2 posts tagged “miz untitled”
I'm still around.
Can you guys see comments on my posts? When I'm not logged in, I see
no comments, nor do I see a place to post any. Not that I'm trolling
for comments or anything.
I'll be taking down my blog
when the domain expires in a few days. There are a few different
reasons - for example, I want to post music and have it look cool and
shit, but I don't have the skills or the time to learn them. I mean, I
have to put food on the table and work to do and things to make and,
frankly, there are many other things I find much more compelling than
web design. [No offense to anyone or anything.] Also, I've lost
significant readership over time; when I went back to work a couple
years ago, then went to almost full-time a year ago, then went
full-time in May and concurrently made the decision to have both
children attend school - I lost readers every time. I post far less
(and with far less substance), and I know a few people felt as though
I'd sold out each time I, you know, bought in. It got to the point where I felt like I'd sold out, a little.
I'm much more at peace with my decisions now, however.
The last couple of years have been incredibly strange. I'm ready to become a more private person again, sharing my life with my family and close friends and working things out on paper. Letting it blurt all over the web hasn't really resulted in much Real Work being done emotionally - just the opposite, in fact. Many of the recent big shifts in my psyche came about when I was taking a little time away from online life. My close friend J has referred to the blogosphere as a wonderful, terrible place - a mirror where one's flaws and accomplishments can be magnified, reduced, or otherwise distorted. And it's not the blogosphere's fault - it's how people like me, and J, and many others I've known, navigate the blogosphere. I need to make my digital world smaller, I guess, so I can expand my analog horizons.
When the going gets weird, as old Hunter S. Thompson used to say, the weird turn pro. I'm weird, and I sure went pro. I'm considered a professional, even.
How weird is that!?
In any event, when I post I'll be posting here from now on. Galaxy Gramophone will get postings at least twice a week, and most definitely on Tuesdays. You might have to be a Vox member to comment.
OK? OK!
I thought I'd post this photo of the backyard a year and a few months
ago, when we first moved in. It looks completely alien to me. The photo
in the previous entry was taken yesterday.
I love our house. It's small - officially 1100 SF but we count the
500 SF "garden apartment", so maybe more like 1600 SF - but the yard is
large. And it's ours. I never really believed we'd ever buy a house and
didn't believe we owned this one until the keys were in my hand. I feel
incredible gratitude; I can grow plenty of flowers, herbs, and
vegetables, work on projects in the garage, enjoy a cup of coffee on
the front patio, walk barefoot on our lovely wood floors. It's modest,
and my teenage son is chafing and wishing there was a little more flash
to the old B-K unit, but I love it.
My writerly chops have left me for the evening. I'm out of practice.
Back when I did madameinsane dot com, I wrote these essays about my
home life - the kids, the garden, the knitting and the breadbaking, my
husband, politics, music, etc. I wrote often and sometimes I wrote
well. I loved the design, I loved the feedback, I loved writing about
my existence. I loved it.
It was no accident, however, that the blog started breaking at about the same time I started thinking that something else had to happen and that this isn't enough and that the next phase is right around the corner.
And it was - within a year of that domain lapsing - July 2004 - we
bought our house, I started working part-time, and some friendships
ended while others began. I started a new blog,
but the vibe isn't the same. I'm not as revealing, and that's on
purpose, but I also feel like I don't know how to talk to the blogging
client. The cursor sits there and blinks at me. I'm intimidated by the
blog.
I've changed, too. I'm not really the person I was when I started
writing about my life in early 2002 (was that when?). I work full-time
now at a job I enjoy and feel very fortunate to have. My kids are
enrolled in public school, which was unthinkable to me in 2002. I've
let go of a lot. My marriage, an excellent one, soldiers on. Due to a
soul sister's recent move, I have no real close friends here once
again, which frees up some mental energy to focus on myself (though I
miss her terribly).
I wrote elsewhere that I've forgotten how to dream, so busy I've
been raising kids and experimenting with the home arts and helping
other people achieve what they wanted to achieve, listening, being
capable, trying to find peace in that. I'm very used to doing what I'm
supposed to do, which occasionally dovetails with what I really want to
do.
So one of my goals - and I have many - is to remember how to dream,
how to find energy and direct it toward something I want. I started
this spring by going after the job I have and getting it - who's to say
I can't keep going?
France, 2008.
