Connie O'Reyes

This week’s been rather calm, partly to the fact that I got to work from home yesterday (yay!) but here’s something I’ve been meaning to write for a while to hold you over until something more absurd comes along. Also, one of my “fans” (aka friend who I force to read my blog) was confused about my name. Just to clarify, Cis4Connie means C is for Connie, as in the infamous song from Sesame Street C is for Cookie, sung by the talented Cookie Monster.

Anywho…

So I started Twitter (http://twitter.com/cis4connie) last week because I figured it would be easier to use the “follower” tool instead of typing celebrity names in my google search engine all the time when I’m bored. Added bonus: if IT is in fact looking at my search history which I am always paranoid they do, they will no longer see me typing things in like “Miley Cyrus twitter.” My feelings about twitter? It kinda feels like I’m talking to myself. At least with my wonderful blog I can pretend that hundreds of millions of people are reading my thoughts and snorting coffee out their noses (please comment if you do by the way, I’d love to know you exist!) but with twitter- you have an actual count of who’s following you, and mine has yet to reach 20 =/

But I was able to follow my favorite author Jen Lancaster, and the next day I checked my account to see that she was following me back! Astonished, I was glad to think that she had the good sense to follow me and dare I say read my blog? But sadly, I looked at her site and realized she follows everyone who follows her- all 10,000+. But that didn’t stop me from dismissing my friends and letting them know I’ve upgraded to much cooler, published colleagues and no longer needed their friendship (humble’s my middle name btw).

My wonderful friend, whose blog name will be Aurora (why? because that’s the name of Sleeping Beauty and she is the only person who is as lazy and addicted to sleep as I am) has intelligently decided to piggy back off of this fame. She has decided to become my biographer and will some day soon write my life story. Here now is her first set of Q&A, complete with my response.

Cis4Connie, where do you find inspiration for your cleverly assembled rants?

-I find my inspiration in the miniscule things in life that normal people would simply dismiss. I tend to drag them out and exaggerate upon them, so a simple thing like tripping on a CTA subway step could lead into a conspiracy theory as to how the city is plotting my death.

Do you find that you writing improves with the level of frustration of a given topic?
-Absolutely. If I didn’t have a genuine, passionate hate for things like the Starbucks cashier, 90s bands, and Jon Gosselin I don’t think my blogs would be quite as interesting as I like to think they are.

How did you achieve such a high level of recognition in so short a time and what advice would you give to those new bloggers just starting out?
-Well my secret to success is this: force your friends to follow and read your blog. This can be done as a sneak attack over enchiladas and margaritas at dinner, or through constant nagging via facebook. Personally, I like to bribe my less eager friends by taking a favor they desperately need and refusing to help until I see their little face under the “followers” section.
The more eager they are, the quicker you’ll see their face pop up.