Six degrees!
Jul 22, 2008 Friends
This is my contact over at the Greater Columbus Arts Council and who wrote the article? Why our own TZT — Tiny Mantras!
There are some seriously smart women in Columbus, OH, eh?
Possibly related posts
Blogging denial
Jul 10, 2008 Blogging, Friends
I reread Edith’s Diary last week. It always makes me think of blogs. In case you haven’t read it, it’s a novel about a woman’s who life is truly wretched but the worse it gets, the happier her diary reads. Her son is an alcoholic, lazy misanthrope but in her diary he’s married and has lovely children. She is living two lives and as the false one becomes more real, the more stuck she is in the wretchedness. It’s a frustrating book; you want to shake her loose of her fantasies so she’ll face up to how bad it all is and do something.
I remember watching this friendship implode from the sidelines once. There were two bloggers who were best friends in a larger circle of bloggers (I knew them from an online forum where I was a lurker so it may be that some of you know them but I doubt it). I don’t know what happened but there was a huge falling out. I got a heads up from someone else on that forum (my connection there who inspired my lurkdom) and I — like everyone else — watched the whole thing fall apart. It was big. It was bad. It was ugly. There were secrets shared, confidences exposed for the world to mock, some ugly language thrown around.
It was one of those trainwrecks that ripples across blogs because people take sides. I pieced it together backwards, hunting down archived entries and skipping around links to figure out how it started.
Anyway. The most interesting part to me is that one of the people just went nuts. She used to write like a regular person — you know, life’s ups and downs — and then suddenly everything was peachy keen and the sun shone all the time and every morning they all woke up and danced around the maypole together.
Now my connection had some inside scoop on this person’s real life and of course it wasn’t like that (because whose real life is?) but the picture got brighter and brighter. She was losing weight! And running marathons! And her children were cleaner and smarter and better behaved than anyone’s!
Of course she was writing it for her ex-friend (whose own blog stayed noncommittal and everyday) to let her know that her life was awesome and she didn’t even care that they weren’t friends anymore. Take that!
I think I would have been a blog denial writer myself if I’d been blogging in my teens. I’d likely have created an alter ego and made a virtual life that was nicer and more manageable than my real one. Actually (thinking more on it) I betcha I would have blogged as one of the characters in the stories I was always scrawling. You know, to make ‘em more real.
Because that’s what Edith was doing and what this other blogger was doing — making a better life real by writing it down.
I guess I do a certain amount of this, too. I write an argument with Brett only make it funny and by the end of the entry I’m not as angry with him anymore. (That’s a tip for you — you can now read the subtext of any entries about that adorable Brett and his quirky way of doing things. You now know that I start those entries with gritted teeth, glaring at the monitor.) See, that’s a way of rewriting a narrative to bring yourself to a happier conclusion but it’s not lies. Because truthfully my conflicts with Brett are minor and sometimes I need reminding about that.
With Edith’ blogging counterpart, her denial was so damaging. She couldn’t make it so just by writing it. A sham doesn’t become more solid just because she’s shouting that it’s true. Instead she just pushed people away because a) they figured she didn’t need them anyway since life was so dandy; b) and they knew she was lying and it was kinda creepy.
But the thing is with blogging is that eventually that blogger got her some new readers who didn’t have backstory so they took her at her word and so it was like her imaginary life was true, at least for them and she could take comfort in their comments that affirmed it.
This is why I’m glad there was no interwebz when I was a disgruntled teenager. I think the nature of having so much control over a virtual life would have messed me up for a little while longer than I was messed up all on my own. Truly.
Possibly related posts
Tags: Blogging, blogs, conflict, denial, edith's diary, lying, patricia highsmith, truth
It’s raining
Jul 3, 2008 Friends, work work work
This may mean no Red, White & Boom festivities at the Clippers game tonight. It may mean no Clippers game. I’m not all that heart-broken about it but Madison is. She says, “I’ve never did Red, White & Boom before!” I’ve never did either but you don’t see me complaining. Of course I’m old and grouchy and on my way to crotchety so not having to sit in bleachers eating stale peanuts and slapping mosquitoes while I wait for fireworks is ok by me. Don’t worry — I’m playing sympathetic while hiding my glee. I just hope Kristin’s shindig doesn’t get rained out because really, it’s the pinnacle of our social life.
Brett and I spent the morning brainstorming new names for our non-existant company. It was fun because he’s funny. It was also annoying because he doesn’t really understand brainstorming, which is just shouting out ideas and not shooting ‘em down as they come up. Brett is used to self-censorship and being overly self-critical. He needs some loosening up in the brainstorming department but eventually he got the hang of it and we ended up with a short list of names that neither of us hate. I sent ‘em off to a couple of smart, branding-savvy friends and now we’re waiting to see if any of them are worth keeping.
Possibly related posts
Tags: branding, Brett, business, clippers, consulting, fireworks, freelancing, Kristen, red white and boom, work
I got locked out of my blog
Jul 2, 2008 Friends, The Story of My Life
It’s another one of the 2.5 bugs. You get locked out and the reset password link doesn’t work. But this is why I love open source stuff — there’s a fix on the wordpress forums that works just fine and you know the developers are working on a more permanent solution.
I heart open source! And wordpress, even this buggy version!!
So anyway — I was locked out all day because I thought it was a different issue that needed a different fix and have just now figured it out so boy am I late, eh? A list post then!
- Madison worries about death. A lot. She’s so four, I know, which is a gravity-imbued age to be sure. Anyway this morning she woke me up by saying, “But I’ve never died before and I’m scared about it!” Then after we talked a bit she said, “But what about Gram and Gramps? They’re very grand and you know what that means — they’re old!”
- She also asked a ton of questions about her bio dad last night and I gave her what answers I have. She was interested and confused, which is about how the rest of us (including Pennie) feel about it.
- I love Noah an awful lot these days despite the tween-ness that is he. The hair, the clothes, the low-down, dirty, bad attitude. I see the moms of preschoolers at the park looking askance and I empathize with their naive condemnation. Hey, I used to think my little rosy-cheeked darling would grow up into THAT either but they do. You love ‘em anyway. Plus he’s a pretty good person underneath it all and sometimes he’s even nice to his sister.
- I am restructuring my business and changing the name. Well, I’m keeping the name because it’s not like leaving that domain sitting there is gonna hurt anybody but I’m going to be launching something else more targeted. Stay tuned for the scintillating (not really) details.
- Tomorrow is a park day that is both more and less because some regulars won’t be there (we’re hooking up later) but some non-regulars will be there. So it’ll be fun. Here’s hoping the rain stays away.
- Brett got his new-to-us grill working (the third one he picked up on the streets because that’s how we play around here). He spent sixty bucks to get it working — including the propane tank — so it wasn’t exactly free but it’s a nice grill. He’s making BBQ chicken with tremendous glee. Truly. He’s practically dancing out there while he tenderly brushes sauce on his boneless, skinless breasts. He is truly suburban. (When not grilling, he’s out strewing mulch under our shrubs. What’d I tell you?)
- Speaking of the park, which I was if you refer to #3, Brett has twice now accidentally but quite contentedly hung out with AmFam in the past two days. He wants you to know that L is getting huge and is, of course, adorable.
Possibly related posts
Tags: Brett, grill, Madison, Noah, wordpress, wordpress 2.5, wordpress bugs
I just deleted a post
Jun 30, 2008 Friends
It wasn’t quite a rant — more like a frustrated cry to the blogging heavens. I channeled Brett and he would have told me to delete it so I did. I’m still frustrated but am not sure if I’m being helpful or passive aggressive so erred on the side of not putting things down to live on in internet infamy.
Bleah.