You found me. And my writing space. As the title suggests, this space is one where my neuroses, all the things I feel conflicted and obsessed about are comfortable being seen, or at least getting that way.
I began blogging in 2004 when I left home in Alabama for grad school in Illinois. Though I was unaware of it at the time, my need to connect with friends back home as well as my need to see my thoughts outside of myself and the strong storytelling background of my Southern upbringing created intersections in blogging that would change my life in numerous ways and at numerous times.
The process of packing requires you to examine your stuff, not stuff like DVDs or books or t-shirts, though I’ve re-discovered some of those, but stuff like the everyday stuff that fills your bathroom and linen closet. I’m talking about the stuff you don’t normally think about even as you use it. Megan Frank talks about this in her column on Soul Pancake. She says, “We think no one will ever see our sock drawers or cleaning products, but the items we have—and the way we keep them—actually add up to a pretty solid picture of the human who owns them.” Perhaps that’s why we all want to sneak a peek at other’s medicine cabinets and drawers.
I’m reading one of my favorite kinds of books to read, non-fiction that makes me think, called Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You. I just started it though it’s been on my nightstand for weeks. Last week someone tweeted about this article in Psychology Today about how our identity is connected to our stuff, and specifically talked about taste: our taste in music, books, etc. These ideas played a big part in my dissertation research and they’re ideas which still fascinate me. But what I’m talking about here is not the kinds of stuff we choose to read or listen to but rather the stuff we use more frequently, the stuff that maybe we don’t want to admit we have or need like puffy eye reducer or acne spot treatment. Can you cultivate taste in the health/beauty arena the same way you do with music? How much of our identity is connected to this everyday minutiae? What does my choice in shampoo say about who I am?
In the apartment I”m moving out of we have two bathrooms which means we have multiple places for this everyday stuff, which, of course, means you have two or three of everything and you wonder later why you didn’t remember that you already had hairspray and now you’ve got three different kinds and you don’t remember which one you liked best until you use the wrong one.
Taking stock of my everyday minutiae, I’m not quite sure what all of this says about me but here goes:
1. I use three different kinds of shampoo for various purposes. When my scalp is really dry, which is most of the winter and a good part of the summer I use Head & Shoulders Dry Scalp at least once a week. You’d be surprised at how soft it makes my hair. Most everyday I use L’Oreal Everpure Moisture shampoo & conditioner, which smells fantastic. Sometimes when I feel like changing it up, I use Catwalk Oatmeal & Honey, which also smells really good and does a nice job of moisturizing your hair without feeling oily.
I guess what these say about me is that I like variety, that I’ll try things out to find the perfect combination. Or maybe it says I care about my hair, or that I’m indecisive which is also true.
3. My toothbrush is a Sonicare FlexCare R910 and I use Crest Herbal Mint Whitening Expressions Liquid Gel toothpaste which I suppose suggests that I pay attention to my teeth but it might also suggest that I’m lazy. For example, I can set a feature on the toothbrush that tells me when to stop brushing and the toothpaste does the whitening for me so I don’t have to mess with white strips or bleaching or any other kind of effort.
I use Oil of Olay because my Granny Jones who died at 91 used Oil of Olay lotion every single day and looked much younger than a woman in her nineties when she died. My grandmother swears by it and also does not look her age. So, I’m invested in the brand due to tradition but also because I have tried other face washes and makeup removers, especially those that cater to sensitive skin, and don’t like the way my skin feels afterward. I do like a lot of Garnier’s skin products and have used the Skin Renew Brusher which does a nice job of not drying out the skin while exfoliating or smoothing it. However, the design of the brusher leaves something to be desired and I got water all over the counter while trying to use it. I’m clumsy; what can I say ? Having to twist and push the bottle was a bit complicated for me.
5. I really like Dove deodorant because it doesn’t rub off on my clothes. It isn’t fussy; it gets the job done. I like the cucumber and green tea scent of the Dove Ultimate Go Fresh .
6. I use Bedhead Manipulator to spike my hair. I like this gel because it works. It doesn’t smell terrible nor does it leave a residue like mousse or hairspray.
7. I wear minimal makeup. I like it to feel natural and light. I hate feeling like I’m wearing a mask. I particularly like mineral makeup and have pretty good luck with Maybelline mineral power Natural Perfecting Liquid Foundation. I have used the matte and loose powder, which work nicely. I also really like L’Oreal’s Bare Natural Powder and sometimes use it without foundation, at all. For eyeshadow I will use any and every brand and color combination, depending on my purpose. Right now I’ve been fond of Wet-n-Wild’s Color Icon Trio but I also like Rimmel’s Colour Rush Trio and have several of their shades. I’m picky about mascara and recently discovered L’Oreal’s Extra Volume Collagen Volumizing Mascara . The first time I wore it, someone asked if I was wearing fake eyelashes, so it seems to work pretty well, though I think the person was surprised I was wearing makeup at all. I usually wear lip gloss and I really like L’Oreal’s Colour Juice which I hear they are discontinuing just like they discontinued the last lip gloss I liked that I don’t even remember the name of now.
8. I love perfume and I have several favorites that I move between, depending on the occasion. My most recent favorite is Escada S which I got in one of those sample packs with other Escada perfume and while I like many of the scents, this one is by far my favorite. It isn’t overpowering or incredibly sweet. You could probably wear it as an everyday perfume. It reminds me of something but I don’t know what; I do know that when I wear it, I feel happy and light. If I’m feeling more daring I use Burberry Brit Red. I have loved Burberry perfume since my very first bottle acquired in London. For Christmas, a friend gave me Burberry Brit which I loved even more than the original Burberry. Since then, I discovered Brit Red, which puts that extra “kick-ass” feeling in my step when I wear it. I don’t know if places like Macy’s are carrying Brit Red anymore but I saw some new Burberry scents there recently like Burberry Summer and Burberry Sheer which make me want to try them. I told you I love perfume.
9. I have a lot of lotion meant for moisturizing my ridiculously dry and sensitive skin. M brought me this amazing stuff back from South Africa a few years ago which is a Roobois and Oatmeal lotion; it’s amazing but I don’t want to use it all up. So I supplement with Aveeno Active Naturals Intense Relief Repair Cream which I use once a week because I’m afraid my skin would be too oily otherwise.
10. I am addicted to lip balm and chapstick. The amount of tubes I own is staggering. I end up losing them or putting them in winter coats and forgetting them, never having one when I need it. My favorite is Burt’s Bees. I like the Radiance Lip Shimmer because I get a lip gloss and chapstick in one. At Christmas, someone gave me a 3 pack of EOS lip balm. It looks totally weird but totally worth the looks people give you. It’s also a good conversation starter because someone is going to ask you, “What is that?”
After looking at all of this stuff, I see that most of it is about addressing my needs. My skin is sensitive, dry. I try to take care of it by using products geared to protecting it. I can buy almost everything listed at Walgreen’s. I don’t know that I’m convinced that moisturizer that costs twice what I pay is worth it and yet the hair gel I use is almost 20 dollars. I suppose we all choose what’s important, what meets our needs best. It’s about trial and error, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. But it’s interesting that I know almost immediately if I’m going to like a song or book or TV show whereas it may take a few weeks to decide if a face wash or shampoo is worth it.
I also recognize something I was of which I was already but perhaps forgot: I am a contradiction. Maybe we all are. I think that if we were always the same it would be boring. So somedays we like to be dressy, made up, a new take on ourselves, other days, it’s all about comfort. It’s our prerogative to be changeable, right?
This list of all my everyday stuff makes me feel like I’m high maintenance, and I guess I kind of am, especially in comparison to M who pretty much uses whatever I buy her and is only picky about her face wash and toothpaste and who doesn’t wear makeup or worry about her hair.
I would describe myself as enjoying comfort over trends. Before this I would not have described myself as girly, though I love jewelry and enjoy getting manis and pedis. I wax my eyebrows and like to get dressed up every once in a while. But at my heart I’m a jeans and t-shirts, comfy, flip-flops and running out the door kind of girl. And even when I do dress up, I still want to feel like me. So I have all this stuff, of varying kinds and brands, but it’s not always put to use. It’s there waiting for me when I need it.
What stories are behind your everyday stuff? Why do you use the brands you do? What do you think your everyday minutiae says about you? What do you think this stuff says about me?
Though I haven’t been posting as regularly as I usually do, I have been reading or trying to, anyway. I frequently read SoulPancake because it asks me to think about “the big questions,” which as an academic, I absolutely love. But the big questions lead me to reflect on smaller things, on my practices, on how I think. Recently, one of their columns explored the ways our obligations often take the fun out of things. Though the column focused on sports and how the pressures of coaches, families, and self expectations can make one forget why playing the game was fun in the first place, the columnist draws connections to other areas of life where this is true.
At the same time, I’ve been participating in the Mondo Beyondo Dream Lab, which reminds us to rest and play and forget all the excuses, all the ways we feel foolish or don’t allow ourselves the time and space we need for play; again, it’s those obligations tripping us up and taking the fun out of what we do.
Never have I needed to hear this message more.
I first signed up for Mondo Beyondo because I felt lost and unsure if I was doing what I’m meant to do. It’s no secret I’ve struggled to find my place since finishing my Ph.D. It’s been a bit of a blow to my self-esteem to struggle this way. School always came easily to me as a student and it hits me at a tender place that I can’t seem to figure out how to be successful on the other side of it, as a professor. Not that I think that teaching should be easy, but I also did not expect the depth of doubt surrounding the career I’ve chosen for myself and toward which I’ve worked so hard and so long. I began to wonder if I had it all wrong. I needed new perspectives, a new way to understand myself.
I continue to have doubts even as I begin to plan for next semester. I worry that I won’t find my way back to the passion I felt when I decided to pursue teaching as a career. I want to make a difference and I find myself overly ambitious in this regard. I am beginning to realize, however, that maybe all the obligations of the job (tenure track, evaluations, committee meetings, other duties) has simply taken the fun out of what I do. I have, as Alice once did, lost my muchness. Sadly, my job began to feel like one and though teaching doesn’t necessarily have the same connections to play that golf or tennis or other careers do, I think there’s something to be said for considering some new obligations that have some stronger ties to play and fun.There are goals the courses I teach have to meet, of course, but that’s in planning and assignments; these can be built in. But, what if my main obligation every day in class was to have fun ? What if I am doing the exact thing I’m meant to do? How does that change my approach to each day?
I love this post by Amy Oscar because she challenges us to think that way, to acknowledge that maybe we are doing the exact thing we’re meant to and there are ways we can do so more fully, more aware, more on purpose.
How would your life, your job, your relationships change if you believed and practiced the idea that you are exactly where you are for a purpose? Would you be preparing for success rather than failure? Would you get back your muchness?
So much is swirling around in my brain lately. We’re moving in less than 2 weeks (just down the street) and my entire apartment is in disarray. Unfortunately with M working 2 jobs it’s been up to me to do much of the packing and let’s face it, I’m not great at organization, especially when it comes to packing. Still, I persevere and we have boxes packed; not as many as there needs to be but that’s how it goes most days. The process of going through, choosing what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away is taxing. It dredges up memories and moments and what ifs. What if I get rid of this and need or want it one day? What if I wish I had those shoes or that shirt?
I once heard an organizer on Oprah, (I think) say that if you’re holding on to items for “one day” or because they hold memories of the past then how can you live in the now? There’s probably something to that and since I’ve been focusing this year on “living in the moment,” I have taken extra thought about what I hang on to. I know the things we carry from place to place mean something; they tether us. M used to be able to move everything she owned in the back of her old Ford Escort. But now, well… it takes a 17 foot truck and weeks of packing.
I am trying not to get bogged down in the details and instead focus on the possibilities and all those reasons I was excited about moving in the first place. But gosh, it’s hard work.
I’ve written a few letters to myself, my younger self, and myself now. It’s an insightful exercise to think about how close and yet how far you are from the girl you once were. I have spent a significant amount of time trying to both distance myself and get closer to the girl I was/have been. For now, I want to create a connection between then and now.
This letter is to my specific 20-year old self because I was probably in the need for some very specific words at 20.
Dear 20-year-old self,
Though I know you’re probably not incredibly interested in hearing any more advice on your life, as your future self there are some things I must tell you.
You have people in your life, right now, at this very moment who will change you forever. And you will change them, as well. You will still be friends with at least one of them and will look back on this particular time in your life and talk about how amazing it was. Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe because everything seems so raw and overwhelming right now. It will feel that way for some time. Make an effort to revel in what you are feeling rather than trying to hide from it.
Soon, you will be leaving for 6 months in Orlando, to work at Disneyworld. This will not be the experience you thought it would and you aren’t going to be completely happy with the decisions you make even while you’re making some of them. However, you create fantastic friendships and have a lot of stories to tell; this will sustain you when you’re beating yourself up about all the things you could have done better. This time is important because you learn all that you don’t want for your life. It takes you a while to begin the steps that will make great things possible, but once you start, you succeed tremendously. You already have in you, right now, everything it takes to be happy.
I want you to know how incredibly fantastic you are. I also know you probably won’t believe me but I’m saying it anyway. You don’t have to be high or drunk for people to like you, for you to be witty or clever nor do you need to numb yourself in order to hide all you’re feeling. You are enough, just as you are. You are daring and tough and smart and intimidating. Your hair is sometimes purple and long and when you walk into a room people notice mostly because of your smile but sometimes because of your boobs. That’s okay, too. You may think you aren’t thin enough or pretty enough despite what anyone tells you. You don’t see all the ways you’re noticed, all the ways your body is appreciated. It’s okay to wear tight t-shirts and baggy jeans and be flirtatious with boys you will never, ever sleep with.
You are terrified right now of what you are feeling and the relationship you are in doesn’t make sense to you in the way you think it should. In fact, nothing in your life feels the way you thought it would. You aren’t sure of what it means to experience the emotions welling within you. But you’re more afraid of not feeling, at the same time. Right now, it seems like you are on a roller coaster and you aren’t sure if you can stay on. You may not be in control of the ride but you are in control of how you respond to the experience, including how long you’re in the seat before moving on to the next one. I will say this, the relationship becomes significant because you followed your heart, to start with.
You impulsively and bravely create a chain of events that will take you places both emotionally and physically that you could have never imagined. I have to let you in on a secret: one of those places is Paris, the city you thought would give you all the answers. It does, but (yet again), it isn’t the ones you expect. Sometimes the answers you find, and life in general feel confusing and sad and desperate, but you become very good at following your heart. I wish I were better at it now at 32.
It seems you make a lot of big decisions for us and I forgot just how much I owe you.
So, thanks. Thanks for all those late nights at your friends’ houses talking about everything you could possibly think of, and for being a good friend, a confidante and secret-keeper. Thanks for acting, doing, going and saying yes instead of wondering what if. All the times you worry if you’re doing the right thing, or moving in the right direction, work out in the end.
I know there are times you feel like you are waiting for your life to begin and that if this one thing or that one thing happens then you’ll feel like it’s really started. I have to tell you, it’s already begun. Right now, at this very moment the simple acts of your daily routine is life already begun. You will have so many adventures and experiences that shape you and each one is a piece of a larger puzzle, a piece of us. But it’s the everyday stuff you enjoy like feeding ducks in the park or visiting the museum again, making sandwiches for friends in your grandmother’s kitchen, eating at the counter like you did when you were a kid; these moments define you just as much as the decisions you make to leave the South, and return and leave again. It is these moments I am grateful for when I look at you, my 20-year-old self because you made time to do all the things you felt like doing.
I began this letter by thinking I was going to give you advice. But I’m learning that you just might have some things to teach me.
One last secret: you are blissfully and complexly happy in the future. And though life is never what you imagine, it’s so much better.
So, continue on the journeys you’ve mapped out for yourself. You’ll have a lot of fun if you just let go. Don’t worry if it feels like you’re always falling, you know how to land on your feet.
After I made the Be Brave; Be Curious video, I knew I wanted to make another video. I’ve been playing with iMovie for a while because I’m still an amateur when it comes to video production. I’m a rhetorician and new media geek; I know the power of the medium. I know it matters “how you say a thing”, as Robert Frost says. But I also know that what I wanted to say was more important than my fear of how amateurish it might seem.
So despite the fact that I feel this video is kind of like a powerpoint, I want to make it known how important photography has been to me in the past 2 years, especially after watching Jen Lemen’s video. I’m learning that it’s important to honor your passions and I’m never more free, more creative, more happy, more at peace than when I’m looking through the lens.
Images are powerful, beautiful, and heartbreaking and exciting. I love opening the files after a shoot and seeing the surprises, the pictures I wasn’t sure would turn out or the surprise of how a flower petal caught the light. *I’m not trained or particularly skilled.* I try to do what Jen talks about and feel my way through it. Somehow it works. I find the light and shadow. I play with exposure and aperture; I ask M to see what she thinks. She gives me advice, encourages me, teaches me. She sees what can be, somehow, better than I can. She just knows and she’s teaching me how to listen to my instinct.
Through our shared passion, M and I have gotten closer; we’ve been able to give something to people: the best pieces of themselves and their families. We’ve captured love and tenderness, affection, joy. I’ve learned that the best moments just “happen” in photography, the same way they do in life. I can’t imagine life without photography. Even if I don’t take pictures everyday, the promise is there. It’s enough to know I can.
Then followed that beautiful season…Summer….
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.”
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In Alabama, summer means it’s going to get unbearably, ridiculously, so hot all you can do is keep drinking iced tea as you sit directly in front of a fan, kind of hot. As a girl, summer meant spending time with extended family. So many of my favorite moments as a girl come from times spent at my grandparents or great-grandmothers’ houses. I spent weeks, sometimes months away from my parents. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t remember ever getting homesick. The time with family was idyllic, full. There are many moments that flash in and out of my mind, many of them involving sitting in my grandmothers’ kitchens. When I think about the places of importance in my girlhood, the kitchen is the first thing I think of and then church, but that’s a completely different story.
in my Granny's kitchen, in my favorite outfit; I think I'm 4
The kitchen was where my grandmother washed and braided my hair, where she counseled friends who came over for coffee, where we watched the black and white TV in the mornings as we ate cheese toast. The women in my family, like many Southern women of their time, were good in the kitchen. They invented multi-tasking. They could tell you stories, snap peas and trade argue about recipes all at the same time. When I sat among them, “helping” peel shrimp or potatoes I felt like I was being let in on their secrets.
In the summer, the kitchen overflowed with family and friends visiting so we moved to the covered carport where we swatted mosquitos and listened to stories until our shirts were soaked with sweat. My Granny J told the best stories, especially about ghosts. She imbued her stories with history, facts, details that made them even more believable, though I’m pretty sure I would have believed whatever she said. Because my grandmother worked as a nurse until her late 60′s, I spent a lot of my summer days at Granny J’s watching her “stories” and learning to bake cornbread. Granny was always busy, going to the store, to club meetings, buying thread and sewing supplies and then doing the sewing. She had bags and bags of scrap materials in her back room, scraps I loved to play in. At Granny’s, I was a racecar driver, a flapper, a pirate, a lion tamer, a dancer; my imagination was unlimited and my supplies endless. I do not remember when my great-uncle convinced Granny to put in an additional window unit air conditioner but I do remember sitting directly in front of it, watching her sew, listening to her talk about her first job, about growing up poor in rural Arkansas, about the psychic she went to who told her that her son would leave on a ship as soon as he turned 18. No matter what else she was doing, Granny always told stories, ones that root me to my family, ones that are waiting for me to tell them but I have forgotten some of the details, the specific people or dates and some of the places. I remember her voice, the look in her eyes when she had a really funny story, the ones she told so often and with such enthusiasm it did not matter if I knew the story by heart: like the one about my uncle biting the dog, or the one where she first learned to drive, or how my grandmother stood up my grandfather on their first date. Granny held all of the stories as if she were a database, able to recall any point in any story at any given time.
Summers in Alabama meant dark nights littered with fireflies and camp meeting church services where I heard my grandfather sing loudly and out of key, the same way I do now when it suits me. I loved riding in the back of my grandparents’ car, staring out the window while the fireflies sparkled against the kudzu-lined back roads. This was my father’s homeland; these were the smells, the heat, the landscape of his boyhood. And now they belonged to me and to my brother. There was the small creek in which he gigged frogs and skipped rocks and sometimes swam. There was the sharp curve in the road he’d taken a bit too fast and almost wrecked his car, the bridge he drove over on a stormy night in his VW bug when he almost didn’t make it home, the field where he ran and dug up earthworms. I knew the stories by heart. We were creating our own landscape as we played and imagined and stayed up late eating ice-cream and popsicles.
As a young teenager, summers meant babysitting, and part-time jobs and swimming at the country club so often that my hair turned green. It meant reading books I was too young to read and carrying a paperback dictionary that became so waterlogged and warped by the end of summer, I’d ruined it for good. In high school, summer meant baseball tournaments (my brother’s), camp where I was a counselor and freedom. I drove the car my grandparents bought me when I turned 18 to the middle of Conecuh county forest where I ruled the Arts and Crafts hut, sold supplies to campers to make shrinky-dinks, keychains and various other items they would take to their parents. I spent the summer in a cabin I shared with four-five other staff members and watched Days of Our Lives or swam in the lake during lunch break. We swam at night, probably with alligators, laid on the deck and told stories about our lives. I was still a bit naive about the world and willing to believe people were who they said they were. I had very few rules and cash in my pocket and friends who rubbed aloe vera on my sunburned skin after I spent too many hours in the sun.
As a graduate student, summers were lean and difficult, scrounging for classes to teach or taking classes or both. In my master’s program, the summers were about cheap bottles of wine, nights of poetry and vodka, days on the bay or in the surf. It was driving to Florida on a just-cashed paycheck, sleeping on the floor in a friend’s condo and listening to jazz and Buffett while the sun went down. Summer then was one Beat night after another and it was glorious and fleeting and full of gas station sandwiches, live bands, cheap motels and words. So many words, stories, an endless run of what could be.
As a Ph.D. student, summer meant work, practically living in coffee shops writing a dissertation, waiting for paychecks and being creative with what was in the fridge. But it was also rich with nights with friends, recalling our favorite songs, playing video games, closing down restaurants with our conversations, or games of pool. Summer meant being in love and hoping it was enough to make the crappy apartment, the steady diet of Ramen noodles and PBJ’s worth it.
Only recently, has summer begun to mean time with family again. Only recently, does summer mean grilling out with the neighbors, playing scrabble, drinking beer, watching movies, softball. As an adult, summer has begun to mean taking photographs, writing, spending time with friends, reflecting on the time between then and now. Summer is sand in my toes, coke floats, flip-flops, and the kind of exhaustion that comes from sitting in the warmth of the sun.
Before today if you asked me my favorite season I would have said Fall. But now, I’m beginning to think it’s been summer all along… “new created in the all the freshness of childhood.”
I’ve been inquisitive since I was a child. My brother and I drove our mom crazy with our constant questions: how does this work; why does that happen? We opened cabinets, doors, anything that was locked or closed only increased our desire to discover what was inside. My brother loved taking things apart and later, building things. Together, we were a force of curiosity against the secrets of the world. Of course, soon enough we had our own secrets to keep and our curiosity turned to specific subjects and fields of study. I don’t know that I lost my curiosity but I certainly haven’t paid the kind of attention I used to, not in the way I did as a child. I read; I look inward; I write. I am still curious about the world but I often forget how to look at things through the lens of curiosity. I try to understand, to reach an epiphany. However, I think curiosity is more about the questions than the answers or rather, asking the questions in the first place.
I think curiosity takes bravery. It means admitting you don’t know something, maybe a lot of somethings. Curiosity means a willingness to surrender to the child in you, to see things from a new perspective. Curiosity is about play, something, I’m learning from the Mondo Beyondo Dream Lab, that we don’t honor enough as adults.
“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you” --Nathaniel Hawthorne
Today, I am trusting that the work I do bit by bit makes a difference. (I’ve spent the morning going through clothes, and throwing things away or donating them to Goodwill.) But I trust this in the larger sense, too.
I am grateful for the gorgeous weather lately that makes me want to go outside, take pictures, sit on the back porch, read.
I am inspired by all the words you guys are leaving here and on your own blogs. Like Dian said when she first initiated the Self-Evidence + Authenticity Challenge, our words, our writing, the community we create with them can change the world. I plan to continue to pledge myself to and write about the 13 topics because I found it incredibly worthwhile and helpful, an inspiration in and of itself.
* I haven’t written a tgif post in a while, but you can see Brene Brown’s blog, Ordinary Courage, a must read, for the exercise’s full explanation. Who or what are you trusting, grateful and inspired by today?
I want to publicly acknowledge the women who blog daily and put themselves out on the page, laying themselves raw and bare for readers, readers like me.
I first blogged because I wanted a way to tell my friends back home about my life as it happened, not edited in letters or phone conversations but as it unfolded. All the minutiae of my thoughts, actions and feelings on the screen for people to read. My early blogs were like journals: today I did this, this really annoyed me, etc. I moved my blog to this WordPress space when I received webspace for Christmas but I didn’t start blogging in earnest until December of 2005. I wrote a lot about graduate school, about my classes, my projects. I jotted down ideas in-between classes. I wrote mostly for myself, as an archive. And though I knew my friends were reading me occasionally, it never occurred to me that others would.
When I started blogging, I was unsure of what I was getting into and along the way I’ve watched my blog grow as I grew and I’ve been able to be part of conversations that I never imagined were possible. Blogs were a big part of my graduate career and dissertation. But more than that, they’ve been a lifeline, a light in the dark, the whisper that tells me I’m not alone, that other women feel what I feel. Reading blogs by women who are smart and funny and who worry and love and have passions and share all of the mess and chaos with other women encourages me on a daily basis. I feel inspired, motivated to make a difference in my own life but also in others around me.
I would like to thank all of you who blog, who spend time reading, linking, commenting and participating in one another’s lives, dreams and goals. I am constantly blown away by the things you all write and I feel honored to be let into your lives, even if it’s only a post at a time. You are my teachers and confidantes, my guides and sounding boards.
Thank you for letting us in. Thank you for being brave enough to say what you need to say, what needs to be said. Thank you for taking time away from your families to write, for ignoring the voices that tell you that there a million “better” things you could be doing. Because I am here to tell you how deeply your words, advice and encouragement have touched me.
I tell my students that to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. You have made me a good reader with your honesty and perceptions. It is a wonderful and priceless gift and I thank each and every one of you for offering it so generously.
