I started following him - in the social media sense, not a literal stalking sense - when I had just had my daughter and a friend had posted some of his hilarious post-it notes on Facebook. It was kind of an epiphany, to me, that I had the same thoughts that others did when it came to the odd situations you find yourself in as a parent... not to mention a father. Where that seems a bit sexist on my part, which I freely admit it is, when you are the stay-at-home parent and your significant other goes off to work every day, you kind of fall back into sexist stereotypes.
So Chris puts out the call for contributors, and I'm excited. I love writing, and I love being a sarcastic asshole about life. And parenting, I guess. So I skim his post and shoot off an email, being witty and carefree and all that jazz.
Then I go back and read the original call for contributors.
"We’re Looking For A Few Good — And We’ll Even Consider Average — Parents To Join MWAB
Leave a reply
Hey! It’s me, the guy who runs this place. Yeah, the post-it note guy.
Here’s the deal — this website is growing rapidly and it’s gone way beyond a one man operation. I can’t do this alone, and frankly, I don’t want to. So that’s where all of you come in. I’m looking for writers. Hell, you don’t even have to BE a writer. I’m looking for people to help create content.
So what’s content? Well it’s anything that moms and dads would give a crap about. Do you have an insane hobby people would want to read about? Is your regular job fascinating to strangers? Do you cook, build, destroy or do anything in the free hours not spent dragging kids from place to place that you want to share with others? Well, that’s content.
Even if you’ve already got a website, Tumblr or creative outlet for your passion, I still want to hear from you. Let’s work together! <– said like an annoying kid’s show character"
Shit. Did he just say a hobby or job that's fascinating that other people would want to read about? So I'm wracking my brain for what I do and I draw an enormous blank. I knit. I crochet. I cook. I bake. I parent. That's about all that I've got going on, and with pregnancy number 2 knocking me on my ass (why hello, 3 hours of sleep last night because of NO REASONS AT ALL) I barely squeak by on one of those options. I'll give you a hint: it's the only one that I have to do legally.
I blatantly sucked up in my email, even made notice of it, with how I bought & read his Thank You for Not Laughing book. It was one of the first purchases I made on my Kindle, so that's saying something. I know that I said something along the lines of how I could offer a female perspective on parenting and going through the whole pregnancy and birth bullshit, but no one wants to read about that. There are already SO MANY OTHER sites that do that, like ScaryMommy, so why bog down this lighthearted site with posts about how much of a pain it is to be pregnant etc.
All in all, even though Chris was nice enough in the response email stating that he got so many offers of contributions (I seriously don't know why he was surprised - we live in the digital age where outside is something to fear and the Internet is our best friend) so he'd reply back with specifics later n the week, I don't think I'm interesting enough to offer something to an already incredible website. Does this depress me? Sure, at the root of it. But if anything it makes me want to find a better hobby than yarn crafts so that I can impress people.
Or I can just say that I've literally stood elbow to elbow with the Mayor of Saskatoon (The Atch himself) as we attempt to correctly say names during a lot draw.
