Day 23 - ATLA Toph Fanart

As per my previous post, I'm drawing the Gaang and their dæmons

Season 3, Episode 9, 12:55-13:17

toph's attempt to help aang.

It varies largely from store to store man. I worked there from 2012-2013, and I don’t regret it mostly because of the people I worked with (except for deep cleaning- I was allergic to the ferrets and guineas, and deep cleaning was starting to make me really sick toward the end). I saw a lot of frustrating/upsetting things, and got really jaded with asshole customers for a while, not to mention some of corporate’s “Policies” about reptile and other small animal keeping that just frustrated the shit out of anyone who new what they were doing.

BUT I also met a lot of coworkers who really knew their shit, including a snake breeder with a gorgeous 18 ft retic he regularly brough in for reptile rallies, and my fishkeeping mentor. I worked in two different locations, and once I started seeking out other sources of info, I learned a lot because of it. I learned a lot about dog nutrition that I wouldn’t have otherwise, and I was able to talk a lot of people out of shitty/downright harmful products. 

-My college store’s manager, Ja-, was really, really great about refusing sales to people who wouldn’t take care of the animal properly, no matter how small.-S, the AQ specialist is my fishkeeping mentor and told me just about anything I would want to know. She listened a lot to the shit that was going on in my life, offered a lot of comfort and was triple my age- I still talk to her any time I have a major question I don’t want to ask fishblr.  In contrast, I would have taken my college store’s AQ’s spot in a heartbeat because he knew absolutely shit about fish and was the whiniest manchild asshole.-K- was the sassiest gay guy I’ve ever met, with a cynical as hell attitude towards most human beings, but he’s incredibly sweet with all animals. He also has emus, and does a great impression of them dancing.-J1 (the guy with the retic) taught me how to hold a snake properly.-M, my GM at the college store once stayed late with me for over forty-five minutes trying to find my (then) prized opal ring I’d somehow lost on the floor (i’d accidentally worn it to work and stuck it in my pocket)-J2, a manager at my home store who was genuinely one of the sweetest family men I’ve ever met who just wanted the best for everyone. He stayed late a night with me too, when my car’s battery ran dead and my mom was a half an hour away.

I was actually going to start on the dog training track right before I accepted my teaching job, (with the knowledge I would rely more on my mother (another dog trainer)’s methods mixed with whatever they were going to show me. I didn’t want to sustain myself on that job, but I was prepared to if I had to.

BR: 7

Ooooh! I’m so flattered you would think of me to ask! It’s important to make it clear what your blog is about so that people who want it can find it. They say if you don’t use Search Engine Optimization properly, that’s like writing your blog on a piece of paper, putting it in a drawer, and then locking the drawer. Because no one will ever see it. (On tumblr it’s a little different though, and we use tags and community as our meritocracy more so than SEO. Still, better SEO means more visibility and even potential longevity for your content’s popularity.)

When I see blogs titled stuff like “BonesandBucks” or “JobsinJournalism” I mash the follow button hard, because those are things I like. Having an appropriate icon is good as well. It’s real nice to be able to tell people, especially in real life, a blog name and its description in the same few words. 

It is a little bad to change your URL (any links to your posts will be broken) so it is worth giving it some thought before committing. On the other hand, the best name will probably be one that comes to you quite easily. 

If you’re looking for more advice on blogging, this is the most important thing that I myself have learned:I’ve read plenty of articles on blogging, even most of a book until I figured that a lot of the advice was just common sense codified. And there are certainly ways to improve your readership, by posting more, setting a queue, writing catchy headlines (if that was more of a thing on tumblr) posting at times when people are online, etc. But a lot of that stuff is kind of like shaving your eyebrows to make yourself more aerodynamic for a race. Most of your concern should be about your actual speed.

By far, by an enormous margin the most important thing is to have good content. And the only way to have good content is to blog what you love. Pull from a bunch of sources, especially the ones that you already have or follow. 

If you’re looking for resources on the specific topics of oddities, animals, and natural history, I recommend checking the tags on tumblr, perhaps some reddit boards, and scienceblogs.com. A lot of major news outlets aren’t on tumblr yet, so I used to follow them using a feed reader but now I just like their facebook pages. (Or twitter if that’s what you frequent) Also, here is a list of books I recommend.