Sometimes when I love something so much, something that lies within the realm of pop culture or current popular trends among people, well, everywhere, I find that in my head I take a kind of ownership of it, forgetting that there are billions of other faces in this world that may just in fact love the same things I do. And, I need to not become territorial when I am reminded of this fact. The easiest example I can offer comes from an incident that happened just a week ago after I committed myself to writing everyday. I woke up at the break of dawn, set on beginning a new trend of writing, when I happened to look on my computer before I got started, only to find that my new found favorite blog writer, The Pioneer Woman,  had written an entire post about her top 10 favorite lines from my all time favorite movie, When Harry Met Sally. My spirit crushed and deflated, I thought, someone else has 10 favorite lines, too? And when I bypassed reading it (because I actually do plan on writing my own tribute eventually and want it to be solely from my brain without influence of someone else’s-if that makes sense!!), I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the post to see that thousands of people had responded to her list with theirfavorite lines from my favorite movie. I felt like I was spinning in a whirlwind of disbelief. You see, anyone who knows me well, maybe not even that well, knows that quoting a line from that classic film almost daily is common place for me. In fact, just recently, I laid one down at work and a coworker just rolled her eyes, as if to acknowledge that there was, yet, another one. Feel the love…

Another example comes from when Chris and I were utter and complete uber fans of Conan O’Brien and, you may notice that I wrote “were” instead of “are,” but that is for another day. It was last summer, when Conan was preparing for his comeback on TBS when we were caught up in the super-hype about his upcoming debut. We followed his website, entered his contests, even went to see him live in Boulder on Mother’s Day a year ago. When the Conan crew began a daily t-shirt give away that would last 10 days, Chris had to watch the website everyday for a certain indication that it was time to enter a specific code, and if he was one of the first 100 people to type in the code, then he won one of 100 original, limited edition tees. Chris was on the ball, he saw when the code appeared and entered it as fast as his fingers could type, only to realize that, at that very same, single moment in time, thousands of people had entered the code, too! Other people could possibly enjoy Conan O’Brien as much as us? Inconceivable!

As I’m writing this, I realize that I may be writing to already established lovers of The Pioneer Woman, maybe not, but I say that because in the last two weeks that I have known about her existence, one out of every two people that I have spoken with are also fans of her. Percentages is not my strong suite, I was an English major in college, but I thought I’d just wad up a ratio tight in my hands and throw it out there and see what happens. You get the idea, I’m surprised that in my circle of people that I know, more than half of them already read The Pioneer Woman and love her (whoa! another ratio! I didn’t see that second one coming!). I love her, too, she makes me laugh out loud. She’s my inspiration for my new writing project – even though she thinks she likes When Harry Met Sally more…I kid! My very dear friend said to me recently, “Jen, there are so many blogs out there, thousands, this is not a new thing.” And to that I said, “You’re right, you’re right, I know you’re right.”

That right there is The Pioneer Woman – if you aren’t the more-than-half of the people I know who already read her, you should! www.thepioneerwoman.com