Just like how Video Killed the Radio Star

1. I noticed that my favorite amateur bloggers have all kind of quit out of blogging all about the same time. By amateur, I mean people who are just blogging about their lives and rambling, like me. I mean people who I know or wish I knew, just talking about their lives. It's kind of a bummer, but perhaps I don't get to complain since I haven't been on the blog much either. When I logged on, my reader really only contained the list of those bloggers who are doing business or generating awareness of themselves or their product and not the social updates and commentary I have come to love about blogging. I'm still reading people's Facebook updates and am thinking of joining twitter, but the long form appears to be lost. Did Facebook kill the amateur blog?

2. My recent awareness of nightmares has increased due to a) trailers for the new Nightmare on Elm Street - even the trailer gives me the heebie jeebies and no, A, I will not EVER go see this with you and b) my business partner's report that she's not getting any sleep because her toddler is waking up regularly with nightmares. I didn't know this was so common. At any rate, I had a horrible nightmare last night/this morning that makes me want to really look at myself:

I was spending time with a friend's husband and child. She, who had apparently been absent, returned dressed up as for a nightclub. In the dream, this somehow really pissed me off and I felt really betrayed - like, how dare she go out while I'm with her family? There may have been something more to it, because I was really upset. Anyway, I leave her house and actually hide from her in an empty home - seems like a model home - probably a nod to my recent house hunting efforts. I successfully hide from her and join my own partner, share an intimate moment and then we have an earthquake. During the earthquake, I actually think about if I should leave her a note forgiving her . . . and decide NOT to!

Seriously, what kind of grudge holder am I? What makes this worse is the drawn out rumbling sound I heard when I did open my eyes - I really thought we were having an earthquake and a jolt of cortisol prepared me to grab the dog and force A bodily into the doorway. My understanding is that doorways or under heavy furniture are the safe places, but that may be for tornadoes or hurricanes. I feel woefully unprepared for an actual emergency and the Red Cross spots suggesting I be prepared are not helping. Nor is the buzz that our area is due for a nice big earthquake any time. Ugh!

3. My goals have gone to the toilet. I don't remember what my financial, professional or personal goals included and the one thing that was making me so proud, my sewing, has fallen by the wayside with the relative dissolution of sewing club after one member injured herself. So, bootstraps, my friends, bootstraps. I've got an article (for the newspaper!) due Tuesday and after that, it's back to the practicalities of making some lists. Hopefully the new phone I'm planning to get in June will be a useful tool for checking it twice.

Ack, Where have I been?!

I was dismayed when I noticed by beau not blogging any more, but now it's me! Is this really so wrong? If I'm participating more fully in LIFE, I would say it's just to the good. But perhaps the loss of valuable self-reflection, composition and creativity time is to the bad. I guess I won't make any promises, especially as I'm attempting to create a daily entry (that is again, EVERY DAY!) on my professional blog, but here's to going at it again.

Dear Potential Future Mother-in-Law

Another new blog idea...letters to my potential/pretend future mother-in-law. I would desperately like to include a sample of the kind of hijinks that might ensure were I to pursue this line of thinking, but a) I can't remember all the funny lines that were going through my head this week and b) A might not appreciate me writing a letter to his mother in such a way...in public.

It's a "you had to be there" moment when there is: in my head. Like when I was trying to remember the name of the islands my friend recently visiting and all I could come up with was Corks and Turkeys when the name of the island was actually Turks and Caicos.

I'm not stalking, I'm FOLLOWING

I love following blogs - when Blogger made this feature available, I had no idea what a time saver it would prove. At that time, I was regularly reading maybe 3 blogs. As time goes on, that list grows - in part because I do seem to want my daily fix of other people's lives/observations/writing/recipes and in part because "following" makes it easy (that is, allows me to be a lazy reader). At present, I think I'm actively following 10 blogs - not many by blog reading standards, but a healthy amount from my busy B perspective.

I love that I can just log onto my own blog and see if anything new has come up. I don't have to click on my "favorites" list or type in the 10 URLs, I don't have to have fill my inbox with subscription feeds and I don't ever miss a post because the 10 I'm following aren't all everyday writers. I can log on and write my first scrambled thoughts of the day or my closing musings and catch myself up in minutes. Yes, I love following.

I ♥ Blogging

Seems like forever since I wrote, but I've been thinking about writing all week. It's only come to my attention recently that I LOVE blogging. I love writing, I love reading others' blogs, I love creating links in my blogs to the things that made me think this or that and I love formatting it so it looks nice. Oh, and I love adding pictures (and videos!). I got a little overwhelmed for a while because I had multiple blogs: this blog,another Blogspot blog for work, a LiveJournal blog for me and one for Chibo, a blog on a social networking site for my other job, plus, MySpace and FaceBook which don't require blogging, but support it.

I started thinking of compartmentalizing different topics onto the different blog spaces and keeping my identity separate and secret in different places. For this blog, I will continue to keep my identity unrecorded, mostly so that my patients don't stumble upon my random ramblings, but I also feel like, even and maybe especially when I write about things that are near and dear to my heart, I don't mind and maybe even want my community to read what's happening. I guess that's the appeal of LiveJournal - A's become good friends with many of the folks on LJ and he writes without censoring himself and there must be some comfort in that.

Now I grant you that it happens that I don't vent here about anyone that I know is reading, so if I gave my blog address to another 10 friends, there would be another 10 friends that I could rant about, but really, when do I rant about them now? And would it really be so scary for them to read that I adored Twilight or cried my eyes out after Nights in Rodanthe?

Wasting Time Online

I thought it was funny a few weeks ago when I read that my friend comes home every day and checks her email and her Facebook. I was feeling just a little superior that she's so locked to the internet, the assumption being that I am more free from it. That assumption would be false. Now that I've opened my Facebook account and have established connections with 300+ people, I too check my Facebook account regularly, despite having set my account to email me with events of import and the ability of my friends and connections to email me directly should anything need immediate attention. This draw to Facebook has made me aware once again of all the sites that I visit regularly and the ways that it's so easy to waste time online.

Yesterday, for example, I came home expecting A to be overjoyed to see me and to demand all my attention the minute I walked in the door. This wasn't what I wanted as I had been pretty busy at work and needed some transition time. Well, never doubt your powers of manifesting your reality, because A was busily involved in a new game on the Wii and didn't demand any attention. When I found myself seeking something, anything, to entertain myself with online, I decided to head to the gym.

So, what do I look at online? In addition to an irregular MSN.com habit which often falls into MSNBC in pictures (they have some great photo collections), I also

• Check 4 email accounts (1 regular, 1 junk, 2 work)
  
• Log onto 2 Blogspot accounts - used to follow several blogs as well
  
• Use 2 Livejournal accounts, used mostly for reading A and other friends' blogs
  
• Read Christine Kane's blog
• Track my food and exercise with an online tool
• Network with Facebook, Linked In, occasionally MySpace and a work related social networking site
• Organize social activities with Meetin.org
• Do random searches - most recently photos and style notes on Jackie O and photos and biography of Sting

When there is nothing of interest in any of those, I KNOW I'm just wasting time, but I think sometimes that I'm wasting time even if I've gone past a couple of those in a day. For example, this post - it's really just wasting time, of course, procrastinating from starting work for the day. Well, I guess since it's barely 9am and I've already done 5 of the above, I'd better get on with it.

So Much Synergy

This is another of those times where I keep thinking "yeah, I'm going to blog about that later" and then never get to it. I don't feel too bad about it because I recognize that I'm just busy living my life, but I do sometimes regret not getting to express about different things. I keep an ongoing list of topics to write about in my professional blog, but I write there even less than here, though I expect that will change dramatically and soon (because I'll be linking the main webpage to the blog). In any case, the latest theme in my life seems to be synergy. I keep finding links and connections everywhere I look. I feel like I may actually be in the flow again, because things are coming easily and I'm feeling at ease and well.

Today is my dad's birthday and I had a lot of anxiety about how I was going to spend the day. I wanted to mark the day somehow and make it special without bringing myself or the people around me down, but how? Then I thought I wanted to just stay home and meditate quietly and alone. What I ended up doing was beautiful and perfect for my energy and mood. A and I set up our guest bedroom. How that relates to my dad specifically is very peripheral - we have an alter space in that room where I will keep a photo of my dad. But doing the work, cleaning the room, setting up the furniture just so to be welcoming and comfortable for whatever guests come felt really nurturing to me, too, so it was perfect.

And the result of that is a domino effect that seems to clarify the placement of a lot of things that haven't been getting done at home. Oh, if that goes there, then of course this will go over there. All in all, a calm, healing and fun evening.

Every Friggin Day

My friends from DC were here since Wednesday and I spent every evening with them. Wednesday night, we met for dinner and planned to see a show. When showtime turned out to be 11 instead of 9, we all admitted that the show was just a great way to choose the venue and we were there for the company anyways. Thursday, I went to a game night to see them and was disappointed that I didn't get them all to myself, but practiced my sharing skills and eventually got to play with my friends again. Friday, typical date night, we had dinner and a movie. Delicious middle eastern food and Burn After Reading. And, finally, Saturday, visits to my and E's shops and some rice pudding, hugs and tears as we said goodbye. I had told them I was keeping my schedule open to spend as much time as possible with them while they were here, but never expected it to work out that way.

It was wonderful to spend some time with them, but I definitely was feeling my routine blown a bit. Yesterday, I came home after work and got several hours to putz around the house before meeting them and that was great. So now I find myself wondering about things I do every day and things I don't. I recently set a goal to take and post (to a different site) one photograph every day. My first day was easy, that was the day I set the goal and the goal came after the first photo which was really cool and jumped out at me on its own. The second day, no photo, but I posted one on the third day and pre-dated it the second day. Since then (4 days later), no photos taken or posted. Maybe that has something to do with how I did spend the last 4 days, but I also think it's a goal-setting issue that I have.

I set high goals - realistically or not - of doing certain things perfectly. Post a photo everyday, and make sure it's a good one. Give up soda pop everyday for a month. Do X, Y or Z consistently or everyday. When I miss a day or mess up, I have trouble continuing - this, of course, is the curse of perfectionism. One can't actually live up to the perfectionist ideal that exists only in our heads, so we do nothing. I think that's one reason I actually blog so much - it's easy to blog everyday or regularly because I don't consider this a priority, I don't try to write anything particularly deep or well, and I don't feel obligated either way to write or not write. It's just something fun for fun.

I think goals are important and wouldn't want to be without goals, but I think this is worth thinking about some more. Perhaps I would do better with hobbie-related goals that are about attaining a skill or skill level or trying something new rather than about consistency, especially since my schedule is so packed with work. So, my modified photography goals is to take and post photos on that other site from time to time. And my modified fun goal is to have some, every day. Oops, I did it again.

Shuffling

I'm packing for my move and find myself shuffling my stuff about. Shuffling, shifting, moving from here to there, sorting, filing, recategorizing, organizing. There's so much I can do with my stuff. I sold the couch, it's gone, so there's more room in the livingroom to lay everything out, although time is short, especially now that we've scheduled more remodeling on the other house, my new house, my new home...he wants me to call it 'our house.' I've never had trouble claiming other people's belongings as 'ours' or sometimes even 'mine,' so I don't know why this is hard for me. Maybe it'll feel more like mine when I wake up there on a regular basis and go home to there after work. Maybe it'll feel more like mine when I stop worrying that he's going to be mad if I drop something on the floor or leave a mess in the kitchen.

That's one kind of stuff, but not the kind on my mind today. Today I'm noticing, while I sit at my office hours (yes, I have office hours, again, hence the blogging, again), how much electronic shuffling I'm doing. Not the electric slide, mind you, but the electronic shuffle. I started a second Google account in order to have a profile up for my other blog that shows my name, after all, the other blog is about my business and to stimulate business so it doesn't make sense to stay anonymous there. So I shuffled info onto the new profile and off the old, I clicked and okay'd and entered the codes so that I have a new account, but don't ever have to go there, except for the purpose of writing for that other blog.

I also shuffled photos the other day - just creating folders and subfolders so that I can find photos more easily. All the while keeping in mind my idea about scanning in all the paper photos I have, so planning for even more photos going into all these folders.

I started creating groups in my Gmail account and assigning people's emails to the groups, so that I can email group emails, which I find so annoying and usually avoid, to specific groups. What to do with Jefe or Ree or A or E? They defy categorization - either that or they fall into multiple categories. The point is to simplify group emailing, or so I tell myself, and they deserve more than that or at least my ability to remember to send them something individually if I leave them off a group. And what about those people I don't remember, not just to send emails to, but truly have no idea who they are? What should I do with those people in the Contacts list that I cannot place? Deletion seems drastic, after all, Google says not to delete anything anymore, just archive it all and search. But wow, talk about clutter.

So I shuffle information and groups and photos and people, but it's a lot of work with little to show for it. The next couple nights I need to start physically shuffling, putting my precious belongings in boxes and start moving them to A's house, our house. And when they get there, shuffle his things to make room, mix some of his and some of mine and call it ours, call it home. For now, I'm going to shuffle my attention back to the tasks at hand and accomplish some organizing and shuffling here at the office, instead of shuffling my hours, shuffling my papers whenever anyone walks in the room.

Lots of Words

I started a journal a long time ago when my (birth) dad was in alcohol dependency treatment. It was a collection of loose-leaf sheets and the first page was a piece of paper with my visitor badge affixed to it. I remember from that visit my dad eating fried chicken – he said his dietitian said that he could eat fried chicken as long as he took the skins off. So he took the skins off the chicken before eating it (the skins). He’s since been diagnosed with diabetes, suffered multiple heart attacks been disabled by a stroke – maybe he should have listened all those years ago. Maybe I should listen now? My weakness isn’t the skin of fried chicken – I’m not even really sure what it is (macaroni and cheese?), but if my docs tell me to quit something, I hope I’ll listen.

Not the point though, I was writing about writing… Despite my belief that my journal was simply a ‘bitch book’ full or gripes about my friends and boyfriends – he said ‘x # $ ! )’ and then she said ‘uh huh!’ – stories like that, family history for good or ill, were recorded there. Unfortunately, in a fit of clutter clearing, I burned or shredded all those pages. I still have my journal from my trip abroad, but its spine is cracked and pages have been ripped out (by me) as I transferred those entries to another format. When I told my travel buddy that I was getting rid of that journal, she was aghast – she even told me to just give it to her if I didn’t want it anymore. I don’t know what it is about journaling that gives it value or interest. I don’t know what it is about blogging that makes me more likely to do it and at such length. I don’t know if my blog/journal should be given over to my next of kin when I pass (in the news recently). And I certainly don’t know or expect that my journal will be of interest to future generations.

But I do know that writing in this format somehow suits me and that I’m much less likely to delete every past entry, no matter how painful, than I am to shred or burn paper pages. I’m also less likely to open to a random page and read, though I do read a couple entries back or look for specific information at times. I hear a lot of dieters talk about opening their food journals and reading how things were going last week, month or year. I keep a separate ‘blog’ and record of my foods, when I remember and take the time to do so, but I’ve never gone to look back at what I was eating like I might with a paper journal. I like the online format there because it calculates nutritional information about my food, rather than just being a list of what I ate which it would be if I wrote it on paper. Sometimes, like right now, I’m thinking ‘why not write it on paper during the day then transfer it to online in the evening and jot down the relevant nutritional facts on the paper too?’ I don’t think I would really do that, but maybe I’ll give it another shot to keep it on paper.

Getting ready to move, I’m especially thinking of clutter clearing and my box-o-photos is much on my mind. I wish I could just move a few completed photo albums to my new house instead of this ongoing and energy depleting ‘PROJECT.’ There are days when I think of just pitching the lot, but there are also days when I think of scanning them all in like A’s dad took the time to do, so they can be shared more easily. I am thinking of making a slide show DVD to send to friends just before our reunion next fall, so that would mean removing all those photos from my album, scanning them and then replacing them – what a chore, but how fun would it be to have sent those CDs?

My mom also brought up the albums she put together for myself and my bro’s several years ago. It would break her heart to know that I took them apart and got rid of parts of them that she saved all those years. It will probably especially hurt because she already knows my brothers trashed theirs and she thinks mine is intact. Why couldn't I just keep it the way she did it? I thought I would make it ‘nicer,’ but I never took the time to do so. Maybe I just make a couple piles in my new office – ‘To Scan’ and ‘Scanned.’ I could just do a couple at a time instead of sitting around staring at the walls. And that would help me start the sorting process for putting them into albums. Okay, I have intentions. But I also still have lots of words, lots of paper, lots of photos and lots of memories.

Too Much Too Fast

Life comes at you fast, or so the commercial goes. So true - no small wonder it's a phrase used in advertising. We can relate to it. I want to take notes on every moment, every day, because it seems like there are always little things that I think, "oh yeah, that's going in the blog." Sometimes it's this blog, sometimes it's my work related blog and rarely, but occassionally, Chibo speaks up and wants something in his blog. I don't know how to keep up and keep it all straight.

I do actually email myself notes when I'm at work and thoughts occur to me, but if I'm out in the word, it's more challenging. As I note this, I realize that it's just possible that my concern about photography could apply here as well. I used to think that if one was overly concerned about taking photographs at a party or event, one might not fully participate in it - I think that could also be said about wanting to memorialize daily moments - when they're gone, they're gone. Lived, learned from and let go. It's okay to let some of them slide into forgetfulness - if they're really important, hopefully they'll come up again.

The other funny thing that comes to mind as I'm writing this up is that the challenge of writing a lot of things at once into the blog is really my own strange habit of each entry getting it's own day. I don't know if you've noticed that in reading, but it's a rare case that two entries have the same date. If they do, they were probably written the same day, but just because two entries don't have the same date most definately does NOT mean they weren't written on the same day - I write and change the dates all the time. It's just a strange habit, but I think it also prevents me from just blurting everything out. And I don't like to talk about multiple subjects in any entry - like, I want to talk about Howling Wolves, but I'm saving it for another entry.

It would be lucky if I still had "office hours" with an accessible computer - I'm surfing a lot of internet at work which gives me a lot of fodder and material for writing, but doesn't allow me to write about it until I get home. Because another oddity of my blogging habits is that I don't ever write a blog outside of the little blog posting box - I've never written an entry in Word or in my email or really even in my paper travel journal. The entries for which I use that journal usually just refer to my notes in that journal. Maybe that's what I should do - just keep a list of daily notes that I could write about later? Okay, now I'm just rambling. Good night.

Blogging Politics

I think blogging can be a really brave act. Either you put your thoughts, opinions and experiences out there in a public way or you keep it private and limited to a select audience. Either way, you're still opening up a journal or diary, traditionally something very private, to the reactions of others. I have been on both sides of taking a blog personally and reacting to it - it's no picnic.

My mantra now when I read blogs is: It's not about me - it's not about me.

I think the blogging experience might be a bit smoother if more people tried that.

Two Weeks Notice

I've been on vacation for the past two weeks. I come back rejuvenated, sorta...but definitely inspired. Again. It seems around every corner there is something to inspire me to change something about myself, something about my life. No difference on vacation and if anything, even more motivation for change.

Upon my return, I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my dogs and my thoughts, but that was not to be until several hours later. Even though I feel a little like I already blew my post-vacation resolutions, I haven't really and I can still stick with my resolutions for the rest of the day. I'm just not sure I can catch my blog up by the end of the day like I had hoped! :)

I've wrote a lot during the first leg of my trip and learned a lot about what interests me and what's important for me during vacations, so that may be more expressive and more in-the-moment. During the second half, I luxuriated a little more and didn't write after the first days attempt failed so miserably (I got distracted... a lot), so I'll just be recalling a lot of what happened. Maybe lists - those are just easier. At any rate, this is notice that the previous two weeks entries were actually entered after this one, though the experiences were appropriate for dates.

Playing Catch Up or Not Playing at All?

So I haven't been blogging but I've been thinking a lot about blogging. I've had a side job for the past couple months related to blogging, so I'm looking at a lot of blogs. I'm also working at the new job, living in the new house, getting news about my boards (passed!) and licensure (yes, I should, in fact, wait until January to get licensed), getting ready to meet A's sister and go on my birthday cruise (despite my best intentions to just spend the day pampering myself at a spa), so there's lots to blog about. I even have sort of a list in my head of topics to write about, but the days keep going and I just don't write. It's like there are too many back topics that I want to write about, but not bad enough to actually sit down and do it. As E and I had discussed, it's a whole lot different when you don't have class time to actually get things done.

I used to knit/crochet, blog and email in class. When I first moved into my new place, I also spent a lot of time at the computer, but I noticed last night when E was over how different the energy was when the computer was closed the whole time. I didn't even think of opening it to check email - wait, I did open it once, but technically, that was just before E arrived. I opened the computer to look up how to make corn tortillas just as she rang the bell. Since we were running out to the store, I wanted to see if I needed ingredients. Since the making of tortillas requires only corn flour and water, you'd think I was set, but alas, I have corn meal and not corn flour and these are two different things. In what way, I do not know, but the site I read specified that they are very different and that tortillas can NOT be made with meal. So, I decided to just buy tortillas and skip the whole "tortilla press" and corn flour fiasco. At any rate, that was what I needed to learn on the computer at the beginning of E's visit. Then I didn't think of the computer the rest of the night.

So, now I find myself wanting to describe the calm yet celebratory dinner we had last night and all the cooking and food prep I've been enjoying the last few days instead of getting to the point. And really, I'd like to get to the point, so I can get back in the kitchen. My point is simply this - I don't have to carry a list of blog topics around in my head or in my pocket - if the topic is salient enough, it will come round again. I can and will just write when the mood strikes. I am not a slave to this forum nor to any technique or method I employ. I can do deep breathing when it feels good or just roll over and go to sleep. I can bike to work or drive as the mood and weather strike me. I can have routines and I can stray from them. I made them to serve me, just like this blog. So, I'll let it serve me and if making a list is something that seems important, I'll make it here and come back to it later.

Book Report Blogging

Immediately on our return from camping, A jumps on the computer and blogs about it. He searched for the website of the place we went and looked up photos. He was at it a good half hour before he turned to me and said, "I'm blogging differently these days - I used to write about deeper things, but now I'm just saying what I do everyday." I call it book-report blogging and have tried not to fall into that trap, but find that I sometimes do.


I think this is a risk of blogging, especially if you know you have a readership, like on LiveJournal or MySpace, where you have long lists of "friends" that may check in regularly. A few people mention your blog to you, commenting or complimenting, in person or online and then this weird sense of something starts to take over. It's almost like an over-inflated sense of your own importance, but I don't think it's exclusively that ... narrow-minded.

When my friends tell me about their day, I'm interested...until it becomes the laundry list and then I start going over my list in my head, which I then often share and it becomes this vicious cycle. I don't want to that in life or online - it seems just such a waste of time, energy and harddrive space.

CopyCat Blogging

I'm a perpetrator of copycat blogging. I'm not copying another person's words - I'm not even paraphrasing. What I am doing is writing about similar material to another blogger on a regular basis - almost like a response. It's not that I'm not inspired to blog or that I don't have my own inventive ideas - it's that I like her blog, I like what she writes about and I often have thoughts on the subject. Not always new, interesting or even that different from hers, but something that I feel is worth writing about just for my own exploration. The ironic thing is that today's entry is all about going it alone, being independent, doing things without help.

I started writing about my move and using that as an example of how I go it alone, but that was just getting me down. The move itself was immensely depressing because despite hiring movers and taking many loads to the new place in my car (alone or with E), I still had to ask friends for help. Now that I'm moved, it's not as depressing, because I enjoy living alone and like having this space all to myself.

So, on reflection, I really don't have that much to say about doing things alone. I know I do it. I know I don't like asking for help. I know that I should ask for help and that it's okay to ask for help. But I also think it's become so ingrained into my personality that I don't even recognize when or how I do it.

So I guess it's a good thing that I asked E to hem my curtains for me, right?

On Being the Peanut Gallery

So I started wanting to write something about the third blog that I regularly check into some days ago. I even mentioned it in an earlier post, but never got around to explaining what happened. My whole perspective is now skewed due to recent events, so I'm not sure what justice I can give this topic, but I'm going to ramble on about it anyway, because it's relevant, it's important and I'm too lazy to leave for the store just yet - if I wait long enough, maybe E will get home from lunch and walk with me.

So the topic is this Third Blog that I used to read and now don't. Well, that's a lie, because I'm reading it again. No, I'm not that capricious - Third Blog is private and viewed only by permission from The Writer. Yes, The Writer granted me permission to view his personal blog and then rescinded it and then gave it back. Why and how do we choose who reads our blogs? The Writer keeps his private because he is in fact writing very personal things, in some instances, pouring his heart out and revealing his deepest feelings. I, on the other hand, write more generally and anonymously, or so I hope, and don't mind it being a public blog, but I don't direct more than a couple friends here - and most of those are people I know won't read regularly anyway. Maybe I'd write differently if I knew it couldn't be read by strangers...maybe I'd write a lot differently if I knew my boyfriend was reading?

So The Writer had told me about his blog and even showed me a few entries for months before giving me access. I like to think that I was "cool" about it and not begging to read, but the latter may be more the case. I was intrigued - what was he writing that was so private? And why shouldn't I, close friend, confidante and generally understanding person, read it and participate? Finally, after months of patient waiting, I was added to the readership and voraciously consumed everything available since The Writer and I met and then went back and started from the beginning. I had to schedule an emergency summit of my Staying Sane on Blogs Committee because I was feeling proud, hurt, annoyed, happy, sad, angry and confused all at the same time based on what I was reading. In respect for The Writer's privacy, I didn't mention or discuss much of what I was reading or my resultant feelings with him.

Until this week. What happens when someone who's blog you read vents about you?

Okay, that didn't really happen either, but it makes for good dramatic effect. The Writer has been known to post a few things about me...okay a lot of things, including photographs. I'm not talking about risking-my-Ms.USA-crown photos, just photos of us doing things and photos he thinks are extra cute. Well, that's flattering, right? Except that I'm super sensitive about having photos of myself on the Internet and even more sensitive about possible divergent meanings in text about me. So I often would get annoyed by things written about me, even when I knew they were well-intended. The latest entry particularly frustrated me because it hinted at a not-so-stable financial state, which is something I'm even more sensitive about than my bad-hair photos. In my immediate reaction state, I commented on his blog for the very first time and it was a pretty snarky comment. Made him look bad and would have made me look bad too if he hadn't immediately removed it.

After that bitchy comment, he booted me from the blog. No discussion, no second chances.

Until today. When he added me back. No discussion. Well, of course, I immediately caught myself back up, but lesson learned, no comments from this peanut gallery. Though I don't know what to think or do about getting access again, I do know my new mantra: Call the Committee before Commenting.

Simplicity

A friend recently wrote about how complicated our lives have gotten and wondered about how we can strip out some of the chaos of our lives and live more simply. I don't know the answer, but I know the question and the discussion have a lot of value. I went camping last weekend - just one night out under the stars watching a meteor shower. It was my first and I was awed like a little girl watching the streaks across the sky. I felt so small and yet so connected in that moment...to the cosmos, to the earth I was lying on and to the people around me, some of whom I knew, some I'd just met and one I was particularly prepared not to like. Well, the meteors didn't make me like said person any better, but maybe they helped me gain a little perspective.

For the overnight camping trip, A and I packed my truck full of many useful and useless things, including air mattresses, a battery operated air pump, games, wine, cups, extra blankets, clean clothes, camp chairs, a camp stove and pans for camp cooking and hot cocoa... I always hate being made fun of for over-packing, but I enjoyed sleeping comfortably and being able to drink a bottle of my favorite wine while seated comfortably at camp. In this instance, it seems that simplicity is having what we need. As I'm looking forward to moving in the next 30 days, simplicity seems the exact opposite as I go through my class notes, files, clothes, dog supplies and other misc to clear out as much clutter as possible before moving.

Another area in which I consider clearing clutter is the Internet. I irregularly read a couple of blogs and nowadays irregularly post here. It suits me and I use this to my own ends. I also have a smattering of email accounts, a craigslist account, an activity site account and, reluctantly, a MySpace account. I do much of my financial work online, I have many expired dating site profiles, and belong to many list servers that send me information that I usually just delete without even opening. I hear about people having accounts on LiveJournal, FaceBook, Friendster, MySpace and many others and how they have to keep up with what everyone is posting. What is that about? I can barely keep up with a few friends in real life let alone a bunch of people posting all day long to various sites.

Of the 2 blogs (down from 3, but more on that later) that I regularly tune into, 1 is a friend a speak to with some regularity. When we speak, she may ask "have you read my blog today?" but this is just her way of knowing if I'm already filled in. When the answer is invariably "no," she just tells me what's going on. I often then go read the blog to fill in any spots she left out and see how her perspective has changed in the intervening time. I like reading her blog, but I prefer speaking to her in person or on the phone. It's more fun to spend time together and hang out. Less opportunity for misunderstanding, too - which is the main reason I'm only a reader of 2 blogs these days instead of 3.

At any rate, I don't know how to simplify any better than the next person, but I'm going to paste the word serenity on the wall above my computer as a reminder of my core values so that I don't get sucked any deeper into the quagmire of Internet activities. To paraphrase many a bumper sticker, "I'd rather be paddling."

Timelines

I do this really weird thing with my blog. I pre- and post-date items all the time. Sometimes I've started writing something and then finished it up much later and sometimes I just willfully change the date. I like to bury some of the more personal items so that they don't appear at the top of the front page. It's not that I mind people reading them, otherwise this would not be a public blog, but I just don't want those items to draw that much focus right away.

It's a somewhat strange habit and today I wondered if I would ever look back at this blog and try to reconstruct my life from it. And if I would believe that I got a haircut before I took boards, because that, in fact, happened a week later.

I also like changing the date because I can enter things in for my own searchable history, such as quotes, words of the day and poetry that I'm not really trying to share. Maybe I'll just randomly start entering things from the year 2000 - if there is anything under that year, it was definately entered late because as of this writing, there is nothing in 2000 and I only started writing in Blogspot in 2007. Yes, even those posts in 2006 were entered later, although they were, in fact, written or posted on the days indicated, just on another blog site.

Was thinking of my first journals today. I remember reading them again later and being disgusted with 13-year-old-me's writings and deciding to clean the slate by getting rid of them. I sometimes regret that decision, but mostly because of the strong visual image (and visceral responce) I have to the first page of any journal I ever wrote. It was a VISITOR sticker put onto a sheet of lined paper. It was from the time I visited my father at an Indiana state treatment center for alcoholics. I didn't even know what it meant, but I remember that my dad was different there than other times I'd seen him - maybe less funny, but more stable. That was how I first started journaling.

Note: after posting this, I changed the date on it and I realize that part of my neurosis about this date-changing business is that I like each post to appear on a different day. Often writing one post leads me to another topic or tangent that becomes its own post, and I like them to appear in order, but not as though they were written at the same time. I wonder why that matters to me?

Moratorium on Blogging

Have spent quite a lot of time blogging lately - noticed that for May, I'm already at 23 entries which is 5 more than most months previously. In the interest of getting my thesis done, I'm officially taking a moratorium on blogging. I'm not allowing myself to write anything (except ideas, so I don't forget!) in my blog until after my thesis is one complete draft. I have to say it out loud to discipline myself.

Goodbye for now, Hive. I'll miss you.