Why me-me again?

Well, I’ve dropped the older kids off with grandma–all the better to take them on a week long camping trip, my dears–and Ladybug is reluctantly napping… (she dozes off with occassional breaks in her sleep to screech at us for leaving her in the crib. It’s a good system, really)–and the Cave Troll is enjoying some alone time with his movie-of-the-week (the same movie he’s been watching all week…this week, it’s Garfield…ooogie-ooogie-oogie, oi! oi! oi!) so I thought I’d work on some old me-mes I’ve been tagged with.

The first one is from Netter and while it’s been a couple of post back, I seem to recall that it was mostly a retrospective–how has my blogging changed in a year, what was my original audience, how is my voice different…

I think the reason I’ve been so reluctant to do this one is that my inner reality tends to shift…one day I think I started blogging looking for friends (and I’ve found some wonderful ones–so in that case it worked) and the next day I remember that I started blogging because I overheard some colleagues talking about how my fiction writing was ‘okay’ but my non-fiction was really where my strength was, and I thought maybe I’d test that out. (Okay–I love blogging, but it ain’t fiction. Fiction is like being twelve other people on any given day, and since there are so many people I’ve always wanted to be, you just can’t top that.) My husband thought I started blogging to pimp my books. Although it’s helped, I always had a very different idea behind the blog–the Yarn Harlot has been my inspiration in that department, and she’s a good one. Honestly, I also think that Mate thought that blogging would get me off his back about a website. We can see that I do have a certain tenacity for some things, so that didn’t work out well now did it? But no matter how I started, blogging has become a way to share my day with my friends… with non-judgemental adults who enjoy the same things I do and are kind and forgive me for being cranky and neurotic and narcisstic…and who laugh at my jokes. Really, the best sort of friends, right?

Now, how has my blogging changed? Well, a lot. I started out very pristine, with very few swear words and a lot of self-conciousness about the grouchier sides of my personality–part of this was because I thought I’d be blogging with my students and I looked forward to that. I don’t even want to talk about how that turned out–it was the mother pus-bucket of bad ideas, but part of that was that I got a whole different animal as far as students were concerned. I was expecting domesticated house-pet rodents like, you know, hamsters and guinea pigs and fancy mice (why are they fancy you ask? I suppose it’s the sequined dresses!) and what I got were rabid flesh eating sewer rats from some demon-flunky’s toilet, and if it hadn’t been for the support of the rest of you all, I would have soured on the whole blogging thing then, but you all rocked and so my bad idea didn’t kill what has been basically a good thing for me. I now no longer bitch about people at work unless I want them to see–someone at work who reads my blogs has forwarded passages to people who normally wouldn’t, people I was bitching about, and I have realized, the hard way, that although this feels like a private room to kvetch in, the walls do have ears. I wish i could talk to that person who forwarded the bit about my co-dept. chair not having balls, though, because the fact was, I had tried to talk to the guy about the matter before I bitched, and I hunted him down to talk to him after I bitched (he was hiding in his classroom–he’s not big on face to face confrontation, whereas I really do like to clear the air) and this person almost turned what could have been moment for me to be hurt and angry in a safe place into a big rift between myself and someone I really do like. It didn’t turn out that way–we have a better relationship than ever now–but it was a potentially hurtful thing to do. Of course, it was a big ‘live and learn’ opportunity for me, but stuff like that just makes me more inclined to shove all my anger down into my bowels instead of venting it, and we all know my bowels aren’t living up to the strain. So, I guess I have gone from formalized, essay like posts (some of which I wish I could get to–for some reason blogger isn’t letting me into my old stuff and “In Defense of Housewife Porn” was really a good entry– oh, wait,I found it here! ) to me allowing myself to totally meltdown in public to a more balanced (maybe) medium between the two. But not too balanced–I’m very passionate (really? nooooo…) and my emotional scales tend to wobble quite a bit. Maybe that’s why people keep reading me?

And as for my voice? With the exception of the swear words, I think my blogging voice has mostly maintained. I’m very often without that little screen that separates what I think from what I SHOULD say…blogging isn’t all that different for me in that respect. The fact that we all know who ‘vainglorious prickweenies’ are is sort of a tribute to that fact, I think.

bleah. Maybe I avoided that for so long because, all respect to Netter (and I love her–she knits beautifully, makes gorgeous yarn, and deals with motherhood with more grace than I suspect she herself believes) I just don’t feel that interesting on this level. Now, I forget who I am supposed to tag, so I’ll tag everybody who feels like answering– just let me know if you answered–I want to read!!!

Now for my next me-me…the Mother of Chaos gave me a ‘Rockin’ girl blogger’ button a few posts ago (and she posts a LOT, so it was like, two weeks ago) and I was very flattered. (Her writing is hilarious, clean, and flawlessly proofread–unlike mine which is weird, fouled with R-rated language, and sports more typos than my first novel in every entry–I felt very unworthy:-) Anyway, there’s a button that comes with it and everything, but although I went to the site w/the button, I had no idea how to save that puppy and put it on my blog. It’s cool–it’s pink and everything. Anyway, since I often feel like a “frazzled female blogger” it’s great that I got placed in the “Rockin’ Girl blogger” instead. And as for tagging people? Okay–the only people who check my blog are women–I think we’re pretty estrogen heavy here, which is mellow and groovy, because there’s plenty of testosterone poisoning in other parts of our lives…maybe we all blog because it’s sort of the antidote to all that? Anyway, my point is, for the Rockin’ Girl blogger thing–uhm…everybody? Tag. You’re it!