Commuter Daddy Blogapalooza commences

Photo by KellyKorv

Back when I was performing in bands, I would approach each gig as if it were an audition. It didn't matter whether we were playing to a packed house at Whisky A Go Go or to seven people in a basement coffeehouse in Northampton, Mass. I would make sure to engage as many people as possible with eye contact or a smile, and sing and play to the best of my ability.

Before and after the gigs, especially sparsely attended ones, I'd repeat a mantra that my bandmates no doubt grew quite sick of hearing: "You never know who is in the audience."

Flash forward to last week, when I lamented with tongue in cheek that I had not cracked the Top 125 Dad bloggers list. Keeper of the list, Keith Wilcox of Almightydad.com, commented on the post, and followed up with an invitation: While he would check if Commuter Daddy measured up via his algorithm, would I like to write a guest post for his blog?

You never know who is in the audience.

I took Keith up on his offer, finishing off and submitting a post I already had been baking for Commuter Daddy. "Home-Office Productivity Foiled by Parenthood" was published on Almightydad.com earlier today.

A couple of addendums:

• The post is written about a couple of hours on the home front this past Monday. One detail I left out was that Monday was a snow day, and Brandy, also facing numerous deadlines with her home-office work, had spent the previous 8 hours conducting the same switcheroos I wrote about. This was all while keeping the urchins out of my office. The scene in the blog post is while Brandy had taken a well deserved break and gone to the gym.
  
• It should be explicitly stated that Brandy and I are grateful that we have reached the point in our careers that we can work from home. It's taken a lot of hard work to get to this point, and the timing is perfect given the ages of our children. We continue to work hard -- perhaps too hard at times -- to preserve this way of life. The point of the post is not to whine about the challenges we face. It is intended simply as an illustration. There are many parents that can relate, I am sure, regardless of their profession or place of business. 

I still may not be in the Top 125 of Daddy bloggers. While I have a decent page rank for a part-time blog, I've not done well with inbound links. That underscores the fact that Commuter Daddy has remained in the sandbox from which it was born. This all started in 2007 when in my day job I was charged with developing an employment vertical and my co-worker and I kicked around the idea of an employment blog network. I learn best by doing, so Commuter Daddy was born -- part laboratory, part playground.

The vertical  launched successfully, but the network was shelved for other priorities and circumstances. The blog persisted as an as-time-permits endeavor. A glance back through the archives would illuminate gaps in the blogging timeline when I have devoted time and extra attention to specific professional and personal projects.

So consider 2010 to be Commuter Daddy's Blogapalooza. This will become a combined personal and professional project. Let's see how far we take this thing. Making the Top 125 upon the next refresh of the Daddy bloggers list is not the goal, per se, but that will be a nice barometer as to whether I've succeeded with increasing the blog's visibility and authority.

After all, you never know who is in the audience.