I have finally, at this late stage of my life, gotten around to reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. And it's all good, but tonight something really resonated with me. The bit about writing as if you are talking to someone else. Duh, that's blogging.
This is why Laurie and Amalah and so many others (sorry, I tire of linking too quickly) are so addictive - they have the knack of just talking, in a funny, frank way, and we are sucked in and we identify and we love them for being themselves.
It's hard to be yourself on a blog. At least it's hard for me to be myself. I am who I am, I make up nothing and I try to write honestly, but I DO censor a lot. I worry about being "outed" at work, I worry about ranting about parental issues and hurting someone's feelings if I'm outed to them. I'm always very aware of the Implications of saying This or That. I don't care if the blogosphere knows I'm a raving liberal who has reached the point of actively hating anyone who still supports the Pretender to the White House, who has rejected men based on their politics because I can accept many things, but I can't get romantically involved with a Republican. I just CANNOT do it.
But I worry that other issues might "out" me. I don't want to get Dooced, so I can't share the hilariously frustrating stories of homebuilding world without fudging a lot of detail. To the point where it's Why Bother?
So I write about knitting, and dogs.
I am going to buy myself that camera for my birthday, because I really want to get an action shot of Dudley in midair, eyes bugging, when he's really, really trying to get our attention. He jumps two feet straight up, making this disgusted "Arrruuuuhhhhmmmm!" attention getting sound.
My father is in the hospital. My mother called me at 7:30 this morning and said he had been incoherent, was very weak, and may have wet the bed. So the doctor sent them to the emergency room, and they got mad and left because there was no bed immediately available. My mother called and ranted at me about the evil of the hospital and how they had him sitting and waiting in a wheelchair. So they left. That call came around 2 this afternoon. And I wondered if I would have to just go on over there, halfway across the state, and get his ass into a hospital bed, but realized that I have little legal or personal control, so I didn't. She called at 5 to say he had been admitted, and "It was all a mix-up." I'm exhausted. Between the idiocy at work and the parental issues, I look at my face in the mirror and don't wonder why I'm looking this old and burned out lately.
I once dated (and cared deeply for) a man who identified as Independent but was wayyy conservative. Much as we tried to make it work, it was too damn hard, and I vowed not to do THAT again (nor to date anyone who wanted a stay-at-home wife and "many" children). And a friend of mine married a classic Bushie conservative who likes to tell her she's "misguided" whenever she has an original thought. Life is just too short for this crap.
ReplyDeleteIf a man tells me he's a Republican, and doesn't preface it with "recovering," or follow it with, "but I'm sorry about this asshole!" I'm outta there. I was thinking about the many ways they bother me. The biggest is that these middle aged boys who never served using military slang, expressions, etc., they learned from playing war games in their parents' basement with their friends. It makes me all oogy, like white kids trying to sound black, or something, and when the kid in question is 48 years old it's just too pathetic. And I think that ties directly to their confusion between "supporting our troops" and actually caring about them - it's all a goddamn war game to them.
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