With a renewed interest in Google, I did a search on my name. Remember that article from the Boston Globe? I finally gave in after curiosity got the better of me. I was surprised that it found my name so quickly. Two of the results were pages of a newspaper I once wrote for. One was a news article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer that quoted me. Those were the top 3 results. The others that followed were for people who happen to share my name. Google lists its results according to popularity, so I was especially pleased to find I had the top spots.

Even more curious, I typed in “daysleepered”, the name of my blog. I was dying to see if my weblog would be listed on the top spot. It was after all, my baby. There was only one result. It was someone else`s page. My heart sank. My blog wasn’t popular enough. But I gave it a second look. I read it and I was, to put it bluntly, taken aback by what I saw. The only result showed the opening page of Barefoot and Happy. Shoeless J had linked to me! My heart almost melted with pride. It was the first time that anyone linked to me! Barefoot and Happy was one of the first blogs that caught my eye. It was always interesting to visit that blog. I find I share most of Shoeless J`s political and humanitarian views.

Up until now, I was convinced that I was linking to myself. I listed myself in 2 blog registries, hoping that some hapless soul would stumble upon me blog. It feels like sending yourself roses on Valentine`s. I was so engrossed in self-pity that I had begun to email friends in the past couple of weeks, asking them to tell their friends to visit my blog. That was weird for me to do. I had always believed it was wrong to email someone a link to promote your site. Maybe I was caught in that mindset because of all the spam/junk mail I have been getting lately. I feel spam violates what little privacy we have left as netizens. Shoeless J`s simple act of editing her links made a big difference. Call me naïve if you want to. That little search changed my attitude towards blogging – for the better.