New Experience #98: Little Merry Sunshine Joins ChicagoNOW!

Image from ChicagoNow.com

Effective today, November 17, 2013, Little Merry Sunshine has joined ChicagoNow, the blogging platform of the Chicago Tribune Media Group.

Writer Jessica Gardner describes this move as an enormous honor and opportunity. "It has always been my dream to become a published writer and this opportunity to partner with ChicagoNow is the first step towards making that dream a reality. I am thrilled and honored to be associated with such a notable publication. Little Merry Sunshine will be exposed to a much wider audience and that presents endless opportunities."

As you may recall, Little Merry Sunshine has previously been recognized by the Chicago Tribune. In March 2009, LMS was named one of Chicago's Best Blogs and then appeared on the front page of the Tribune online on April 17, 2009.

These were enormous honors and and joining ChicagoNOW is the logical next step.

The original Little Merry Sunshine site will not disappear. The articles and all of your comments will continue on into perpetuity. New Little Merry Sunshine blog posts will appear at ChicagoNow.com/Little-Merry-Sunshine. Please bookmark the new site.

This will be the last post on the original Little Merry Sunshine blog. The first Little Merry Sunshine post on ChicagoNOW will appear on Monday, November 18th.

What does this mean for current Little Merry Sunshine readers?

• If you receive LMS via email, your subscription has been moved to the new blog on ChicagoNOW. You don't need to take any action.
• If you read LMS via a reader, you'll need to grab a new feed. You can do that by visiting the new site here.
• If you read LMS on the website, please update your bookmarks and visit the new site.
• If you link to LMS on your website or blog, please update your links to direct readers to the new Little Merry Sunshine.
• And if you haven't done so already, please like Little Merry Sunshine on Facebook.

What does this mean for Little Merry Sunshine and me?

• I still own all of my content. It will simply live on the ChicagoNOW site.
• Being part of the ChicagoNow network means that I will be exposed to many more readers.

I make this promise to you: You've been a loyal reader since I began blogging on July 1, 2007. You've stuck with me during my down periods and times when I had no idea if I could write anymore. You have always come back. That means the world to me and I'm grateful for each and every one of you. I will not forget you and I will not let you down. 

Little Merry Sunshine will continue to be all the things you love. I'll talk about my 100 New Experiences, what inspires and/or amuses me, politics, sports, dreams, Sammy and Zoey, and much more. Hopefully, I'll continue to be funny sometimes. At least for a little while, however, I'll probably cut back on some of the more personal things I've written about here. At least until I get my footing.

I hope you'll follow me over to ChicagoNOW and continue the conversation.

BTW, that's 73 of 100 New Experiences completed!

Little Merry Sunshine Quoted in TribLocal!

TribLocal had a Twitter chat tonight. You can find it by doing a hashtag search on Twitter for #TribLocal. It was a pretty interesting chat about how to build an audience for your blog. For the most part, I was a lurker, reading the comments of other participants, but question 6 really piqued my interest and I jumped in with my opinion.

@TribLocal: Last question! Q6. What is your favorite blog that you have written? #TribLocal

I thought for a second because I have a number of favorite blog posts, but there are two that are my absolute favorites and based on the feedback you gave me and the number of hits LMS received on the days these posts ran, they are two of your favorites too.

@Jessica_Gardner: @TribLocal I have 2 Little Merry Sunshine blog posts that are my faves: http://bit.ly/iHXMvK and http://bit.ly/ifHbDR #TribLocal #Q6

Those bit.ly links take you to You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover and Who Are We Not To Be Great? Or I Had A Chat With The Voices Inside My Head. Both posts are about Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent.

About 30 minutes after my tweet, I received a reply tweet from TribLocal informing me they'd quoted me in the story about the Tweet Chat! You probably remember that almost exactly two years ago, Little Merry Sunshine was named one of Chicago's Best Blogs by the ChicagoTribune.com and appeared on the front page of the Tribune's website.
Nope, that picture never gets old.

So now that I've been in a Tribune publication TWICE, maybe now the big blogging bucks will start to roll in. I really don't want this to be my life.

LMS Receives 1st Celebrity Endorsement!

As you know, Little Merry Sunshine was named one of Chicago's Best Blogs in 2009 by the Chicago Tribune and even appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune's website in April 2009. That publicity has created quite the buzz for LMS in the blog world (well, mostly in my imagination) and probably helped increase our international readership, not to mention the requests for me to review such products as baby food and diapers and give you my hearty endorsement in exchange for free baby food and diapers (yes, really).

All of that is terrific. But the crème de la crème came today when Little Merry Sunshine received it's very first celebrity endorsement! That's right, Gary, Indiana's Greatest Writer, Milo Samardzija, posted the following about Little Merry Sunshine on his Facebook wall yesterday:

Despite a complete lack of foul language, criminal attitude and despicable behavior, I am growing very fond of the Little Merry Sunshine blog site.

Ya, I know, it doesn't get any better than that. Yes, you can be jealous.

Haven't heard of Milo Samardzija? Well, then you must be living under a rock. As I said, Milo is Gary Indiana's Greatest Writer. He also writes for one of the wittiest blogs I've ever read called The Third City. Plus, he's written a fantastic book called Schoolboy. Simply put, Schoolboy is a must read.

The writers here at Little Merry Sunshine (that'd be me) are incredibly honored to receive this endorsement and hope it will result in boosting readership from 7 to 8. Thank you Milo!

Little Merry Sunshine is on the Chicago Tribune's Website!

In case you haven't seen my Twitters today,

"Little Merry Sunshine is on the front page of the Chicago Tribune online! www.chicagotribune.com! Check it out!!!" 10:59am from txt

"Today is the best day of 2009. Look at Little Merry Sunshine on the Chgo Trib website! www.chicagotribune.com Scroll down look on left." 8:40pm from web

you may not know that the Chicago Tribune highlighted Little Merry Sunshine as its featured blog from Chicago's Best Blogs today! Go take a look while it's still there (they change the featured blog almost daily). When you get to the Tribune, scroll down and look on the left under the box with today's columnists.

All I can say is WOW. WOW. WOW. And thank you.

I wish I could tell you that almost 2 years ago, when I first opened myself up to the world via Little Merry Sunshine, that I believed this blog of mine would take off and be noticed by anyone other than my mom and immediate best friends who read it because I begged them. I didn't. I didn't think anyone would care about anything I had to say. I thought I'd have 7 readers forever. But I just kept telling myself "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me!"

I was scared and insecure, but I kept writing for me, if for no one else. Many days Little Merry Sunshine is personal and about what I'm grateful for, what inspires me or just some crazy anecdote from my life. Some days it gets into politics because I believe most people get into politics to make the world a better place and it's a passion of mine. I write about the Cubs because I bleed Cubbie Blue. And I write about activism because contributing to the world around me is one of my top personal values and I believe we should all give back everyday.

Somewhere along the way, my readership started to grow and I gained a following. Your belief in me and your encouragement helped turn my wavering confidence into rock solid belief.

Thank you for reading my blog and contributing to the conversation through your comments and emails. Thank you for making me be better. Thank you for believing in me. Please keep reading Little Merry Sunshine and leaving your comments. And hang on because this ride is about to get even more fun.

Below are the screen shots, which I'll grant you are small and a bit difficult to read. But you can get the gist. The third and fourth shots show LMS (with the picture of Governor Blagojevich). The last shot shows the LMS in its entirety, although it's still difficult to read. The picture at the top of this post shows exactly how LMS was featured.


And here's one where you can see the entire feature for LMS:

Guess Who Is One of Chicago's Best Blogs!

ME!

Little Merry Sunshine is one of the newest blogs listed on the Chicago Tribune's Chicago's Best Blogs site! Scroll all the way to the bottom to see me.

According to CBB, "An Arlington Heights native, Jessica Gardner shares her thoughts on local news, activism, politics and sports."

I'm so doing the Happy Dance over here!

Seriously, this is the coolest thing to happen to me all day. Oh, heck. It's the coolest thing to happen in weeks!

Thanks Chicago Tribune!