A Year of Blogging Dangerously

$20,000 annual stipend, a brand new iMac, a pocket video camera. All of this in exchange for writing 500 innocuous words a week and occasionally handing out T-shirts and key chains at public events. Why not? I ask you, why not?!

My credit union is big on community. That's part of the reason it's my credit union. That, and they have free pomegranate lip balm in their lobby. I'll never have to buy lip balm again. Besides making sure that all of their customers have smooth, supple lips, they also have a series of blogs linked to their web page to foster this sense of community. Every couple of years they have a contest for their Mom blog. After circling it like a hyena for a year or so, I finally entered last year. Because why not?

Suffice it to say that I didn't get the gig. I didn't even make the first cut. They weren't looking for me. I submitted a post about potted plants; they were looking for potty training and wine at the end of the day. I have no talent for that sort of thing. So I decided that I would blog for free. Because why not? I didn't know anything about blogging. I read a few, wondered who their readers were and stumbled into BlogHer, where they were just gearing up for NaBloPoMo. I was amazed to discover that people actually would willingly read my stuff and share it with others. I was completely enchanted with all of these other people out there quietly doing what I wanted to do. I discovered some invaluable friends and have gotten so much feedback on my writing that I don't even know what to do with it.

I am a terrible blogger. I don't always respond to comments, I don't join blogging groups, I read posts all the time without commenting. I am sporadic and grumpy. I am not a networker, I barely understand social media and I chafe at the unwritten "rules" of it all. I am a terrible blogger, but I keep blogging. Because of you, of course. Because I read your words and I am inspired. Because I am thrilled with the knowledge of all these smart people thinking and writing it down. Because I feel connected to something larger than my own journals and notebooks and scribbled post-it notes.

I am a decent writer. Shall I tell you a story? I have written forever. I can't remember not writing. I can't remember a time when I didn't look around and make up stories in my head. I don't know what it would be like to look around a crowded room and not wonder what is happening inside the brains of others. Something happened, though. Some kind of message received through the garbled reception of my perception. Back when I was making the kinds of decisions that I was far too young to make and everyone tells you that it will affect the rest of your life, I decided that writing wasn't a "real job". I decided that I could keep my silly little hobby to myself. I decided that I must do something "useful", something "worthwhile". I had this nonstop Morse Code of negative bleeping through my brain: self-indulgent, waste of time, pipe dream, useless, immature, arrogant, self-involved, etc. And I believed it. And I went to college and got a semi-respectable degree in a field I enjoyed, but really only so much. I mostly enjoyed it because it facilitated the writing; it gave me fodder for the stories in my head.

A year ago, I decided to listen to myself for once and get serious about the writing. Not about the blogging; about the writing. There's a difference to me. Blogging is a means to an end for me. It is a space where I can make connections with other writers, explore ideas, try different writing exercises, etc. People blog for a lot of reasons. I had no clear idea what I was doing when I started. I just wanted to write every day. That has evolved over time. Most of my writing is now done off the blog. But I keep this going because I like the community. I like the lip balm in the lobby. There are Mommy blogs, DIY blogs, journalistic blogs, some read like a diary - thoughts for the day, current events, a place to gripe, to shine, to rejoice. Mine has never felt like any of those things. I have no pigeon-hole and I'm all right with that, mostly. But sometimes I feel like it makes my readers a bit uneasy.

I am a terrible blogger, but I'm a decent writer. I am writing, writing, writing when no one is looking and it is thriving. I am having some blogging growing pains. I am casting about for some direction. I don't want to give up the community, but sometimes the blogging is a distraction from the writing. I guess I'm trying to figure out what this blog wants to be when it grows up. If you're reading this now, then it's for you that I keep blogging.

What would you like to see?
What's working?
What isn't?

Be honest. I'm really asking. I am not fishing for compliments.

The Gift of a Great Big Bleeding Heart

Word Nerd saves the day! I had been trying to bludgeon a post into submission for the better part of the afternoon when I decided to take five. Bloodied, winded and growling, I thought it best to put down the baseball bat and instead check and see what nice things people had to say today. Lo and behold, what should I find but an award and the whisper of a promise about cookies from the lovely Word Nerd. She speaks, you know. She speaks so touchingly, so eloquently, so hilariously about things (quite literally) from A to Z that I am quite honored to have been included in her list of people of whom she has requested 7 things. I feel like I've been asked to sit at the popular table. And quite a table it is. Go check out her list. Fabulousness abounds.

So, it's the Tell Me More About Yourself Award, wherein I will divulge 7 things about myself and then choose 15 other people to tag. (Can I just say that if this were taking place in, say..., a bar? Would not be the same sort of honor. Nevertheless, I digress.) So lucky for you, my merry band of faithful readers, the very post I had been kicking around with steel toed boots earlier was rather a twaddly self-reflective one and it was almost as if I was preparing for this very moment.

1. I anthropomorphize things often and with reckless abandon. Not just in my writing, but in my everyday life. It helps me get things done if I think of it as hanging out with a friend or vanquishing a foe. Just yesterday, in fact, my jBird, ever literal, asked me: "Why do you keep referring to the marshmallows as 'he' and 'she'?" Why? So that we will be gentle with them, of course.

2. I have always wanted to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. Not for anything in particular, just kind of to sit and shoot the breeze with him. Kind of like a Charlie Rose Tell Me More About Yourself Award. I don't just want him to interview me. I want him to think that I am intelligent and witty. I also want to say something in the course of the interview that would cause him to either do a spit-take with his water or let loose a great big snorty belly laugh. Preferably both.

3. I'm not terribly vain (or maybe I'm so horrifically vain that I feign not to care) but I am still a girl. So when, a few months ago, the young man at the deli counter in the grocery store elbowed his co-worker and said "You ever watch Weeds?" and then nodded in my direction, I did not leap over the counter and kiss him on the mouth like I wanted to. Instead, I left my shopping basket in the middle of the store, ran out to the car and called my husband and screamed: "THE BOY IN THE DELI THINKS I LOOK LIKE MARY-LOUISE PARKER!"  He totally got it. Which leads me to number...

4. My husband was the 9th person to ask me to marry him. He was not my 9th choice. He is my first and only and ever choice. I'm not entirely sure what the other 8 had in mind, but it wasn't me. I had pretty much decided that as far as dating went, it was either settle or abstain. That it was pretty much hopeless to ever think I could connect with anyone in any sort of meaningful and lasting way. Most of my dating consisted of my hiding large swaths of myself for one reason or another and the result being that the boyfriends would fall in love with some other person that they thought was me. Then I would have to break the news to them that no, they had never had full access and I thought they knew that and oh! the crying and the vomiting and the moving out of state and not dating of women any more and the joining of the military. The other half of my dating consisted of men who thought that they knew me pretty well and as one of them said "wanted to tame me." Uh, scary. No. Very scary. So this, my friends, is why my husband is the most amazing man on earth. He caught me off guard and I splashed crazy all over him and not only did he lap it up, he celebrated it, adored it and cherished it and wanted to live with it just as it was for the rest of his life. We've been married 13 and a half years and my mom says we still act like newlyweds. We actually just act like us.

5. You may be wishing Word Nerd didn't include me on her list at this point. I am an avid coffee drinker. I can drink just about anyone under the table when it comes to a steaming hot cup of joe. I take mine straight up, neat. The stronger, the blacker, the better. If you were stuck in the Donner Party with me and were forced to eat my meat, it would taste like Arabica. (It would also probably be a little stringy and need to be marinated first, but I digress.) But on wintry evenings such as tonight, I like to have a cup of tea. I am drinking in Stash Meyer Lemon Herbal and I think I may have inadvertently made it with hot dog water. I'm going to drink the whole cup just to be sure, though.

6. I'm not that great with children. My own are just used to my methods. I try to treat mine as much like little people as I can. So no, not everything they do is fabulous. Sometimes they have bad days. Sometimes they bug the ever-loving crap out of me and I need to walk away. But just like with any strong healthy relationship, there's room for give and take. I'm completely honest with my kids about things including admitting when I am way off base, explaining that sometimes I get scared and confused too, telling them I love them and I am proud of them as often as possible, and giving them a clear idea of what my goals with them are, what their boundaries are and why. I think they deserve that and so far they rise to expectations and far exceed them. I get some flak for my parenting style, but I say the proof is in the pudding.

7. Confession time: I am part of the 1%. No, not that 1%. Would I be sitting here blogging and drinking hot dog lemon tea if I were in that 1%?! No, I am in the 1% of people who, according to the Myers-Briggs personality inventory are categorized as INFJ. I have taken this personality inventory countless times in countless situations and I always end up with the same results. If you really want the skinny on me, click the link and it's a pretty apt description that I didn't write. I am uncomfortable with direct self-disclosure for a lot of reasons. It's a lot more interesting to discover things in the course of discourse over time. Keep reading, friends, and you will know more about me. Because try as I might, I really can't hide my great big bleeding heart.

Word Nerd hogged several of the people that would have topped my list: Masked Mom, Just Jane, The M Half, Kelly... so check them out, too. But maybe not Kelly because she cheated and took my idea of an open award to anyone who cares to read this here blog. Here are some people whose brains I would love to pick for innumerable distinct reasons:
Darren
Green Goose
Sonya
Jewels
Lindsey
Scary Duck
cdnkaro
Nadia
Krista
and I would add Nicole, but she just did the most delightful 100 things about herself the other day. Read that.

And many more, but my 7-year-old laptop is about to create a black hole and disrupt the time-space continuum from the cutting and pasting of links and the Chief Lou is so very patiently waiting for me to watch Season 2 of Torchwood. In all sincerity, I would like to thank each and every person who clicks this way from the bottom of my great big bleeding heart.