How to Be a Human Being on the Internet (Does Anyone Know?)

I started this blog about six weeks ago.  I'd been thinking about it for a while.  I'd read a blog and think "I could do something like that."  Or I'd get all fired up about a topic, read good blogs on the issue and want to type up my own response.  But I didn't want my family blog getting much traffic from people we don't actually know.  And that sort of seems like the point of writing about topics and issues, right?  Having people read it?

Well it turns out one can scare up quite a few blog views by posting a few links in other, much more popular, blogger's comments sections.  Then if something you write resonates with another blogger and they share it around?  Also lots of hits.  Pinterest can be helpful too, but I think I'm not doing it right because I haven't gotten as many from that.  Which is sort of the point, right?  Doing it right?  Now there is suddenly a wrong way for me to do the internet?  Or to do blogging?  This started as an interesting experiment.  Suddenly I'm reading Twitter feeds hosted by a website dedicated to helping bloggers "do it better" (read make more money) and wondering if I should be putting ads on my site or trying to join more group boards on Pinterest.

All of that can get a little stressful.  Also it starts to feel a little forced.  Once in a while they mention having good content, or enjoying what you do, but it kind of feels like an afterthought.  I mean "you should enjoy what you do, but don't forget to check out this great site that allows you to edit pictures and create awesome graphics and if you subscribe please follow this link because I will get a commission."  Just paraphrasing.  I'll spare you the link.

But maybe it's because February was brutal and March is shaping up to be exhausting and terrible, but I've been obsessing about stats.  I'm trying not to totally abandon my family, but I feel the need to escape so strongly that I grasp on to the task of finding a few small ways to promote the blog each day as a way to exist - somewhere else.  And I'm still trying to figure out how to balance saying stuff that is meaningful to me with saying stuff people will find interesting while still maintaining healthy boundaries in terms of what I reveal about myself online.  Also, it seems important to treat other people well and I'm not always sure how to do that.

I agonized (a little) over my post about the Proverbs 31 mom because I felt bad about criticizing the woman who wrote the post.  But I also feel that women need to hear that there's more than one way to be a good mom and that the Bible isn't in the business of heaping burdens on us. I posted this piece on not thinking that we're doing something wrong just because times are hard as a kind of balance - just my perspective without needing to contradict someone.  But even then, the people I described in the post are real and could, in theory, read it and recognize themselves.

Because so far I have ended up writing about subjects I feel passionate about and revealing more about myself than I had anticipated when I started this blog.  I've had lots of positive responses, but it makes me kind of nervous.  I can really relate to this post by another blogger who's been blogging about her spiritual journey and feeling anxious about the repercussions. 

I joke about blogging being cheaper than therapy, but I don't want to end up in therapy because I blogged about something sensitive and ended up getting hurt.  I'm thinking about this because I've been following a blogger who recently wrote an article that got a lot of attention about sexual violence at the college she went to.  Later she shared on Twitter that the responses had been very hard for her to handle.  And I've been reading other posts about sexual abuse in religious settings and although I can see how it's so important to get the word out I keep thinking "Is this kind of vulnerability good for people who have been traumatize so much to begin with?"  (For a great summary of some of the stories I've been following check out this post, which also suggests a way we can help prevent these tragedies in the future.)

Thankfully I don't have that kind of "capital T trauma" to write about from personal experience. Although I haven't always had the most conventional life and I have had a few heartbreaks along the way, I have, in many ways, led a charmed and sheltered life.  I mean, when I say that February was brutal and March has been terrible I mean "lots of snow and cold weather and colds we can't shake and not getting enough sleep."  Not "civil war is tearing my country apart and we had to flee the only home my children have ever known in hopes of finding enough food to eat and a place where we won't get bombed" kind of terrible.

But it's my life and they're my struggles and heartbreaks and joys and it's what I know and seem inclined to write about.  I'm just not totally sure how much to share or in what context or..... what.  So may post a few recipes and some attempts to be funny and just give it some more thought.  Or I may seize on some idea or issue or experience I feel passionate about and throw it out there for the world to see.  Time will tell.  I'm still trying to figure out how to be a human being on the internet. 

In Which I Solve the Mystery of Mommy Blogging

I'm sitting on the bed in the clothes I've been wearing for the past thirty-six hours.  The baby in sitting on my lap with (just a little) sweet potato on his face.  He needs a clean diaper but you don't need to be seven months into the second baby to know that it's good to wait a few minutes on that one.  I have a head ache that pain killers and a sort of almost decent night of sleep barely touched.  I'm typing with one hand.

Why do I do this?  Why do I compose blog entries (in my head) while trying to get back to sleep at three in the morning or on my way home from dropping Lenny off at school?  Well besides the fact that it's pretty impossible to compose blog entries while on the way to drop him off because of all the questions and comments coming from the back seat. 

I figure a couple of different reasons work pretty well.  In more or less equal parts I....

• want to hear my grown up voice.
• am trying to impose some order on what otherwise feels pretty chaotic.
• want to remember this beautiful, crazy, super-intense time.
• like to keep in touch with family members.
• like attention and affirmation from the folks in my digital community.

About this last point:  I'm not proud.  I'll admit that being a stay-at-home mom can be lonely and thankless.  In the midst of a day of "mommy look at this" I sometimes like other people to look at me too.

Also, this is not my main "mommy blog."  I have another one that I started way back in the days when Lenny was a baby.  It's not a "how to" or a food blog or an advice or opinion blog.  It's just the story of our family.  And I wasn't really thinking about internet security when I started it, so it has lots of personal details about our family in it.  I sort of try to keep it hidden.  I may end up needing to password protect it. This blog, that you are reading right now, is an experiment.  An attempt to see if I can write "stuff" that a broader audience will be interested in.  Also, I'm trying to see if I have a "voice" - something I really want to write about.  Or something I'm good at writing about.  So anything goes at the moment, pretty much.

Obviously I'm not alone in feeling drawn to blogging.  I've been reading "mommy blogs" lately and there are literally thousands to choose from.  Groups of moms blogging together.  Moms with famous twitter feeds.  Networks of moms who pool ideas about what to write about.  There are sentimental, humorous, practical, honest, encouraging, self deprecating, tragic and triumphant blogs.  And of course many that have various of those elements at different times.  Just lots of blogs.

So do they all have the same motive I do?  Well without asking...any of them I would like to suggest that most likely they do.  Also I think that we all share the following motive, which I hadn't really considered until I read a couple of articles pretty much back-to-back and was hit with an epiphany. 

First of all I read this article about a Danish writer who is inspired by a Swedish film maker who said that seeking out solitude is important for writers because (my summary) writing is tumultuous enough without adding a bunch of drama. He said he felt like he contained "too much humanity" and it was squeezing out of him.  But this quote at the beginning of the article really grabbed my attention:

"Conventional wisdom tells us pain is good for art. Genius, the logic goes, is best drunk, unhappy, destitute, scarred by war or parenting, buoyed by illegal drugs or Merck."

"Scarred by war or parenting"?!?  I love it.   I don't know if I would write more or better if I had solitude.  I doubt it.  I actually had a TON of solitude for several years and mostly wrote tortured journal entries that I do not want to reread myself let alone share.  At the moment the humanity doesn't have to squeeze out of me like a defective tube of toothpaste.  It's swirling around me like....water about to rush out of a toilet bowl?  No, that's not right.  Wind in a tornado?  Maybe better.  It's definitely swirling around me like something that makes a big mess and leave me feeling breathless and traumatized.  And I don't know if it's producing some kind of genius, but it does compel me to write stuff down.

But why this story of my crazy, normal, beautiful and monotonous mommy life?  Why not make something up?  Is it just because it's what I know?  Or maybe the reasons listed above are enough.  But then I found another one which is more elegant and might just go right to the heart of the matter.

I saw an interview of Jennifer Senior, the author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood a few days ago.  It looked interesting.  She talks about why parenting has become such an intense emotional experience.  How we see our children as precious even as they have (historically) lost any economic "value."  Then I saw this review which had more detail and this great quote (I'm quoting the article, which quotes the book.):

Senior draws on the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between the “experiencing self” that exists in the present moment and the “remembering self” that constructs a life’s narrative. “Our experiencing selves tell researchers that we prefer doing the dishes — or napping, or shopping, or answering emails — to spending time with our kids. . . . But our remembering selves tell researchers that no one — and nothing — provides us with so much joy as our children. It may not be the happiness we live day to day, but it’s the happiness we think about, the happiness we summon and remember, the stuff that makes up our life-tales.”

 That's it!  I write partly because the swirl of humanity compels me.  But mostly, I write - I "mommy blog" to become the "remembering self."  It's not just that I want to remember at some distant time in the future when the house is quiet and clean (ha!) and my little ones have outgrown my loving arms.  No.  I need to remember now.  I need to become the rememberer.  The one who finds joy in my children, who sees the beauty and the humor and the love in our every day crazy-making lives.  I need to find the self that is not overwhelmed, tired and just about fed up and listen to her for a little while.  I need her to tell me that the first sleepy smiles of the day, imprinted on my still-sleep-starved brain though they are, are precious.  I need her to point out the funny, ironic, and amazingly intelligent sayings of my children.  I want to see how they are sweet and compassionate and full of exciting potential.  I need, for a few moments, to become the one who sees my life that way.  As joyful, satisfying and something that I love.

Mystery solved.  That's why I do it.  And I think probably a few other "mommies" blog for that reason too.