my first IComLeavWe.

Today marks the end of my first-ever IComLeavWe. The name IComLeavWe stands for International Comment Leaving Week, and it's organized each month over at Stirrup Queens. The whole point is to encourage bloggers to comment on the things that other bloggers are writing. I have to admit, I've been lax in this aspect; there are a few blogs I read regularly and I do leave comments on them, but my blogosphere under the infertility umbrella has been way skimpier than I'd like.

IComLeavWe doesn't take a massive amount of time, either. Each morning I would go down the list of participating blogs and see what new posts had appeared. I left comments on the ones that I wanted to comment on. Genuine comments, not a quickie "Great post!" just to satisfy my 5-a-day quota. In addition to 5 new comments each day, you're also supposed to return one comment on your own blog. I try to return every comment on my blog so that wasn't a big deal either.

Like I said, it doesn't take a lot of time. I'd do most of my commenting in the morning, which is also when I usually blog. The only time it got tough is when the women who'd signed up weren't writing new posts. One participant didn't update her blog once during the week. I was grateful to the women who updated regularly, as it made it easier to find things that I wanted to comment on.

You aren't limited to commenting on IComLeavWe participants' blogs either. There were a couple of days where some of the comments I counted were on the blogs I read regularly, like Chronicles of an Adoption, Tiggy's Den, and My Violet Thoughts....

What I liked most about IComLeavWe is that it introduced me to new blogs - blogs that I now have on my reading list. So that was cool. And it introduced my blog to some new folks, which is also cool. So, after just a single week of making an effort to read/comment on new blogs, my blogosphere has expanded. Time well spent, in my opinion.

I signed up for the April IComLeavWe as soon as it opened. I think I'm going to try to keep up with it for a while!