I am relatively new to blogging. I relish having my own web site and my own blog because I like for my writings to live at home with me ... no doubt about who owns it. But I've missed the company and conversations of forums. Until November. Until NaPloPoMo. Until Mr. OddMix came along adopting me into his little project that he adopted from Merseydotes of Elevated Umbrella. Also, several books and resources have been weaving their way through my goals. And it's all got me convinced. I want more!

OddMix has his group, and I have my own group. His group of bloggers and my group of bloggers are beginning to mix and mingle. They come and go. Our groups are not committed to each other. But my commitment is to keep up with OddMix and the rest of my group and his commitment is to keep up with me and the rest of his group. This is exactly what I want all the time. Alliances like this. But I want to take it to the next level.

Currently my list in my group are people I chose in a day and I adopted them ... without their permission. Just poof there they were. It's kind of the way blogrolls are being built now. Many people either inherit a roll from a ring or group or they surf around until they have a list that they read from-time-to-time or that they think will make them look good. In other words, the value of the blogroll, in my ever so humble opinion, is not necessarily as benficial as it could be.

The point I'm trying to get to is I want a group of bloggers on my "Blog Alliance Roll" who have agreed to actively promote and encourage me as I actively promote and encourage them. I don't want to adopt unsuspecting bloggers. I want a partnership.

I am looking for encouragers and promoters who are intelligent, life-crafters, storytellers, and conversationalists – I am looking for diversity in thought, activities, culture, and location – who are willing to partner with me to the mutual benefit of both of our blogs.

This is the plan that I would want my alliances to follow. If you like it, you can adopt/adept it into the alliances you build.

Promotion:

• I intro you to my crowd.
  
• You intro me to your crowd.
  
• When I write about something that I want a wider circle of readers to know about, I will send you a note and ask for a mention – not more than 6x in a year.
  
• When you write about something that you want a wider circle of readers to know about, you will send me a note and ask for a mention – not more than 6x in a year.
  
• When we discover we are writing about the same subject matter, we will use crosslinks, trackbacks, or pingbacks to increase the subject's credibility, buzzi-ness, and hopefully increase the search engines curiosity.
  
• I will never spam the people on your blogroll, you will never spam the people on my blogroll.

Encouragement: We will offer soothing words in times of trouble, hope in times of gloom, and best of all celebration in times of victory.

Intelligent: Using the organs above the neck to consider life's options. We will talk to each other and our readers in tones that request that our ideas be considered. We must be able to say "have you considered ..." And when we state something as fact ... we are prepared to locate and share the relevant sources. If we disagree about religion or politics, we will do so without name-calling or ridicule ... our blogs entries are creative and interesting enough without needing to be mean-spirited.

We are picky about what gets dropped into our heads and hearts. Life is difficult enough without requiring others to take on misplaced anger (hate & ridicule), body parts, and excrements. ... we do not force these on each other nor our readers.

Life-crafters: We are aware that we are creating our life stories. We are actively creating stories by purposefully choosing life's activities and direction ... as best we can. We enjoy art &/or beauty and are doing what it takes to create it &/or enjoy it (like get outdoors!). We prefer to have hope but we also don't mind being honest about when we are struggling ... and when we struggle we hope to move toward some sort of improvement. We do not whine by stating a problem and then sitting there making mournful noise over what could have been instead of stating the problem and then looking for what can be.

Storytellers: We tell the stories about what happens when you try to craft your life. It has it's ups and downs and ins and outs. We also tell stories about what we've observed here and there about people and life.

Conversationalists: We say more than "me too." We ask questions. We want to know more. We share ideas. We talk to each other and to the other people who've already written comments.

We don't comment every day. We use RSS feed readers and stop in when there's a topic of interest – which hopefully will be at least one per week. More than anything we want conversations because conversation is when the magic happens. Conversation leads to knowing and being known which is the essence of life ... or in our case the essence of building our blogs.

Diversity: We probably won't think alike on every topic. We may differ in age (Yes young people are crafting their lives ... and "old" people have stories to tell about a crafted life. All ages can tell about what it really takes to step out from the crowd.) We may be from different cultures and continents ... we may share a few things in common but we are not carbon copies.

I want to make this clear: I am not looking to create a closed group. I am looking for individual bloggers who will enter into an alliance, a partnership, with me. But each of them is responsible for assembling his/her own network of alliances – of which I will be one.

If you want to consider an alliance with me, please drop me a note: Contact Pam.