In recent months I’ve received notification not once, but twice by fellow bloggers who were kind enough to think of me and notice my low follower count when brainstorming their nominations for the Liebster Award. For readers new to the blogosphere: most blogging awards aren’t decades-old ceremonial traditions determined by committees or democracy. Most of them are congenial badges passed from blogger to blogger as a way of promoting each other’s talents, encouraging networking, and spreading good cheer whenever our malicious Site Stats page is lying to us about our traffic stats. In my mind, I think of them as Mega-Likes.
I’ve dragged my feet on my Liebster Award acceptance post for a few different reasons. I kept forgetting about it. Other writing ideas kept crowding past it to the forefront of my brain. I didn’t feel worthy. The Internet got in my eyes. The dog ate my acceptance notes. That sort of thing. However, I knew I needed to move forward on it soon, because I may be in imminent danger of disqualification. The Liebster Award can only be gifted to bloggers with a low number of followers. Evidence shows the threshold was 3,000 followers or less at one point in Liebster Award history; as of the most recent Draconian revision, new nominees must now have less than 200 followers. A lucky streak last week left me dancing on the edge with exactly 200 followers for a day, until the balance and my humility were restored when a bitter Twitter spammer dropped me after I refused them the courtesy of an undeserved return Follow. Even at 199 followers as of this writing, my hard-earned Liebster Award is two new spammers away from getting me summoned before a Liebster Award Internal Affairs review board, surely a fate worse than zero-traffic.
“It’s been a long trip.” 
Particularly near and dear to me this year are those who have read, followed, and actively supported me in my endeavors regarding my writing in general and this site in particular, now seven months old and not yet crashed or burnt. Any forms of feedback, from the simplicity of clicks to the extreme generosity of comments, have meant the world to me as I continue this process of exploration, experimentation, and indulgent navel-gazing. While the value of such input into my process is sometimes hard to quantify, the WordPress.com sensors insist that earlier this week marked MCC’s crossing of the 1000-Like threshold. I had no idea they tracked such statistics to that extent. I can’t believe they even have a dashboard icon for it (pictured). The longtime high-traffic bloggers among you probably enjoy this response level as a twice-weekly event, but a small fry like me is in no position to take any forms of encouragement for granted. Obviously I try not to rely on Likes as the foundation for my self-image, but I can’t deny that it’s nice to have some kind of measuring tool (no matter how unscientific) to confirm that I’m not necessarily applying this particular skill set on a daily basis entirely in vain. 
As this week’s new Revolution episode “Kashmir” opens, Our Heroes have commuted a full 280 miles from last week’s endpoint in Ford City, PA (or wherever the Allegheny rapids dumped them south of that), all the way east to West Chester, twenty miles west of destination Philly, and home of a Rebel Alliance faction led by special guest star Reed Diamond. The costar of TV’s Dollhouse and Homicide: Life on the Street was a welcome change of pace from the long line of guests I haven’t been recognizing. I presume this means the show’s mighty ratings have finally earned it a higher casting allowance.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 