New Schedule
Harper's been running me ragged today. Today was the first day of our new schedule. Mom's starting a new job and is gone from about six in the morning till three. So now I got the kiddo all to myself all morning.

I'm not a morning person.

Well, ok, at least I'm not right now because I have been on a different schedule. I usually work through the night and mom would have him till about noon. Not anymore. Now I have to try to get to sleep earlier so that I can spend my morning putting the dvd's back on the shelf, the pots back in the cupboard, and well, change some not so fun diapers.

But it's fun. I just have to figure out how I'm going to get anything done now. I'll still have a few hours in the evening - and I hope that I can get some stuff done during the day. I'll just have to distract him at key moments with snacks. Those seem to work. Bright shiny objects aren't working so well anymore - guess he's past that stage.

If I can just work out 15 minutes here, and 15 minutes there I should be able to get a few little things done - a few quick articles hopefully. It's just so hard because I tend to want to pass out during those 15 minutes.

It was funny today because I couldn't get him to take a nap for the life of me. Eventually, finally, he simply spread out on the floor in the living room and feel asleep. So not wanting to pass up an opportunity for a nice nap, I passed out next to him on the floor.

Using links in your blog posts
How's that for a transition? Really smooth, eh? (eh? I've been talking to a Canadian friend a lot lately and I love to use eh, eh? He claims there's about a hundred ways to use eh. I've only found about 36 so far).

I've been thinking a lot about how I use links in this blog. You ever think about that? I mean really, links are like money in the blog world. People have contests and do all sorts of things to procure valuable links. So if you have a blog - it's like being able to print money. Ok, not really. Because really, I guess you're links heading out of your blog are only as valuable as the links you have coming in.

Link to the big boys
Why? I used to have some links to the big ones - you know, problogger, john chow, etc...I mean really, what's the point? You're readers probably know how to get there. In fact, they've probably been reading them just as long as you have. So really, what's the point of having that link - I used to tell myself that it was so I could just click on it when I wanted to read there stuff. Yeah, I have them in my bloglines - do I need a link too? No.

Link to your peers
So if links are so valuable, who are they most valuable to? Blogs like your own. Blogs that are about the same size, slightly bigger, slightly smaller. That's where your real traffic is going to come from, and that's who is going to love seeing that you linked to them. Trust me. I know everybody that has a link to me. It's not hard - it's not a huge list yet. It's growing, but that's because I've been nurturing those relationships. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. That's the idea right?

I could link to John Chow, is he going to link back to me? Probably not. Yet. That's because everybody that has a blog links to John. He doesn't have to link back to me. But that's ok. It's not going to make me angry. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

But what's really nice is when you've written a post and linked to somebody and a few days later they link back to you in one of their's. That's what this all about. That's what you should strive for. Those are the links that are going to be the most valuable to you in the long run. It takes some time - you're not going to blow up over night, but if you grow a little every week, you'll get there in good time.


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