The BEDA buddy system

Mentioned amongst one of the tips for business bloggers was an item about getting a blogging buddy. My comments on it were that it was a very good piece of advice, one that I would do well to follow. Well, looks like I've been given a chance to make good on those words.

On the blog of the Blog Every Day April (BEDA) progenitor, Maureen Johnson, is an item about organizing us into small groups in which each of us will get a BEDA buddy. Reading that post, you'll find a link to her Ning forum and BEDA Buddy thread. There, I and every other BEDA participant can post a little bit about themselves and Maureen will then put us into groups (I don't know what criteria she'll be using to put us together, but I hope the formula doesn't aim to create the most volatile combinations possible). When assigned our groups, we're to encourage other members of the group by commenting on their blogs, asking questions, giving ideas, etc etc.

One thing that became immediately apparent to me, was that most participants are the target audience of Maureen's books. That is, teenage girls.

I immediately felt old, very old. I even mentioned in my reply to that discussion that, comparitively, I'm something out of the jurassic period. There was the odd sprinkling of 20-somethings, but good God I felt like the far end of the bell curve.

Yes, my favourite female author is the writer of books aimed at teenage girls. Now how you think that makes me feel whenever I go to the library to see if her back-catalogue of books is available?

There I am, an adult male, perusing the young-adult fiction section of the library for a book (or books) written for the opposite gender of an age group I passed-through with several bruises a long long looooong time ago. All I need now is a trenchcoat in the middle of summer and my creepiness would shoot through the roof.

So let's see where this BEDA Buddy thing takes me. It might be like the group round in American Idol: we're either gonna prop eachother up supportively for the remainder of the month, or together we'll turn into a beautiful disaster.

Here's to hoping.