The nature of blogging is temperamental, as the nature of bloggers tends to be willful and unpredictable. The really enthralling ones, at least. You see it in your favorite blogs: wildly passionate daily posts one month, barely connected erratic ramblings the next.

Blogging, for the most part, is best enjoyed when you can afford focus and energy, on both the parts of the writer and the reader. No one really enjoys those “I’m too busy to blog” posts, but bloggers usually have “real” jobs and responsibilities that result in our being “too busy to blog” occasionally. What to do… what to do?

I’ve always been a big fan of the unplanned hiatus, personally. My friends say it is because I prefer a sense of mystery. I say I just loathe those “I’m taking a break” posts.

Therefore, rather than plate a pile of misshappen half-baked cookies for you the last couple of months, Blog Nosh Magazine has been on a bit of an unplanned hiatus. We kept thinking we were going to update, then we got busy. Life. Who knew?

More precisely, 2008… Seriously, who knew?

The end of 2008 has come and all of us at Blog Nosh Magazine are looking forward to an energized and focused new year in 2009. Our resolutions? The return of daily featured posts, new NoshTube videos, and the launch of the promisingly tempting channels Race & Ethnicity, Travel & Expats, Personal Finance, Military, and more. We are finally revamping our Editors page and sprucing up the “About” information you all crave when considering submitting your work.

In the meantime, I am insanely proud to introduce you to one of our new Politics Channel Editors: Mr Lady from Whiskey in my Sippy Cup. Now that we see how well Blog Nosh Magazine can work, we are actively fleshing out the channels with as much diversity as we can get our hands on. Naturally, the flip side of the political coin was at the top of our list. Mr Lady’s post, What a Dream I Had, Pressed in Organdy, is the ideal introduction and hint of what finds you may expect from her.

Look for delicious daily posts beginning again January 5th! Until then, nosh on!

Nosh Notes by Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Megan Jordan from Velveteen Mind

We had a quiet week around here last week. Our apologies to anyone that was checking in for new posts and finding nothing but the same. A bit of reorganizing and reshuffling should prevent that from happening too much again. Fresh goodies from now on!

Speaking of fresh goodies, now is the perfect opportunity to prod you into helping us stock our Blog Nosh pantry with your posts covering some of our soon-to-launch new channels:

• Food
• Military
• Personal Finance
• Travel & Expats
• Green Living
• Sports
• Race & Ethnicity

We are actively setting up our new editors, but in the meantime, send your posts to our Publisher and they’ll be passed along to the appropriate channel. Have a post in mind for one of our current channels? We are always open to submissions, so check out our Editors page and send your submissions to the Channel Editor of choice. Check our Submission Guidelines to be sure your post gets the attention it deserves!

Now back to that fresh Nosh! Our featured post today comes from one of the very first bloggers we published, from our very first issue, as a matter of fact. Cafe Philos is a perfect example of the diversity we are constantly seeking to share…

The cherry on top of our first full week of new posts at the revamped Blog Nosh Magazine was a bit of a sour one, as a few technical snafus prevented us posting Nosh Notes on Friday. Therefore, let’s double our desserts and highlight some of the posts we featured last week, as well as introduce you to our new NoshTube Channel Editor!

We celebrated our first week in our new home with the launch of our Fiction & Poetry channel, featuring a short story by The View from Here. The response was better than we expected, so spread the word to your writer friends that we are open to submissions of short stories, poetry, and posts about the craft of writing.

Another new angle we are exploring here is encouraging our editors to share posts with which they may not agree, but that they feel make intriguing arguments and are worth further discussion. It is important to note, if you have not already, that the posts we republish at Blog Nosh Magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors that select them nor the publisher, however we feel that lends our content selection all the more depth. We are open to considering differing opinions and we hope you will be, too.

The perfect jump into the deep end for this approach was a political post from Dr. Laura on Sarah Palin and motherhood. Dr. Laura is definitely a “love her or hate her” personality, and one that certainly didn’t need any publicity from our magazine, however we were able to offer you something you don’t usually have the opportunity to do: comment back. Dr. Laura’s blog does not allow comments, but we do, so it was interesting to see our audience share their thoughts in an open forum.

Welcome to the relaunch of Blog Nosh Magazine! The site has been redesigned from top to bottom with your needs in mind.

What’s on the menu, you ask? Allow us to give you a little tour:

• Top horizontal navigation tabs! Too much scrolling to find the channel you were craving for on the old site? It’s all right here in top navigation tabs, easy to grasp in a glance, a special order for you!
• Search box– Wanting to find posts on a specific topic, but one that might span several channels, and want to find them now? A handy “search” window is in the upper right corner.
• Not sure what is covered in each channel? Hold your mouse over the channel name and you’ll find a handy list pop up, including some of the more popular topics covered in that channel.
• Daily YouTube featured video, submitted by you! Find something you loved and have to share it? email us or send it our way via twitter. You’ll get credit for the find in our weekly roundup Nosh Notes, so be sure to include your blog URL!
• Each day’s two featured posts are even more highlighted, in the top two featured post boxes
• Want to see what we’ve featured during the last week, but don’t want to wander around too much to do it? You can see all of the week’s post at a glance at the bottom of the page, right above our delectable advertisers, highlighted by channel. Sample them all, we promise they are all delicious!

Our tasteful dinner party here at Blog Nosh Magazine has been crashed by Hurricane Gustav!

We’ll be back up and running shortly… In the meantime, use this time to digest all that we’ve delivered so far, catch up on some of your favorite channels, and get to know our editors.

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The chocolate-smudged face of Blog Nosh Magazine is in the process of changing. For the better. We are loosening our belt to make room for more delectable goodness, and eyeing some snazzy new pants with an elastic waistband.

In other words, the response to our call for new channels and new Channel Editors has been overwhelming and we are moving forward with a move to WordPress, complete with a new layout and easier navigation.

Look for the relaunch of Blog Nosh Magazine the second week of September. In the meantime, I’d like to introduce you to one of the new editors we brought in before the open call and are eager to see what she will bring to the table:

Deb on the Rocks!

Okay, it sure seems like we keep bringing women in and still no men, but they are coming. Speaking of coming, let’s talk more about Deb. wink wink

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Sometimes I am simply madly in love with this magazine. Blog Nosh Magazine has changed the way I read blogs, as I now approach the internet as one massive This American Life story. On my better days, I so fancy myself as Ira Glass. (tongue firmly planted in cheek, thank you.) So many different perspectives, so much to find, opening my eyes to stories I may never have heard before if it were not for blogs. If it were not for your willingness to open your lives to us.

Our goal for Blog Nosh Magazine is to deliver as many diverse perspectives as possible, across numerous topics and genres, many of which you may never have been exposed to in your daily reading, let alone daily real life. This is made possibly by the work of our Channel Editors, of which we have close to 40. But even with a team that size, it is still not enough.

We need more. We need more eyes. More minds. More guts. More hearts.

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Less than two months in and Blog Nosh Magazine is growing by leaps and bounds, all thanks to you! In the pipeline, we have a very exciting site redesign with ease-of-navigation in mind, new channels (including Race & Ethnicity, Travel & Expats, and Personal Finance), dynamic new editors with even more diverse perspectives, and much more.

Today may be one of the biggest turning points for us, though, as we proudly announce that we are opening to private advertising! And for a very good reason:

Blog Nosh Magazine will soon introduce a quarterly print publication to complement our daily online magazine!

What serious blogger doesn’t dream of seeing their name in hard copy? Now is your chance.

Grab your piece of the pie!

One of the key elements of Blog Nosh Magazine is timeless content. As such, we plan to offer a quarterly literary magazine perfect for casual browsing-over-coffee-n-scones or in-depth reading during your daily (ahem) personal time. The ideal coffee table magazine that you can keep for years, so to speak.

Blog Nosh Magazine begs to have crumbs scattered across its pages, don’t you think? We do and we welcome you to be part of making this happen as an advertiser on www.blognosh.com!

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Hey, why no new posts today?

Because you didn’t send us any!

Okay, not really. This was an oversight on my part caused by distraction due to some major changes we are working on for Blog Nosh Magazine. Sorry about that. I really need some help…

Hey, you! Help me out! Blog Nosh Magazine thrives by your submissions so take a look at your archives and send us your best posts! We receive dozens of submissions a month, but it takes dozens of dozens of submissions to keep our pantry fully stocked.

Choose a couple of your best blog posts, browse through our editors for one to submit your work to in the appropriate channel, follow the instructions on our Publication Guidelines page, and SUBMIT! If you have trouble choosing an editor, you can send your posts directly to me, but be sure to include all of the requested information, particularly which channel for which it is intended.

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Originally published on Halushki.

One of the most important responsibilities
- nay, obligations - of any parent is, I think, to encourage our children’s
daily awareness of all that is magical and mysterious in our great,
big fantastical world.

And, yes, I am a hippie.

To point our children toward a sly glimpse of the crystalline fairies
in a drop of dew….

To wonder in awe at Titan voices booming across the evening sky during
a summer thunderstorm….

To marvel at orchestras captured on silver discs, musicians trapped
like microscopic genies to be released in song only at the listener’s
wish and command….

Ah bliss! Ah joy!

To support and stimulate their creative selves and thusly nourish their
hearts and souls with the food of poets and saints!

(And I’m not talking cigarettes and day-old baguettes.)

But, as a bittersweet fact of life, every day my children grow a bit
older and, so too, a bit too wise for the world’s magic.

Mostly, I blame science.

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