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I started blogging a few days before my 28th birthday. The two events did not coincide as a symbolic gesture to a new life or anything like that. It was simply that I had the opportunity to do so. i had just given birth a couple of weeks earlier and was on “maternity leave”. If you could call it that. I was a self-employed daycare provider. I couldn’t afford to take much time off. I opted for 3 full weeks not working and then only half enrollment until 6 weeks post-natal. I didn’t have TV so the internet was my diversion between diaper changes and infant naps and during marathon nursing sessions.
Allison Crews was my introduction to blogging, through Live Journal. In all honesty, Allison & I didn’t get along very well with each other. I had nothing but respect, admiration and love for that girl-mom. She reminded me of myself – a teen mom who was doing everything she could to knock the teen mommy stereotypes on their ass , packing a punch so hard they’d never recover the same way. We both were told we were nothing by definition of our age & reproductive status but knew we were something more than anyone wanted to believe . She didn’t relate to me the same way I related to her,though. She thought I was an elitist and classist bitch. Her words. And she didn’t mince ‘em. That was just one of the many things I loved about Allison..and myself.
So that’s how it started, almost exactly 8 years ago.
I’ve tried to walk away from blogging several times over the past 8 years. There are times when blogging feels like nothing but a time vampire. I look at relationships I’ve built over the years through blogging and know that it has not been a waste of time entirely but still…the personal payoff is slim. It seems like all the words I tossed out into the blogoshere might have been better spent on endeavors like…oh…I don’t know…say, those eight or so “works in progress” – novels, non-fiction projects and other things made out of words, that I’ve been working on entirely too long now.
My most recent blog posts here have been media sharing almost exclusively….nothing really substantial. I write things and before I post them, I dissect them and realize they are just small pieces of something more that I’m meant to keep to myself. Then I feel that familiar presence of pressure to blog….like I’m cheating someone out of what I’ve kept to myself. It’s an odd feeling, considering I’ve never felt that it was right to write for anyone other than myself.
I read one day recently in an article entitled, “Ten Tips for Successful Blogging”…# Whatever – Don’t blog about not feeling like blogging or having nothing to blog about. oops.I’m breaking the rules.
I don’t feel like blogging beyond wordless photographic entries – my “memories in the raw” or giving out the link love & media sharing. Someday…maybe it’ll be more again. But for now – that’s the deal. Bite sized blurbs, a snapshot of my life soundtrack & cinematic diversions and link love from around the web. It’s what works for me right now.
[blog title from "True" by Spandau Ballet! Did you hear? They're reuniting! hehe]
RECENT CONVERSATION:
Carlos ( while checking my blog to see if I’d written anything): Why aren’t you blogging?
Me: I don’t know.I just think I’m saving words for real writing. And stuff.
I have heard the number one Blog Killer is to blog about how you don’t feel like blogging. Oops.
There isn’t a ton to blog about lately anyway. I’ve covered the whole My Kid Is Satan In A Cute Kid Suit deal already. Besides that, I haven’t been up to much. I’m working on ideas for a collage novel, cleaning out closets & organizing crap (some stupid book I read said that by organizing my house, I’m organizing & restructuring my life!), developing my skills as a beer connoisseur and trying to follow the advice given to me by a fortune cookie:
“(S)he who spends more time on (her)his bottom, will never rise to the top”
Got it. I suspect it’s not helping with the size of my ass either. Although, I’m told that, overall, my ass combined with the blonde,blue eyed thing I’ve got going on gives me some hellacious street value in Panama. Awesome.
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RECENT MEDIA
Ok, I’ve changed my mind about Freddy Rodriguez.
I think I’ve successfully bullied everyone in my house into reading it,too.
This is my 3 year old’s favorite. He even chose to fall asleep to it one night. The only explanation I can come up with is the chaos matches what’s inside him.
O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias
English title:The Year My Parents Went On Vacation
Really excellent family movie. Well, for older kids who can read subtitles .
“Is the director’s name really Cao (‘COW’) Hamburger? Haha!”- said by one of my 12 year olds.
Now I’m not one to use the TV as a babysitter but I discovered this past week that Astro Boy provides hours of electronic babysitting for my typically active put-a-movie-in,watch-10-minutes-of-it-and-then-leave-the-room 3 year old. Then we took a nice chunky paperback of Astro Boy comics out of the library and now the 7 year old is hooked. And she nearly peed her pants when I told her there’ s gonna be a Astro Boy movie! With Freddie Highmore as Astro Boy! (In case you are not aware,Freddie Highmore is squeee!-material to 7 year old girls.)
Confession time: I’m not an Ani-Fan. Everyone thinks I’m supposed to be. It’s true that I consider “32 Flavors” to be one of those songs that defines me (my theme song,if you will) but honestly, I firest heard it by that other girl that sang it so it was the song that spoke to me,not Ani. “The Atom” ,though…it’s brilliant and I love it and thereby might become an Ani fan afterall.
Paganini caprices by some guy with a saxophone.
oh my god,it was horrible. Plus,this guy holds his saxophone like it’s some extension of his dick and has this look on his face that says it’s supposed to make me really hot and bothered that he does that.But wow, it really,really doesn’t.And I’d rather hear Paganini with violin and guitar. Personal pref.
And speaking of dicks, I’m halfway through reading American Wife and I’m really not sure I can finish it. Knowing that the characters are modelled after Laura Bush & Co is probably what’s killing it for me. I think I’d enjoy it more if I didn’t have the image of George Bush as The Politician because great gods and godesses…do I really need that much imagery of George Bush’s penis floating around in my head? Also, much of the book focuses on relationship development and the whole meeting and falling in love and blah blah. I’ll be honest – I don’t care about other people’s relationships,even fictional.
[title from "The Atom" by Ani DiFranco]
[title from: "Internet Relationships" by MC Lars]
Life is busy.Real life. I always kind of laugh at the expression “online life”. Is that really possible?
Nevertheless, my time online is limited these days and there is one huge stressor in my So-Called Online Life.That would be my Google Reader.
Every morning,they sit there – this huge list of blogs I subscribed to. I thought I was being all organized and shit when I made little sub-categories in my Reader to make the list seem a bit more streamlined
Craft Blogs
Art Blogs
Comic Blogs
Mommy Blogs
Sex Blogs
Eco/Sustainable Living Blogs
Food Blogs
Regular Blogs I just Like
Group Blogs (politics,domesticity,feminism,activism…other ‘isms”)
Oddly, it doesn’t make them any easier to read. It’s like doing laundry.Just because you sort and fold all the laundry and put them neatly into little piles according to what they are (shirts in one pile,pants in another, so on and so forth..) , it doesn’t mean they get put away where they belong any faster.
Clearly, the solution is to purge the list. When your underwear drawer starts overflowing, you get rid of the ones that are holey, period-stained and no longer pass as sexy since your ass just eats them panties. Same idea.
Does one use a hatchet or a scalpel for that sort of thing? How about an axe.
This morning I started carving away at the list.I used the following criteria for deletion:
♦Blogs who remind me way too much of Elizabeth Gilbert .Not that they’re on some sort of spiritual quest – just that they’re self-absorbed and think they are way more special than they really are. We get it – you’re pretty,smart,funny and have a great girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/lover/dog/sex toy collection and we should all not only like you,but want to be you. Only I don’t. Now, you’re just going to say,”Oh,you’re just jealous!”, but I’m really not. It’s more like nausea I’m experiencing,
♦Train wrecks that are past their expiration date.They were pretty interesting at first when it was a lot of twisted metal and horrific cries for help but the rescue crew never showed up so now there’s just a lot of really bloated and overripe corpses laying around rotting . It stinks and no one wants to be anywhere near it.
♦ Blogs that read too much like fiction because they probably are
♦Book blogs that consider Jodi Picoult their favorite author. I respect people’s affinity for certain authors they latch on to but the “Ripped from Newsweek and Dateline NBC” style of generated fiction is not for me. If I subscribe to a book blog, it’s because a reader has similar tastes in brain candy. Life is too short to read books I don’t like and it definitely too short to read reviews of books I probably won’t like,either.
♦Blogs written by people who are striving to be Margaret Cho but instead sound a lot more like Caroline Rhea
♦Bloggers who really need to read Maria’s Blogging 101, Commenting 101 , & Basic Etiquette 101
♦ the “frugal” ,”simplification” and “eco-friendly” blogs who are looking to be some sort of Green Martyr. I know…you’re new at this and looking for a pat on the head but the “Look how much comfort and pleasure I’m sacrificing for the sake of the environment!” mantra does nothing for me. You are totally missing the point.
♦Bloggers who write way too many posts in which they load their brats into their SUV,drive to Wal-mart for “great deals!” and stop at the McDonald’s drive-thru on the way home. Ew.
♦Child-Free By Choice people who hate “me” because I’m a Breeder. I respect your choice to not have spawn. Please reciprocate and respect my choice to replicate on a whim.
♦Snark snark snark blah blah blah
♦Bloggers that lean waaaay too far to either the right or the left that they may as well just lay down already.
♦Blogs that I stumbled upon randomly and upon reading their latest post, deemed them my Blogging Soul Mate. Since then, the common thread has unraveled.
All long-time (relatively speaking) bloggy friends and artsy/crafty blogs survived the cut.
But guess what? I have very few blogs subscribed to in my Google Reader now. How ever shall I have an online life now??
If you know of a blog that you consider a worthwhile MUST READ that you think I would also love, tell it to me. Some bitch came in and hacked my poor Reader list to death.
Dear Dr. Phil,
While traipsing around the blogosphere yesterday, I read that you were seeking stories from homebirthers.I clicked on the link provided by the blogger and was a little confused to find a form that asks only questions related to regretting a homebirth.
Now,I don’t like to jump to conclusions,Dr. Phil …but it appears to me that you’re planning a show focusing on the negative aspects of homebirthng. As a woman who has had a wonderful homebirthing experience (I will spare you the details since you seem uninterested in hearing about it), it concerns me that a mainstream television show with a wide viewing audience comprised primarily of women would choose to show only the ‘cons’ of such a demographically relevant issue.
It would be a huge disservice to women to present a partial sampling of information regarding homebirthing. Sharing stories that focus only on bad experiences perpetuate fear and ignorance about birthing options. As I am confident the Fact Checkers in your employ can confirm, homebirthing is a viably safe birthing option with many more pros than cons. I implore you to aim for at the very least a healthy balance of representation and allow the powerful voices of women who will never regret their homebirthing decision to be heard loud and clear.
