A New Home for The Worthington Post

Dear amazing readers and friends,

The Worthington Post is moving to a bigger house!

Here’s the deal – For four years I’ve been nurturing this writing thing, and 2+ years ago it turned into this blog here on WordPress.com.  It allowed me to write what I want, when I wanted, cost me $0, and kept it simple.  That last part is huge for me, I might add.  I never got into the notion of moving it over to WordPress.org, which would allow me to have ads and other monetary transactions (like, if I ever wrote a book or wanted to sell something else,) but would also mean I’d have to be involved with the behind-the-screen stuff way more than I’m interested in being.  I know my technological limits.  They were reached when we got a push-button phone and call-waiting.

The blog has grown slowly…slowly…still slowly, but impressively enough that the WordPress People who helped me out at a conference looked, and said, “Whoooooa…you have that many followers?”  I said, “Yeah, why?  It’s a lot?”  They said, “Well, yeah – and it’s unusual on a WP.com site.”  I said, “Really?  Why?”  They explained, “Well, when a blog URL has ‘wordpress.com’ in it, it seems kinda…well…like you’re telling everyone you’re an amateur.”  I said, “Really?  Oh, well…I guess people don’t mind I’m an amateur.”

But after two happy years at WordPress.com, I’m following my friend, John Shore, over to a bigger house.  Patheos.com.  (Patheos.com is also a WP site, btw – but one of those more professional, people-who-know-what-the-hell-they’re-doing-type of WP.org sites.)  The Patheos tagline is “Hosting the Conversation on Faith.”  John moved his blog over there, and he oversees the Unfundamentalist Christians page on Patheos, too.  You can see if you poke around over there that they have dozens of religious “portals.”  The variety perspectives is staggering – and quite a few of them don’t have much to do with religion at all.  I’ll be at the Patheos Jewish portal. As you know, a fair amount of my writing explores my experiences as a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, married to a Catholic guy from Baltimore, with three kids who are like, “Whatever.”

Content will remain the same – I’ll still be writing on plenty of topics from ridiculous conversations with my 4th-grade son to sarcastic and/or thoughtful take-downs of things that aggravate me to the random movie or book review.

The blog will look kind of different – Patheos is a big site with hundreds of thousands of readers, so there are ads on the sidebar, etc.  So sorry about that.  (That’s one of the things I liked about my blog here – simple and easy on the eye.)   The trade-off is they will pay me once I start getting a certain number of page views.  Not much, but I get to keep all the rights to my work, and have complete control over what I publish there.  Just like here.  Did I mention they have hundreds of thousands of readers?  They won’t all flock to MY blog – they’re there for their own thing, ya know?  But chances of more eyes on my writing increase dramatically.

They are keeping the general look of The Worthington Post you’ve come to know (yes, that picture of the block structure my son built will still be the header.)  And they’re keeping my categories – Life, Liberty, and Happiness.  And they’re keeping all my subscribers.  Yes, if you’ve signed up to receive an e-mail whenever I publish, you will continue to get those emails.  The web ninjas over at Patheos have transferred you all over.  You don’t have to do anything!  Isn’t that NUTS?????  How do they DO THAT STUFF???

I once had a conversation with John a while back before this prospect of moving the blog came into being.  He asked me what my goals were for my writing. I said, “uuuuuuuuuuuuh…” because that’s what I do when people who are smarter than I am ask me simple questions.  He kindly helped me along, saying, “Well, based on what I know about you, I’m guessing you’d like creative control over your content…”

I said, “Yeah, that’s good…”

John:  “And you’d probably like to be read by the largest audience possible…”

Me: “Yeah!”

John:  “And it wouldn’t hurt to get paid for it, either.”

Me:  “THAT’S IT!!!  You got it!!! IT’S LIKE LOOKING IN A MIRROR!!!”

Well, when Patheos approached me about moving my blog, I was hesitant, because I resist change.  It requires work.  Then I thought about what John said months earlier, and how he helped me articulate what mattered to me, and how a move to Patheos embodied those priorities exactly.  Worth it.  So, here we go!  Come over to my new home!  (Housewarming gifts completely unnecessary, though I have been DYING for some new towels.)

xoxoxoxo,

Aliza