atheist), I think we all have a little anger, envy and pride in us. I would hope so at least, these things are what make us human. Would we rather be perfect, flawless specimens of humanity? Wouldn't the smugness and do-goodness of it all drive you insane? Make you want to drive sharp, pointy implements into the eyes of the next person you witnessed being oh so good? I think it probably would me.

What about you, are you a sinner? Do you find yourself committing one or more of these on a regular basis?

Note From The Editor

Change. It happens to us all whether we yearn for it or fight it every step of the way. We see it in our reflection in the mirror, in the colour of the leaves on the trees and the number of outgrown clothes in our children's wardrobes. Changes happen in our lives everyday, many progressing so slowly that they go by unnoticed and others so monumental that things will never be the same again.

How has change affected your life?

Has it brought with it wisdom and clarity or has the passage of time only brought a sense of confusion and a feeling of getting old? Do you feel lost in the sea of new music that only sounds like noise to you now? Confused by the tiny silver gadgets that do things you didn't even know you needed doing? Or do you ride the wave of change reveling in all that is new and different, refusing to let it make you grow old and rising to each new challenge it brings?

Tell us your story of change.


Our Editor, The Farmers Wife can be found at her blog Running In Wellies where she talks about her new life on foreign shores, embarrassing tales of new and old and other miscellaneous nonsense.

Note From The Editor

The crazy state of constant daytime, with 24 hours of daylight throughout the summer have come to an end and the temperatures are dropping below freezing in the early hours out here on the farm. Summer is most definitely over.

With the harvesting of the potato crop and storing of wood for the long winter months, autumn also brings with it a time of introspection and contemplation. A time for remembering the year gone by and looking forward to what is still to come. A time to sit and organise one's thoughts so tell us, dear readers, what have you been thinking of this week? What is on your mind?

Write your post, post it on your blog and email me the url, and I shall add it to the list of posts below. Don't forget to include a link back to us here at TopBlogMag.

Note From The Editor

When I say the word 'colour' to you what do you think of? Do you think of skin colour and race? Of the bright gaudy colours of the carnival? Of the emotions different colours provoke or represent?

If you were to choose a colour to base a post on which colour would it be and what would you write about? Would it be memories of that colour in your childhood, the feelings that colour brings with it or something completely different that would be the topic of your post?

Let us know by writing the post, link it to us and email me the URL and I'll add it to the list at the bottom of posts based on this weeks theme: Colours.

Note from The Editor

The fact that this weeks issue is a week late is a fine tribute to this week’s theme: Differences.

The differences between where I used to live and where I live now are huge and yet the longer I live here the less I notice them, until that is, something like a tree falling in the forest and knocking out the power and internet connection to the whole village happens.

My first reaction was one of horror. Whilst everyone else around me merely sighed, shrugged and changed their plans for the day, I was outraged.

“What do you mean the power won’t be back on until the evening? Don’t you realise I have things I need to be doing?!” Hours later, when the electricity came back on but the internet connection was still not working, I was even more outraged. Somehow being able to turn on the computer and not be able to use the internet was infinitely worse than not being able to turn it on at all.

After an hour of pacing around the house, sighing deeply, clicking the firefox icon, sighing, closing it and continuing pacing,

pace,
sigh,
click click,
sigh,
click,
sigh,
pace;

I had finally driven The Farmer nuts and I could tell from the look in his eye that I was in trouble.

When he yelled through the window for me to come outside I did so grudgingly, dragging my feet like a sulking school girl. He gave me a pair of wellies, a couple of buckets and sent me off to the bottom of the garden with strict instructions not to come back into the house until they were both full.

Four hours later I staggered home; back aching, arms bleeding, red sticky fingers clutching full buckets of strawberries and a deep sense of peace and tranquillity radiating from within.

Bemoaning the differences between here and there is all very well, but one must not forget that differences can also be good.

When the internet failed to work the next morning I simply shrugged and changed my plans and when it finally came back on line yesterday, after a week of berry picking, jam making and other rural housewife type activities the feeling was a strange mix of joy and disappointment.


Our Editor, The Farmers wife, can also be found at her blog Running in Wellies.

Issue 19: Note from The Editor

Welcome to Issue 19 of TopBlogMag.

The sounds track to this weeks issue is Kelly Willis about whom you can read more in our Voices to Hear music review written by John from altjiranga Mitjina.


The theme for this week is Questions, a theme that many of us can relate to whether it is the constant barrage of questions from our little ones whose inquiring minds want to know everything but attention spans rarely last long enough to listen to the answer before the next question comes; the "where is my..." questions from the bigger kids and supposed grown ups who think we are responsible for finding things they have lost, or questions like the ones I find myself muttering (or shouting out loud depending on the number of times we have asked the same question in the last 20 minutes) daily, like "where the hell has my post just gone?", "why won't this stupid computer do what I tell it to?" or the ever present, even if only said in our heads "What the F@*&k?"

As some of the more observant of you may have noticed I have a new blogging name, The Farmers Wife. After the harrowing 'father finding my blog and not being particularly happy about it' episode I decided to move all of my posts and comments and set up a new blog over on Wordpress which means that this last week in the Farmers household has been spent mainly asking questions of the last kind as I set everything up, moved all the stuff to my new sidebar and spent a few frustrated hours fiddling with the Wordpress code to tweak my new blog to how I want it.

Now that it is up and running again you are all cordially invited to come for a chat over for a glass or two of wine after, of course, you have spent some time browsing through this weeks issue of TopBlogMag.

Speaking of code tweaking, I have spent some time this week developing a new template for TopBlogMag as I can't seem to fix the viewing problems in IE for this one; so if you have any ideas or suggestions, things you do or don't want to see in the next design please leave a comment letting me know.

The Farmers Wife.
Running In Wellies