The other day, I talked some about polyamory. I honestly forget sometimes that things like that might surprise some people, or make them uncomfortable. I know that a couple of my readers were uncomfortable with that post, and based on my blog stats, I'm guessing I lost some readers (though that could be a coincidence). I was like, "Oh, yeah, right."
I am lucky to have a diverse group of friends, including, through homeschooling and elsewhere, committed Christians of various stripes. It should be no surprise that there are things we don't share easily with each other. I do forget sometimes that when I write on my blog, I am writing both to some faceless audience of people I haven't met, and also to specific friends and loved ones, and that some posts may be very welcome to some friends, and uncomfortable for others.
I've actually been thinking about this kind of a lot since I posted about polyamory. Right now, my own sexuality and sexual history are things I'm interested in, and if I'm interested in something, I usually write about it, to someone, in some venue. Right now, this blog is my venue most of the time.
I write about a lot of things on my blog. Even before my renewed interest in reflection on sexuality and polyamory, I wondered if my blog was too scattered. I write about adoption; parenting; anxiety; race and class; books; Quakerism and faith; my life; people I love. Perhaps I should have several blogs--one about adoption, one about books, one about Quakerism, one for profiles of my beloveds, one about parenting...
The problem is that I don't have enough to say about any one of those things to sustain a blog. Long-time readers may recall that this blog started as a place to think about transracial adoption. Eventually, though, I found that I had said most of what I have to say on that topic, and the blog was quiet for awhile until I started using it as The Blog of All Things. I seem to be a Blog of All Things kind of person, because I don't have one thing I'm interested in. I'm deeply interested in transracial adoption for awhile; then I'm reading up on economics and globalization; then I'm reading a whole bunch of classic sci-fi, or re-watching Firefly. Lately I've been studying up on homebirth and midwifery, because I realized I didn't have an informed opinion on those things, and I was curious. Sometimes I'm interested in several things at once: right now, I'm very interested in reading and talking about gifted kids; kittens; amigurumi; common birds of Michigan; young adult fiction; marriage; flirting; service; homeschooling; gender-nonconforming kids; and religion. Off the top of my head. And that might mean a blog post on one of those things one day, and on another the next day. Or one post that touches on a couple of those things.
They're not neatly compartmentalized for me. Parenting, gender-nonconformance, anxiety, religion, and kittens, for instance, have some obvious connections in my life right now. I can't see it working for me to have a blog that was supposed to be only about one of those things.
Something I thought about yesterday, during my middle-of-the-night drive home from Ann Arbor, was whether, if I want to write about polyamory and sexuality, I should have a special space for that. A separate blog, or a section of this blog that people could choose to go to, or not. But part of what I'm thinking about is my desire to be wholly known, by which I mean to be in places and with people where I can bring my whole self. One of the things I love about FLGBTQC is that it comes so close to that for me--I've said many times, and here I am saying it again, FLGBTQC is the place in my life where people can best honor and hold both my relationship with Raider and my queer identity. I like that. I want and need more places like that in my life.
As Ragen Chastain says, I am the boss of my underpants. I am also the boss of my blog. And I need and want this to be a place where I can write honestly about what matters to me.
It's not my wish to make anyone uncomfortable; it is, indeed, my regret if I do. But at the same time, it's OK with me if people are uncomfortable. It's OK if some people only read my posts on books, or my posts on parenting. It's OK if some people decide not to read my blog at all. Even people I love. Even people who are my friends and want to stay my friends. It's OK, if you're uncomfortable, to say so. I welcome both "I" statements and Good-Faith Questions on any topic. Tell me what you think and feel; that's fine with me. Ask me more; that's fine with me. Choose to spend your time elsewhere; I'm sorry to see you go, but that's fine with me, too, and when I see you at park day or in the grocery store or at a friend's house, I'll still be glad to see you and I hope you'll be glad to see me.
I am a moral person. I am a deeply ethical person. I am religious in a non-trivial way. I think and ponder and reflect and think some more about everything. The decisions I make about my life are shaped by these things. I don't think I've ever made a decision lightly. So, you know, at least, that if I make a decision that seems dangerous, reckless, immoral, wrong-headed, deeply mistaken, risky, or even just head-scratchingly incomprehensible to you, well, it's probably the best-thought-out, most-thoroughly-processed bone-headed move in history. Perhaps that is a consolation.
I might write some more about sexuality and polyamory sometime soon; I have a couple of things percolating in the Grab-Bag. But I won't write explicity about sex here. Just so you know.
In other news, my notebook went missing yesterday just after I wrote about it. It went missing in circumstances that make me hope it will yet turn up--I remember putting it, and my shopping list, into my bag, but when the Tiny Tornado and I got to the store, I opened my bag and they weren't there. Somewhere in the house, we think. Or maybe the car.
I hope it turns up. This is not just a notebook; it's the notebook my friend Janis gave me a pen quiver for. I love perfect, unexpected gifts (like the time my friend Weaver mailed me a fancy tape-flag dispenser! Clearly office supplies are a theme) and I treasure my pen quiver.
In the meantime, Raider gave me a little notebook he picked up at a conference in May, small enough to carry in my bag. And I have a beautiful journal my friend Uncle Toots bought for me at Walden Pond, really too nice for the kind of disposable note-taking I do. And I remind myself that my brain is always generating more thoughts and ideas than I know what to do with, so anything that stays lost is probably not that important; meanwhile, worthwhile things (and some that aren't) find their way to the surface again. I'm already on the second page of notes in the lovely journal.
And so on.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Posted with Blogsy
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
"You're a writer? What do you write?" "Letters."
Since my daily blog-a-thon in May, my pageviews have increased from 20-30 to about 125-150 per day. More and more of them are people I haven't actually met. I like this. I enjoy having an audience. If you like something I write, tell a friend. Now that I've broken the triple digits, I'm full of crazy ambition. Like, what if I had two hundred devoted readers?
I'm really working on feeling like blogging is "real" writing. It feels more real if there's an editor and your work gets accepted and published. Except that I have more readers at my blog than I had in most of the little magazines I used to sometimes publish in back in the day!
Also, blogging is really my genre. I do essays, sure. Almost never fiction. But from my first opportunity, I've had a knack for writing letters--I used to write very long, very detailed, very funny letters to friends in college. And I did my first "group letters" --which later evolved into a small e-mail list -- after I had left my Ph.D. program at Rutgers. I started writing long letters, making multiple copies, adding a cover, and sending them off to my group of friends from New Jersey. One of my friends, who was then living in Florida, told me that she read my letters out loud to her friends at parties. "Has anything come from Su?" they would ask when they saw her. And when it had, they would all get together at her place and kick back with a cold beer while she read to them.
It can be hard--well, it was hard for me--to accept that my special writing talent lies in writing letters. But it does. Even when I spent a month at a writing retreat many years ago, my main output was long group letters to Raider and some other friends. I sent one almost every day. Sometimes two a day. This was before people had e-mail access routinely; it cost me a mint in stamps.
I wrote a lot of other stuff, too. But what I really loved and could not get enough of was writing letters.
Blogging is like that. When you read one of my blog posts, you might be interested to know that they read very much like my letters do. A typical letter might include some funny stories about my kids; some fretful processing about something that's on my mind; a snarky book review (or a non-snarky one); a story or two about people I've met. Pretty much like the blog, except that I don't tend to do all of those things in a single blog post, and I have to be a bit more discreet about storytelling.
I thought I was going to go on to talk about something else, but I think that's it for now. Your takeaway: Feed my overweening ambition! Point interested friends in my direction!
(Edited to add: Apparently this is my twelve-dozenth post! Woo-hoo!)
I'm really working on feeling like blogging is "real" writing. It feels more real if there's an editor and your work gets accepted and published. Except that I have more readers at my blog than I had in most of the little magazines I used to sometimes publish in back in the day!
Also, blogging is really my genre. I do essays, sure. Almost never fiction. But from my first opportunity, I've had a knack for writing letters--I used to write very long, very detailed, very funny letters to friends in college. And I did my first "group letters" --which later evolved into a small e-mail list -- after I had left my Ph.D. program at Rutgers. I started writing long letters, making multiple copies, adding a cover, and sending them off to my group of friends from New Jersey. One of my friends, who was then living in Florida, told me that she read my letters out loud to her friends at parties. "Has anything come from Su?" they would ask when they saw her. And when it had, they would all get together at her place and kick back with a cold beer while she read to them.
It can be hard--well, it was hard for me--to accept that my special writing talent lies in writing letters. But it does. Even when I spent a month at a writing retreat many years ago, my main output was long group letters to Raider and some other friends. I sent one almost every day. Sometimes two a day. This was before people had e-mail access routinely; it cost me a mint in stamps.
I wrote a lot of other stuff, too. But what I really loved and could not get enough of was writing letters.
Blogging is like that. When you read one of my blog posts, you might be interested to know that they read very much like my letters do. A typical letter might include some funny stories about my kids; some fretful processing about something that's on my mind; a snarky book review (or a non-snarky one); a story or two about people I've met. Pretty much like the blog, except that I don't tend to do all of those things in a single blog post, and I have to be a bit more discreet about storytelling.
I thought I was going to go on to talk about something else, but I think that's it for now. Your takeaway: Feed my overweening ambition! Point interested friends in my direction!
(Edited to add: Apparently this is my twelve-dozenth post! Woo-hoo!)