Lorelle VanFossen is a font of inspiration for bloggers everywhere, particularly those who work in WordPress. I like her because she’s creative, logical, fond of traveling, and wont to link to 10,000 Birds every now and again. Her latest link to this humble blog was the setup for one of her beloved Blog Challenges, which she offers up gratis to help bloggers explore and expand their powers of micropublishing. The gist of this challenge, “What is the Most Unusual Blogger You’ve Found?” is as follows:

I want you to do some research on who is blogging about what subjects and blog about the most unusual blogger and blog topic you can find.

I call this the “blogging going to the birds post”, and if you think blogging about birds (link to 10,000 Birds here, thank you) is unusual, think again. There are a lot of topics covered by bloggers and I want you to go out and find an unusual subject matter, hobby, or purpose and a blogger who blogs about it…

One reason I’m writing about this blog challenge is to clarify Lorelle’s underlying point that all blogs are weird. Still, I’m sure more than one nature blogger might chafe at the presumably widespread belief that bird blogging is outside the norm. Birding occupies, to one degree or another, that sweet spot between hobby and science, two categories that have launched literally millions of blogs. So don’t feel self-conscious for a second if you’re blogging about birding or nature in general. You’re part of a thriving international community of thousands of accomplished naturalists and writers (and me.) The fact that you blog about birding doesn’t make you weird in the least, but you should note that it also doesn’t absolve you of any pre-existing eccentricity.

The other reason for mentioning Lorelle’s Blog Challenge is so I can respond to it! In general, the more unusual the topic, the more compelling the blog. Look at PostSecret. The converse is that personal journal blogs seem rather prosaic, though this doesn’t seem to discourage the teeming hordes of diarists out there. What I’m trying to say is that I found this challenge deceptively difficult.

The question to answer was, “What topic would I never write or read about?” Considering how omnivorous my online diet is, only one answer came to mind as truly outside my appetite. The most unusual blogging topic I can think of is blogging about one’s pet cat. Corey and Nuthatch could surely set me straight on this, but I just don’t get it. Not only do I dislike cats as pets in general, but they comprise in aggregate an ecological disaster. Blogging consistently about one’s cat seems to channel many of the most narcissistic aspects of bragging about one’s children without the redemption of parental suffering. Like I said, I just don’t get it. Since countless people seem to blog about their cats, way more it appears than those who write about wild birds, the logical blogger to single out for the dubious honor of ‘Most Unusual’ is the dynamo who maintains the Carnival of the Cats, on issue #174 and still going strong. Cheers to you, IFOC, for taking on a topic I just don’t understand and making the web a richer place for it.

Take the Blog Challenge and share the most unusual blogger you’ve found…

Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.