Would You Miss Me If I Was Gone?

Google sent me a nasty note about one of my blogs because they said I had unnatural links.

It means they think I paid for links and was participating in some scheme to artificially inflate my pagerank so that I would gain a better position in their search results.

The note ticked me off because I hadn’t done any such thing and I played around with just shutting it all down.

Call it the “screw you, I am gone” response.”

Would You Miss Me If I Was Gone?

Google didn’t give me any guidance as to what I had done wrong.

One day everything was great and the next it wasn’t. Reminded me of dating and being told “I can’t see you anymore” without being told why.

So my initial response was if you are not going to tell me what I did, well I am done.

I can get along just fine without you and it is your loss.

Except the thing is, if you care about growing your blog you want to be on good terms with Google because that SEO stuff can be a big deal.

Which reminded me of dating again because I thought about how sometimes you still wanted to see someone and you figured they owed you an explanation.

There might be a simple fix.

Of course it also reminded me of how there are lots of fish in the seas and while one girl might not like XYZ about you, well another would love that.

Anyhoo, when I thought about it I realized that shutting it down wasn’t a good idea because I would just be hurting myself.

So I called Google a bunch of names and didn’t worry about the consequences because I wasn’t going to hurt its feelings.

Not to mention that I realized very quickly Google wouldn’t miss me if I was gone, it wouldn’t care.

That is the benefit of not being a person.

I like the birdcage in the picture above and the note inside that says bird.

My imagination likes to see a bird working hard to create the four letters B I R D so that it can one day escape and leave those behind.

It fits my sense of humor.

One day you’ll look in my window and instead of seeing me you’ll see a giant J O S H where I used to be.

Maybe you’ll miss me and maybe you won’t.

I figure the most important people in our lives are generally those who serve as the confidant Whitman writes about.

As long as you have one or two in your world, well things are probably ok, might even be great.

Take Notice

I tell the kids to take notice of the people who are important to them and to nurture those relationships.

They are just starting to learn that some of those people won’t remain classified as important and that they’ll go their separate ways.

Won’t be long before they learn sometimes things change by choice and sometimes by someone elses choice, but change they do.

One day they’ll start having to address these questions themselves and then they’ll gain a deeper appreciation about bittersweet life can be.

I can go on without Google. It is not hard to keep moving forward and to produce content.

But if that manual action isn’t lifted it will make some things harder.

So I have to decide if I want to do the work to figure out how to make them happy again or not.

I can say screw it and find a way to work around them and if I feel like revisiting it down the road, well I can do that too.

I love looking at the stars and have spent many evenings lying on my back watching the heavens above me.

In some ways I am a giant contradiction as I can be the most patient/impatient person you have ever met.

But here is how it relates to this post, I don’t have to focus on Google now.

I don’t have to try to figure out what Google wants or needs me to do because neither or us are going anywhere.

That is a good thing because I have some crap that is creating hiccups and challenges in my life and I need to focus on some of that.

I need to find the people and resources that are interested in helping me solve those situations first and when that is done, well I can go back to Google.

There is no rush, I’d rather get things done the right way than to create a short term bandage.

Google won’t care if or when I come back so I might as well do it on my terms.