Looking Back on the AuGuest Extravaganza

I sit here on the morning of September 1, periodically singing Neil Diamond's "September Morn" as I am wont to do on this morning every year. In addition to that silliness, I am also looking back over a highly successful experiment here at Too XYZ: The AuGuest Extravaganza.

Over the last 30 days, six of my fellow bloggers/friends have taken the time out of their own busy schedules to contribute thoughts and writings to this blog of mine. They were asked to do so because over the year or so that I have been following most of them, they have shared ideas, goals, and visions of the world that made them stand out from the status quo. Depending on your own viewpoints, what they say and do may or may not be Earth shattering, but it is certainly not beholden to the conventional expectations that many would place on them. On all of us.

Whether they used the terminology or not, these six have indeed lived up to the idea of being Too XYZ to conform to the arbitrary norms of their environments. Not just because they think it would be fun to tell the world to "shove it", but because who and what they are simply doesn't allow them to vanish quietly into a flock. Different jobs, goals, religions, and geographical areas separate them, but they resemble each other, and myself, in their level of self acceptance. (And also their writing talents!)

When I first started Too XYZ, I did so in order to more openly express my outlier status in regards to so many common traits found in the multitudes. And unlike most of my AuGuests, I sometimes do have the partial goal of telling the status quo "up yours". But having these six guests write for this blog last month reinforced the notion that though any given issue may be viewed differently amongst the non-conformists of the world, I am not alone in my resistence to conforming. At least the idea of refusing to conform on everything. I knew it before, but having these guest posts makes that knowledge more personally satisfying.

I didn't edit any of the posts in any way, (except to change some of Mehnaz's Canadian spellings to keep my spellchecker at bay.) That is because I was dedicated not to creating a specific style to fit my blog, but to freely share my space in a totally unrestricted way. So that these guests could be exactly what they wanted to be when they posted here. That is what I and this blog are all about, and I am proud to have been able to provide an extra venue for these bloggers. They have encouraged me to seek out even more people that are also Too XYZ for bullshit. And they showed that having guest posts is a mostly painless experience. It will happen again.

Bringing my ideas, and sometimes even my feelings into the realm of other people's consciousness, and making them think, if only for a moment, in a different way. I hope I have done that, with both my posts, and with allowing the AuGuest posts last month. I can assure you, each of them has managed to make me think a bit differently myself.

And so here's to the AuGuests of 2010, my first six guest posters ever:

-Brianne Villano, of Living Out Loud
-Jen Gresham of Everyday Bright
-Mehnaz Thawer of Speak Softly and Carry and Red Pen
-Jamie Nacht Farrell of BizRelationships
-J. Maureen Henderson of GenerationMeh
-Laryssa Wirstiuk of Comma 'n Sentence

All of these people emphasize the importance of doing it your own way. Or at least doing something in this world your own way, even if that be just thinking and expressing. If you too value these characteristics, read not only their posts here on my blog from last month, but also each of their own blogs. I promise you, if I am NOT Too XYZ to get something out of them, (and I'm not), neither are you.