A Bloggiversary and Some Thoughts About Having a Voice
Ten years and one month ago today yesterday (I got busy!), this happened.*
If I'd been paying attention, I would have pointed it out last month, but I got distracted (I've READ stuff and I did a whole lot of sewing, and of course there was day to day LIFE involved). But I'd PLANNED to point it out, because people with hugely popular Official Blogs are always pointing out their five year bloggiversaries or even one or two years, and I'm like "TEN! TEN YEARS! And still no one takes me seriously!"
But of course, it wasn't a BLOG, per se. It was a LiveJournal. At that time only college students used Facebook, and as for the rest of social media... well, I'm not entirely sure the phrase "social media" even existed. LiveJournal actually WAS social media. You followed your friends. People'd post pictures, surveys, memes, short cryptic passive aggressive comments that no one besides the poster understood, links to news articles, and there were LOADS of "Communities" on every conceivable topic. Just like Facebook and Twitter, and supposedly Tumblr but I still don't understand why that's considered a community-building place and I've been there two years already (no CONVERSATION! Just reblogging and adding comments that other people may or may not even see!). So I had friends on LiveJournal, ones who would tell me I should join. I think it was my old college roommate who specifically said, "It's something I can really see YOU getting into." I don't even know if her LiveJournal still works. Let's see what happens if I put it in here. gloworm59 Huh, it DOES still exist. But it was last updated six years ago, which means this one has been happening over TWICE as long.
Anyway, she was right, obviously. Because here I am, still using it, if only once a month or so (and I must admit I RARELY look at my Friends Page anymore. Most people I care about there link to their posts through other social media, so I KNOW when to go look!) And I enjoyed participating in the meme-survey-quiz-things whenever they showed up-- I miss surveys, to be honest, somebody give me a survey! -- but the thing I REALLY appreciated, which flashier social media could never offer me, was the LENGTH. The opportunity to write whatever was on my mind and actually get feedback about it.
It's like in middle school, when our english teacher would ask for volunteers to share our daily journal entries with the class, my hand would always shoot right up, because finally my peers would get to hear all the stuff I was thinking about! It was my chance to TALK! It was so much easier to talk that way than to talk out loud!
So right, Tumblr does offer length, but not, like I said, an easy way to get FEEDBACK. I LIKE comments. I LIKE the discussions that come from comments. I wish I got more comments.
And at the same time, I'm glad I'm just a little LiveJournal blogger. I'm glad I'm relatively invisible. It's this weird balance between letting myself OUT THERE and having somebody else acknowledge that I have something to say, and protecting myself-- the louder your voice, the more nasty voices find you and tell you to shut up.
I mean, here's an issue I've noticed for a long time: people can be nasty on the Internet. I know, duh. But while some people are just trolls, some people are actually well-meaning. They feel they're standing up for what's right by pointing out what you've done wrong. BUT they cross the line and turn it into a huge issue, make it personal, won't drop it long after you've moved on, fill it with hate. And for a long while a lot of people I admired thought, because these people's MOTIVES were good, or because these people's voices were traditionally unheard (like when they were calling out a person of privelege), that protesting this kind of behavior was just further oppression, further silencing of the seldom-heard. So I figured I was in the wrong, because I'm a spoiled straight white girl. But lately I've been noticing more and more people acknowledging what I noticed all along, that sometimes good motives don't excuse outright mean behavior.
And I think, hey, so maybe my gut instinct was RIGHT, here. Maybe I should have believed in myself, stood up against what I could see was bullying even if it could be argued as justified. I still need to remember that even I can sometimes be RIGHT.
So the other day at the library I was scrolling down my collection development spreadsheet, just looking at all the authors' names. All these people who managed to write books and publish them in the past year! When I was a kid I thought I was special for being a writer, the ONLY ONE... well, that I KNEW. Even when I met Angie, my best friend, in high school, and discovered that she was an absolutely fabulous writer, part of me was like "No, I'M the writer! ME! She's not as MUCH of a writer!" even as the rest of me was like "Don't be an idiot, Part of Me, this story she wrote off the top of her head is hilarious and awesome and not at all what YOU would have written so it's not like there's not room for BOTH of you to be writers!" So anyway twenty-some years later I'm looking at this list of a thousand-some names of professional, paid writers, and those just the ones who've published something recently for anyone under 18 that might be worth purchasing for a public library...
...being online, blogging and following other bloggers, has really driven home how MANY writers there are in the world...
...but for some reason the other day when I looked at that list, the thing I thought was "Maybe I could write something if I changed my name to Belinda."
That wasn't just a random name I picked. Belinda was my alter-ego as a very small child. Princess Belinda of Switzerland. I actually got the name from the Ogden Nash poem about Custard the Dragon, which my mom used to recite. (Not the Princess of Switzerland part. That I made up myself). So I guess it taps into that pure, brave soul-child of mine, the one who isn't afraid to put her vast imagination Out There. I don't think I was thinking that in so many words at the moment, it was just a gut-thing: "If my name was Belinda, I could be a writer again." Like, that IS the name of my inner soul-child, and maybe it's HER who can write.
But it seems kind of funny to adopt a pseudonym now, when here I am on the internet under my real name for over a decade. NOT writing fiction, even. Writing my innermost thoughts, putting them out into the universe in hopes someone else might see them and understand. Somewhat protected by the unprofessional backdrop of LiveJournal, by the anonymity of Not Being Famous. Fully exposed, but not where anyone's looking. Well, where SOME people are looking, which helps. Because I like that validation, that if I DO speak up, somebody might listen.
So here I am. Ten years I've had a voice, a small voice, a largely drowned out voice... but a voice nonetheless. And sometimes just having the voice reminds me that sometimes I actually have something to say.
----
*Note that the userpic is set to "default" and the "Current Mood" theme has changed over the years, as neither the building in the default userpic nor the baby in the Current Mood pic actually existed at the time of that post. Also, that baby learned to ride a two-wheeler the other week.
If I'd been paying attention, I would have pointed it out last month, but I got distracted (I've READ stuff and I did a whole lot of sewing, and of course there was day to day LIFE involved). But I'd PLANNED to point it out, because people with hugely popular Official Blogs are always pointing out their five year bloggiversaries or even one or two years, and I'm like "TEN! TEN YEARS! And still no one takes me seriously!"
But of course, it wasn't a BLOG, per se. It was a LiveJournal. At that time only college students used Facebook, and as for the rest of social media... well, I'm not entirely sure the phrase "social media" even existed. LiveJournal actually WAS social media. You followed your friends. People'd post pictures, surveys, memes, short cryptic passive aggressive comments that no one besides the poster understood, links to news articles, and there were LOADS of "Communities" on every conceivable topic. Just like Facebook and Twitter, and supposedly Tumblr but I still don't understand why that's considered a community-building place and I've been there two years already (no CONVERSATION! Just reblogging and adding comments that other people may or may not even see!). So I had friends on LiveJournal, ones who would tell me I should join. I think it was my old college roommate who specifically said, "It's something I can really see YOU getting into." I don't even know if her LiveJournal still works. Let's see what happens if I put it in here. gloworm59 Huh, it DOES still exist. But it was last updated six years ago, which means this one has been happening over TWICE as long.
Anyway, she was right, obviously. Because here I am, still using it, if only once a month or so (and I must admit I RARELY look at my Friends Page anymore. Most people I care about there link to their posts through other social media, so I KNOW when to go look!) And I enjoyed participating in the meme-survey-quiz-things whenever they showed up-- I miss surveys, to be honest, somebody give me a survey! -- but the thing I REALLY appreciated, which flashier social media could never offer me, was the LENGTH. The opportunity to write whatever was on my mind and actually get feedback about it.
It's like in middle school, when our english teacher would ask for volunteers to share our daily journal entries with the class, my hand would always shoot right up, because finally my peers would get to hear all the stuff I was thinking about! It was my chance to TALK! It was so much easier to talk that way than to talk out loud!
So right, Tumblr does offer length, but not, like I said, an easy way to get FEEDBACK. I LIKE comments. I LIKE the discussions that come from comments. I wish I got more comments.
And at the same time, I'm glad I'm just a little LiveJournal blogger. I'm glad I'm relatively invisible. It's this weird balance between letting myself OUT THERE and having somebody else acknowledge that I have something to say, and protecting myself-- the louder your voice, the more nasty voices find you and tell you to shut up.
I mean, here's an issue I've noticed for a long time: people can be nasty on the Internet. I know, duh. But while some people are just trolls, some people are actually well-meaning. They feel they're standing up for what's right by pointing out what you've done wrong. BUT they cross the line and turn it into a huge issue, make it personal, won't drop it long after you've moved on, fill it with hate. And for a long while a lot of people I admired thought, because these people's MOTIVES were good, or because these people's voices were traditionally unheard (like when they were calling out a person of privelege), that protesting this kind of behavior was just further oppression, further silencing of the seldom-heard. So I figured I was in the wrong, because I'm a spoiled straight white girl. But lately I've been noticing more and more people acknowledging what I noticed all along, that sometimes good motives don't excuse outright mean behavior.
And I think, hey, so maybe my gut instinct was RIGHT, here. Maybe I should have believed in myself, stood up against what I could see was bullying even if it could be argued as justified. I still need to remember that even I can sometimes be RIGHT.
So the other day at the library I was scrolling down my collection development spreadsheet, just looking at all the authors' names. All these people who managed to write books and publish them in the past year! When I was a kid I thought I was special for being a writer, the ONLY ONE... well, that I KNEW. Even when I met Angie, my best friend, in high school, and discovered that she was an absolutely fabulous writer, part of me was like "No, I'M the writer! ME! She's not as MUCH of a writer!" even as the rest of me was like "Don't be an idiot, Part of Me, this story she wrote off the top of her head is hilarious and awesome and not at all what YOU would have written so it's not like there's not room for BOTH of you to be writers!" So anyway twenty-some years later I'm looking at this list of a thousand-some names of professional, paid writers, and those just the ones who've published something recently for anyone under 18 that might be worth purchasing for a public library...
...being online, blogging and following other bloggers, has really driven home how MANY writers there are in the world...
...but for some reason the other day when I looked at that list, the thing I thought was "Maybe I could write something if I changed my name to Belinda."
That wasn't just a random name I picked. Belinda was my alter-ego as a very small child. Princess Belinda of Switzerland. I actually got the name from the Ogden Nash poem about Custard the Dragon, which my mom used to recite. (Not the Princess of Switzerland part. That I made up myself). So I guess it taps into that pure, brave soul-child of mine, the one who isn't afraid to put her vast imagination Out There. I don't think I was thinking that in so many words at the moment, it was just a gut-thing: "If my name was Belinda, I could be a writer again." Like, that IS the name of my inner soul-child, and maybe it's HER who can write.
But it seems kind of funny to adopt a pseudonym now, when here I am on the internet under my real name for over a decade. NOT writing fiction, even. Writing my innermost thoughts, putting them out into the universe in hopes someone else might see them and understand. Somewhat protected by the unprofessional backdrop of LiveJournal, by the anonymity of Not Being Famous. Fully exposed, but not where anyone's looking. Well, where SOME people are looking, which helps. Because I like that validation, that if I DO speak up, somebody might listen.
So here I am. Ten years I've had a voice, a small voice, a largely drowned out voice... but a voice nonetheless. And sometimes just having the voice reminds me that sometimes I actually have something to say.
----
*Note that the userpic is set to "default" and the "Current Mood" theme has changed over the years, as neither the building in the default userpic nor the baby in the Current Mood pic actually existed at the time of that post. Also, that baby learned to ride a two-wheeler the other week.