I check my blog statistics quite often. I’ve been this way ever since I had the ability to check my site statistics, which has been most of my 7 year tenure as a blogger. I love to see who has linked to me and what search words are used to find the blog. Sometimes the words are weird and creepy, but occasionally they inspire a future post.

I rarely find something upsetting.

Four years ago, I noticed a link from a Chicana college student. She linked to an entry I posted about old school Mechistas. I perused her blog and found that she’d heavily borrowed and copied other parts of my blog. In some parts she’d taken the format for my “about me” section and substituted the original text for information about herself. In another section, she copied a list of favorite quotes. There was no attribution or links.

I was mad. I talked about it with a friend and he said something about feeling flattered. I was flattered, a little, but I was more upset about being copied without credit. And even if she had given credit, I still would have thought it weird that she adapted the profile section I wrote. You’d think that a section about herself would be original, right?

The budding academic in me (I had just started graduate school) was ready to send the young Chicana to the dean of students for plagiarism and to the writing center for a lesson on proper citation. Yeah, I know my blog is not an academic paper in a journal, but if you use my words, you should link. In academia, it’s even more stringent. If I even used your idea, I’d have to cite you. I can’t write a paper without stopping to cite someone every two sentences.

In blogging, I think it’s fair to credit someone if you lift a passage or are inspired by a topic covered in another blog. If words are borrowed, they should be quoted or indented like longer quotes in academic papers. Links should always be included.

I ended up drafting a short email to the girl. I explained why I was upset and asked that she remove my words. She apologized and said she’d take down her whole blog (not just the offending posts) because she felt she needed to start anew.

And then I felt kinda bad.

I’ve been blogging almost as long as Sean. He started in March ’01, I started in November ’01. I wonder what this says about me. Maybe I have been doing this too long.

Way back when I first started blogging — when it wasn’t even called blogging — I’d often write about the guy I was dating. We broke up about a year later shortly after he read a piece alluding to my frustration and unhappiness in the relationship.

In my post-breakup sadness, I naively believed we would still be together if I had never recounted the dream on my blog. I felt my words were unfairly used against me to justify the breakup rather than fixing the relationship.

After that, I asked him not to read my blog. I wanted him to know as little about my life as I knew about his. I wanted the break in communication and knowledge about one another’s lives to be equal.

Of course, there was really no way to make sure he wasn’t readying my blog and that troubled me. Still, I didn’t stop writing. I’ve never stopped writing on my blog for more than week* until now.

At first, It wasn’t an intentional blog strike. I was just busy. Job1, job2, family, DB, friends, traveling, and the phantom dissertation proposal were all taking up a lot of my time.

But it quickly evolved in to a decision not to blog, to lay low.

That feeling I had many years ago returned. I was still bothered that you could know so much about me — or at least what I chose to reveal — and yet you would still be a mystery. So I didn’t reveal anything, no thought, opinion, story, or update. I wanted to make you do more than just type my URL to find out how I’m doing. You know, call or visit.

And so, I chose to keep my words to myself for a few weeks, until I knew you’d be gone.

There was that time back in October 2006 when I had technical difficulties with my blog and had to switch hosts. I think my blog was hacked.

A few months ago, K posted a list of simple pleasures, those little things that make you happy. I replied with my own list, which had a lot in common with hers.

One of those things was comments on my blog. I love getting emails announcing a response to the latest post. I don’t even mind the critical and snarky comments all that much.

Of course, I would have no comments without wonderful readers. I think it’s pretty cool that you all find my tales and questions interesting enough to return. I’ve been doing this since 2001 because I like interacting with readers, which also comes from reading your blog (if you have one). I still love writing in notebooks, but it’s not the same. There’s no one there to reassure me that I’m still cool. Hah.

¡Gracias!

I wouldn’t have know about this if not for MsAbcMom, who got the idea from The Other Mother

I love blogging so much I’m contributing my words to other blogs as a guest blogger or regular contributor.

If you don’t already have these blogs on your blogroll or RSS feed reader (I recommend Google Reader), you should add them.

• VivirLatino: my favorite go-to blogs for news on politics, culture and entertainment in the US and throughout Latin America. My first post at VL on undocumented immigrants and death.
• The Unapologetic Mexican: Nezua, the main author at UAM invited several bloggers to post on the weekends. My first post at UAM is about broaching those sticky discussions on race with people who may not be allies.
• LA Eastside: I don’t live on LA’s Eastside. I’m squarely on the Westside. If you’re confused, the Militant Angeleno has a great guide on LA’s regions. However, I’m on the Eastside culturally. It’s where my LA roots lie.

And don’t worry, I’ll still be regularly posting here.

They think you should comment (artifacts at the Natural History Museum)

I missed National Delurking week, which is supposedly the second week of January. I have an excuse. My computer was broken.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a lurker is “a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely participates” (source: wikipedia).

If you’re a lurker*, leave a comment. You can write whatever you want, but if you need a prompt, here’s some ideas: recommend something (a book, film, song/album, website, blog, whatever); tell me about yourself (where are you from? what do you do?); tell me why you love/like/hate Lotería Chicana.

I promise I won’t bite or call you annoying (that was so last week).

*Of course, if you regularly comment you can chime in too.

On Friday, I bought a 13″ black MacBook.

It was weird. I wasn’t just buying a new laptop. I was making the switch from a PC to a Mac. I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile, and still don’t know why I didn’t buy a MacBook a few years ago when I was in the market for a laptop. That laptop, my trusty LifeBook is currently out of commission. Luckily, I have 99% of my files backed up and my main concern in switching to a Mac is about my iPod.

Oso, my favorite globe trotting blogger, believes owning a MacBook will make me more popular. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get my own fan club.

Photo by Oso (his flickr photostream)