October 27, 2006 – 9:22 pm
I’ve had a lot of time to think this past week. Standing in front of a copy machine allows for that. Been thinking about the wedding - what it will really look and feel like, how will people react to my invitations and what the invitations themselves should look like, since I am making them. Who will make it and who won’t be able to come. The magazines suggest making your wedding very you by incorporating parts of yourselves into it like with the purple and the hens and chicks. We have joked that I should knit my wedding dress, since I can do that now. Knitting. (Aw, yes. Betsy is a quadruple threat. She cross stitches, she does calligraphy, she scrapbooks, and she knits.) But I keep trying to think of other aspects of myself. What makes me, me? What are tangible, describable parts of me that we could bring into a wedding? Sometimes, I think its extremely difficult to describe yourself, your life. That’s why these About Me and Interest sections can be so tough. To stop and try to analyze what you are - it doesn’t make sense. Or seem like enough. Or seem right. Cool. Appropriate.
It’s like asking someone new you meet what they do for a living. I’ve heard before that is one of the worst questions to ask to find out about a person. So many people work to pay the bills, not because its what they want to be doing. Some are lucky enough to be doing something they enjoy and it pays the bills. Few are fortunate to be following their true passion and be making a real living off of it. But to ask me right now "What do you do?" You may get a smartass answer like "I’m engaged! I’m too busy planning my wedding to work." or a truthful answer "I spent this week photocopying accounting records for an upcoming audit. I am officially a pro at removing staples now."
The truth is, I’m struggling all around. It’s been mentioned to me before that I have a way with words and should pursue a writing career. With no other idea, no better idea of what I wanted to do with the later 72 years of my life, I jumped into an English/Creative Writing major in college. Didn’t get my degree because apparently you have to take Math and Science classes to get that degree. So I decided to try to work, which I do find much more enjoyable than school. And write in the evenings and weekends. To be honest, as a writer, the only actual fictional full length stories I have completed have been fan fiction stories about an old boy band. I found web journals (Oh Scribble, how I miss thee) and blogs were more my piece of pie. Yet somewhere in between deciding I wanted to do that and really getting an actual decent blog going, the whole world has started blogging. The good, the bad and the ugly.
My friend Danyelle wrote something about blogging, to which I wrote this response.
There is a clear difference between bloggers and people who blog. People who blog write on a whim and often do not write interesting or well written pieces. They tend to be filled with quips that could be chalked up to verbal garbage, littered with bad punctuation and grammar.
Bloggers, on the other hand, take the time to think out their pieces and are often fully aware of the ramifications of something they choose to post.
It is well known that MySpace and Facebook are often searched by employers and anyone who’s been reading blogs for the past five years would know from Heather Armstrong’s personal experience at Dooce that you shouldn’t blog about where you work in any specific way.
Blogging can be very therapeutic and extremely passive aggressive, depending on how you wield your words. But at its most simple form, it is allowing people who often feel that amongst the talk shows, magazines and advice columns, that they aren’t able to be heard, to finally be. We are a generation of people raised to believe that some day, we too will be famous and when we reach that realization that we most likely never will be, it is defeating. A lot of people have found that blogging is a way to claim a small piece of the world as their own for their thoughts.
Don’t ever feel guilty for reading a public blog. It’s not like you are sneaking a page from their personal diary. They put it out there to be read.
Which I do believe. I’m not going to automatically place myself in the ranks of the bloggers but I would hope to god I am past the point of People Who Blog.
My point to this ramble. My Myspace blog reached 10,000 hits this week. The most I’ve had - ever. Betsyjun. Betsyloulou. True Stories I Made Up. Downsizing Me. Dirty Little Secrets. Life Before Babies. I’ve been writing online since 2000. Just kind of nice to see someone out there is listening.
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