Limping My Way To 100,000 Points

I didn't think it would be this way.  I mean, I had visions of blowing across the 100,000 mile, er... point marker while writing 4-5 posts a week and being featured at least once or twice a month.  It was not to be.  Instead I've gotten lazy and only write a post every now and then while leaving a few comments here and there.  So who's the bigest loser here (figuratively speaking)?  That would be ME!

It's time to take inventory to see where I went wrong, what I've learned along the way and where I go from here.  Are you with me?

• First, I'll never forget being at a home staging convention several years ago where Cindy Lin was presenting.  She said, "If you're not blogging, you're not in the game."  That got my attention!  Although I had already signed up for AR, I believe that's when I actually got around to writing my first post.
• My first blog posts were really quite pathetic (sort of lilke this one!)  I mean, who wants to read, "Elvis Is Dead, Tiger Is Back, and I'm Somewhere Stuck In the Middle."  Or how about, "My Kid Is Inmate of the Month at the County Jail."  I think you get the idea.
• But somewhere along the line I hit my stride and actually picked up a few features.  I think the first one was on "A Stager's Advide To Realtors,"  Then I got features for a couple of posts I wrote on what I learned at The Google Academy.  And I found that it never hurts to have a little humor.  Another featured post was, "You Might Be a Redneck Home Stager If..."
• Okay, I may as well throw in a random thought here.  I've noticed that there are lots of featured posts written on the topic,"How To Get a Featured Post."  Has anyone out there ever written a post on that topic that was NOT featured?  If so, I'd like to hear from you.
• And a few other things that I've learned:
  1. If you want to get comments on your posts, you have to leave comments on others' posts.  (Sort of reminds me what my mom taught me when I was growing up -- "If you want to have friends, you must first be a friend."
  2. It's a lot of fun to help the Newbies.  They ask such cute questions and have these little 1-2 sentence posts basically saying "HELP!" like all the rest of us did when we first started blogging. 
  3. How to write posts so people won't get bored with them (by using all these little bullet points like I'm doing here and adding photos to illustrate the points); 
  4. How to be a better home stager by seeing many FANTASTIC B&A pics here in the staging groups; 
  5. Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about SEO from Stephen Graham's fantastic classes;
  6. And I've learned all about WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, QR codes, photography, search engines, what Google does and doesn't like, and how to be a better cook!

So how did I pick up my limp?  Simply put, I had a WordPress site built with a blog on it, cancelled my outside blog and turned my back on ActiveRain.  BIG MISTAKE!!!  What was I thinking???

Now here I am about to get that coveted 100,000 point marker icon under my name.  While I'm excited to be so close to the goal, I'm also sad thinking about all I've missed here on AR over the past 8-10 months. 

• My SEO has suffered;
• I've lost contact with some great friends;
• I'm no longer building valuable backlinks to my site;
• My learning curve has flattened out since I stopped reading all your great posts.

So where do I go from here?  Back in the Rain, baby, back in the Rain.

PS - Do I get a feature when I hit 100,000 points?