In 2002, I was writing mass emails (I still have a love affair with these, and I know they are annoying, but I get so excited about fun finds on these interwebbernets) about being a Teaching Fellow in Brownsville, Brooklyn. And this was because every day, I went somewhere far off the road map of reality - I had never seen any depictions of where I worked, or what my kids and their families were like or were going through, anywhere else. It was this little black hole in America, and I wrote these long emails to justify my existence, my kids' existence, to make sure that some bit of that came back to the "mainstream" intact. To show it really was just REAL.
This was also before The Wire was everywhere.
Anyway, a friend told me I should start a blog, and that seemed weird to me. Mostly because lots of other people have more and smarter things to say, and I'd rather spend time reading them and making myself smarter. Also, I am not good at sharing. I am super personal. And I think it is weird, this impulse to verbally throw up everywhere so folks can examine your insides. This is not my generation - fuck, no one I know had a goddamn email address until maybe my senior year in high school, and then we got them for the novelty of them.
My first blog I started in . . . I don't know, maybe 2005? It was so successful I cannot remember what it was called, the website name, or how to locate it, let alone get into it. So that went well. I started another one 3 years ago, in which I posted nothing, that Google Buzz found for me, and I'd forgotten existed. This has never been a successful experiment for me.
And the thing is (and this is TOO LONG already - I am clearly violating, like, blog ethics AND your patience, if you are reading this, which, SORRY, it's really not for you, it's probably really only for me), I still think I would be better spending my time reading other smart folks, and their takes on things, rather than penning my own. I am always awed at the smart, smart shit I read out there on the webbertubes. Some of it has made me a better person, certainly a better feminist, and far more aware of my mild transphobia, my ableism, the absolute obnoxiousness of my defense of my use of the word "retard" (I have gotten over that last one; the rest I am working on). Some of it has helped me as a rape survivor. A lot of it has made me more aware of politics and policy. And a huge chunk of it makes me laugh out loud.
So, why am I writing here? Because recently, my therapist pointed out (OVERSHARE ALERT) that living in rape survivor land by yourself and not telling anyone about your little vacation there can be dangerous. Actually dangerous. And I stay up late now, and chew things over in my head, and get these anxiety attacks over random WHATEVER, and my mania takes over, and maybe if I'd just WRITE IT DOWN, I could get it out of my head and go to sleep at night.
And I like sleeping. I have never had problems sleeping until the last couple months. I miss sleeping.
So, my goal is once a week, whatever is burning holes in my brain, I am going to spit it out onto this blog, and be done with it. I am not letting things eat at me (instead, I post them, and then they eat at you? Don't say you weren't warned).
It won't be taking time from me reading other smart things, or obsessively reading political news, or reading, like, actual books, the I bought for pleasure, rather than law school. (Speaking of pleasure: Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red? One of the most wonderful, beautiful things I've had the pleasure to stumble across). This is for when I cannot sleep, because I am, in my head, imagining take-downs of other people saying terrible shit to me (for instance: do not ever say, in anger, to a rape survivor: "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Because she will want to answer, "ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. Thanks for asking." And then she will stay up late at night, boiling mad), or some pop culture thing (TAYLOR SWIFT) is making me fear for young women and the messages they are getting hammered with (also: Twilight. OH, MY GOD, TWILIGHT. That might be a whole other post).
So, there we go. There's my first real post. And maybe, this time, I might actually post again. Friends, Twilight made me THAT MAD.
I've always had the same thought. There's nothing particularly interesting I have to blog about, but a blog would help me clear out some of the detritus that seems to accumulate in my RAM each and every day, and maybe make me a little more sane. A visible record. I still live and work in the "Black Hole" of Ocean's Hill, Brooklyn. Just discovered The Wire, strange to see something that seems so familiar.
ReplyDeleteAnd Twilight SHOULD make you mad.
But don't let the "Other people's blogs are smarter and more worthy than mine" trope get in your way. This is YOUR blog, and for that reason alone, it is worthwhile.