me and the blog

I've been asked before why I blog. It's a good question, but one that is hard to answer. I like to write, but there's a difference between writing for fun or relaxation or to comment on political or social issues or just life, and writing as a craft. I might work for weeks on a 400-word story or a poem, but that isn't going to happen with a blog post. And it shouldn't. It's more natural to just write and only edit for correctness. It's like the difference between snapshots and paintings, and the blog is more like a photo album than an art gallery.

Because of this, I sometimes worry that what I write on the blog is largely superficial. That isn't to say that I don't ever write about issues that are meaningful to me, but most of the time they are issues that are out there in the world and not about me personally and my own life. Some of the reason for that is that the most personal things (worth writing about) are hard things and it's difficult to open yourself to the vulnerability writing about them entails.

I don't write very often about things like the deep lonliness I sometimes feel, or how frustrating it is to feel like I have this immense capacity for loving that I never get to express (at least haven't for a long time). I haven't been in that many serious relationships, but those few were pretty good. I was good at loving them (obscure Christian Slater movie reference anyone?) I hope I get that chance again with someone I like and respect.

I've spent my whole adult life caring for, teaching, supporting and generally emotionally investing in other people's children and it's painful to realise that I may never get the chance to raise kids that I get to keep instead of give back. To be honest I've never even really cared whether or not I gave birth - I hate it when people say you have to bear a child to be a mother, because it isn't true. But the difference is that when you do give birth, you really have to screw up for someone to take that child away. When you don't, you have to wait for someone to allow you the privilege of raising a child, and that's rare. A couple of years ago a close friend of mine and her partner were basically just given a baby. I wish it were that easy for me. If someone dropped a child off on my doorstep, I'd have to change my entire life to accomodate them, yet it would be an easy decision to make.

These are the things that I don't often say, because they are ever-present and if I blogged about them all the time it would be a very angsty blog indeed. Generally speaking, my life isn't so angsty. It's busy and challenging and sometimes lovely. And sometimes not.

The other reason I don't blog about personal things a lot is that I'm (perhaps too) aware of my audience ~ both the known and the unknown. In my life offline I have a few friends that I talk to about pretty much anything, but only a few. I've connected with some awesome people through the blogosphere, some of them people I think I could be friends with for real if we lived close enough to each other for that to be viable. So part of me wants to just be one of those bloggers who writes without concern for who reads, because I've had good experiences with people who read and comment.

But the internet is a weird place and I find it more sensible to assume that everyone I know reads the blog, because then hopefully I won't write anything that hurts someone, or that exposes me or someone I know to stupid gossip, or reveal even good things that they regard as too personal for the internet. One of my closest friends found and read the blog for a while before telling me that they were doing so. What they thought they might read while I was unaware I do not know. But it's one of the things that makes me cautious, because this is a person who probably knows anything I'm likely to write here anyway. I don't know if it's truly possible to be anonymous on the net, and I'm not even sure I want to be completely so ~ but if not, then what I write will always be tempered by an imagined audience. It's just the way it is.

Anyway, the point of this post is really that I hope I can open up a bit more in the future about myself, even if there will always be a line that I don't want to cross. During my short break I read some of my earlier posts and it felt like I had more to say. I still have things to say. I hope some of you will stick around to read them.

something offbeat for the other romantics

This is actually an xkcd strip. It was parody week and this strip was xkcd's parody of A Softer World. Happy Valentine's Day to all the people who aren't madly in love right now, but who appreciate how wonderful, and scary, love is all the same.

thoughts on relationships

Just been watching this week's Trannystar Galactica episode from Diana. Such a sweet person. (In case you're not familiar with TG and are confused, she presents male for work and on that vlog, but the name indicates to me I should use female pronouns, so that's how I'm rolling with it.)

The topic was Valentine's Day and relationships in general. She brought up her (previous) three rules for a relationship: no lies, no violence, no disrespect. At some point that seemed too negative, so she changed it to love, honesty, respect. It seemed like an interesting question to raise.

If you had to sum up your philosophy on relationships in three pithy dot points, what would they be?

For me (and I'm writing this on the fly, so it might not be definitive):

~ no mind games (emotional manipulation = dealbreaker)

~ friends as well as lovers (friends are more accepting and in the end it's a stronger bond. Love based on friendship can weather much bigger storms and makes the smooth sailing more beautiful)

~ don't fear baggage, but don't be owned by it either (we all have it; it makes us real people. Just remember we retain the ability to choose, no matter what)

Adding explanation made those a bit less pithy, but at least you know what I mean now.

I've been reasonably lucky in my life with relationships. For the most part they've been good and ended amicably. It's been a long time since I was in love, but I choose to be hopeful about that. Most days. :)

By the way, in case you watch Diana's video, this is the Indigo Girls song she mentions. It's great.

this tricky business of marriage

It was Saudi's birthday today (as far as he could work out swapping between calendars). He invited two friends over, both also Muslims from his country. We had a most interesting conversation about arranged marriage. None of this difficult dating lark, oh no! When Long Black decided he wanted a wife, he sent his sisters out looking for him and they found him a very nice lass. :)

After his and her parents had a chat, he was allowed to meet her. She was pretty shy, but luckily he isn't and he was able to talk with her enough to realise that they both felt a connection, so he gave her a present he'd brought ~ a bracelet ~ to indicate his interest. They were both pretty fortunate to have very open-minded parents who agreed that it would be okay for the two of them to talk on the phone (not all families allow this) so they exchanged numbers and while he was away in another city for six months, they got to know each other better. Now they've been married three years and have a young son.

It's so strange that while I can't imagine ever letting someone else choose a husband for me, I still found this story completely sweet. Everyone was charmed by the way he spoke about his wife and how much love and respect he has for her. It's interesting, too, to talk to young men in their 20s who have no shyness at all at the fact that they have never dated any girl, and won't ever do so before they marry (Saudi and his other friend are still single). These things are simply experiences for another time in their life that's still to come.

It's such a diverse world, and people take very different paths, but we all want to be happy. I feel like they are missing something in the loss of those first weeks and months when you know you like someone, but have no agenda except to enjoy finding out more about them and discover if they feel the same connection. And yet, there was such a purity to the way he described this arranged match. It had its own beauty.

Interesting night.

when do you tell?

I talked to a friend today and he mentioned that his wife is pregnant. It's early days yet, so they're not telling people, but I don't see him very often so he did tell me. (First baby...very exciting!) I guess they'll do like most people and go public when the first trimester is safely over.

On the net, picking your moment to tell some news involves a whole new level of analysis. No matter how anonymous (or limited in audience) you think your blog is, once you put something on the internet, you better be cool with the world knowing it, because once it's out there, well, it's out there. Romance is a good example here, because if you talk about dating someone, then you end up 'having' to blog the break-up if it happens, if only to signal that people should no longer ask how said romance is going.

You also have to deal with comments. This is true in real life, too, which is exactly why another friend has been keeping her romance on the downlow for months. And if you've ever been a part of a Mormon (or any closeknit religious) community, you'll understand how that goes. Everyone's always waiting for an announcement, even if you are nowhere near making one.

So most people want to get that 'first trimester' safely over. Nemesis introduced Gentleman Friend not too long before their engagement, but we all knew he was significant back when his photo appeared. I thought when Riftgirl and her beau joked about 'doing it for Obama' they were talking about sex. Seems now that 'it' was getting themselves hitched. The blog world had to wait a whole month for that news (totally worth the wait). I can really understand that though. They both have a relatively high profile on Youtube, etc, and share a lot of their personal lives, so it must have been really nice to have something special and secret they just enjoyed for a while alone before they told the world.

So what do you think? Do you blog about romance? If you do, what's your equivalent of a romantic 'first trimester' you want over before you hit the interwebs with heart-shaped news? What other kinds of news would you wait a while to blog?

don't extinguish love

This is compassionate, intelligent and inspiring.

Thanks Craig, for sharing it!

the thrill

There she goes

There she goes again

Pulsing through my veins

And I just can't contain

This feeling that remains

(Sixpence None The Richer)

I love this song so much. Such a succinct description of that feeling when you first fall in love. Even the music builds to this kind of gentle exhilaration.

~~~ (^_~) ~~~

ah romance...

I'm feeling rather smiley tonight, just because I heard some happy news that is so very old I can't believe I didn't already know it. I was trawling through my blogroll and reached the known universe and suddenly I am seeing the word honeymoon being bandied about. Lo and behold, Jamie has gone and gotten himself engaged. It happened while I was overseas and oblivious to all things bloggy.

Deborah is a lovely, lovely woman who (and I hope it doesn't annoy her for me to say it, but then she probably never reads this blog, so whatever) often reminds me of Sandra Bullock - not exactly the same but similar and just as beautiful. But actually I don't think Jamie's lucky to have her because she's beautiful. I think he's lucky to have her because she understands him and really cares about him and just takes life as it comes. I think she's lucky to have him because he appreciates her and is honest with her but always loyal. I also think they both have enough life experience to know that things won't be perfect, and to not need that to be truly happy, because they know what they want and have a few dreams and like supporting each other in all those various endeavours. And they both know that the best of life is found in the people that you meet.

So yeah, happy day.

true confessions of a lonely girl

This entry to Post Secret this week touched a nerve with me. I often feel this way ~ not about everything, but about some of the most important things. Acknowledging that you want things is hard because it puts you out there, makes you vulnerable. Or feel vulnerable at any rate. And gosh, don't we just hate feeling vulnerable?
















This postcard could be referring to any kind of want, but it did make me think specifically of love. Maybe that's not a surprise to anyone. Maybe it made you think of love, too. At least if, like me, you're single and wish it wasn't so. Confessing this is hard enough even when we have some confidence that what we want is coming our way. There's just something about saying it out loud that feels like you're tempting Fate and dooming yourself.

But it's even harder when you don't have that confidence. I still have high hopes of getting a novel published one day. I think I still have a ways to go in my career. That I want those things is easy to admit because I see them as possible. But the idea that I am going to find someone to love, who loves me, seems more and more unlikely with each passing year, and consequently it gets harder and harder to admit that I even want that. I certainly do if asked directly ~ I'm not going to lie about it ~ but there are very few situations (ironically including an occasional blog post :) ) in which I would volunteer the information.

I think the core reason for this is that I hate the feeling that I'm giving people some kind of free pass to feel sorry for me if my wishes don't materialise. I hate that I feel that. I think there are people who will see me as a failure if I never get married (whether or not they ever say it to my face) no matter what else I might achieve. It irks me that there is a part of me that will agree with them, even though all the other parts will be scowling and thinking how illogical it is to judge personal success that way...long years of conditioning I suspect.

It's funny. I wanted to simply end this post by saying, 'So yes, I want to find someone to love, who loves me, too". Yet my fingers hovered above the keys for a couple of minutes before I typed it. Which is kind of the point.

in the rock, scissors, paper of love...

career beats romance, yet again...

Daniel Johns and Natalie Imbruglia ~ my favourite entertainment couple ~ have announced that their four-year marriage is over. I can't say I'm all that surprised: when you live most the time on the other side of the world to your spouse, you're kind of asking to grow apart, no? But I still remember Johns telling Juice magazine:

"I can't believe how scary it was to have found your soulmate at 21."

And I loved them together, and I wanted them to last forever. I guess so did they.

"This mutual decision has not been taken lightly or quickly," the pair said in a joint statement.
"However, our career demands and our lives in different parts of the world have brought us to the point where unfortunately this difficult decision was necessary for both of us.
"We have simply grown apart through not being able to spend enough time together."

Here's a little video I found on Youtube. The song is Natalie's "Only You".



If anyone hears any bad news about Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick, just keep it to yourself. I'm already in mourning.