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#30Daysof GOOD Challenge: 21. Leave a Positive Comment on a Stranger's Blog

Each month, we challenge our community to do something that will improve the world around us—and our own lives. September's challenge? To connect.


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Welcome to The GOOD 30-Day Challenge (#30DaysofGOOD). Each month, we challenge our community members to do something that will improve the world around us—and our own lives. The challenge for September? To connect with other people. In an effort to help us all rise to the occasion, we're going to assign one small task every day. Each morning, we will post the challenge on GOOD.is and Twitter, along with a testimonial from someone on the GOOD team who's already completed it. We invite you to complete all 30 mini-challenges with us! Today, we challenge you to

Leave a positive comment on a stranger's blog.

I've long had one foot in and one foot out of the blogosphere—I have a million blogs on my Google Reader, and have written a few since 2007. But I comment on them only once in a blue moon, mainly because the threads can devolve into nitpicking and nastiness. I have a habit of commenting on teen feminist blogs, though, because they make me laugh and they don't have toxic comment sections. Jamie Keiles writes one of my favorites. Back when I discovered her Seventeen Magazine Project, I gave it a shoutout on my own site, but never bothered to drop her a line.

I hadn't been to Jamie's blog in a while, and when I visited it for this challenge, the second post from the top was one about Mormons and pop culture. It was fate: I've been working on a piece about Mormon style bloggers for weeks. Even though her post was a few weeks old, it felt good sharing my two cents with a stranger who had been contemplating some of the same things I had. I thought back to my early blogging days, how excited I got when an anonymous reader engaged with my ideas. Blog comment threads can be destructive, but they can also be incredibly affirming.

- Nona Willis Aronowitz

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Ready, set, go! Good luck completing today's challenge. Share your experience on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook by using the hashtag #30DaysofGOOD, or let us know how it went in the comments section below.

Tomorrow's challenge: Ask for someone's advice, and take it.


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