Archive for July, 2008

What We Believe: Blogging Community as a Healing Force (Live Blog)

July 23, 2008 | Filed under: BlogHer

(I live blogged a session as a favor. Hence the randomness of this post. But you really aren’t missing much as the theme of this site is about to turn into what I would say if I had a voice. It wouldn’t be pretty)

What We Believe: Blogging Community as Healing Force

Moderater: Susan Wagner Panelists: Flutter, Lovebabz, WhyMommy, Laurie Kingston

When I was asked to liveblog this session I said yes without having a clue as to who the panelists were or the meat of the topic. I said yes and in 15 minutes found myself in a room full of women passing out kleenex and thanking the makeup Gods for waterproof mascara. On the one hand I felt duped because nothing can bring one down like mothers with cancer or rape but in the end I found myself pleasantly surprised that these women were able to use their writing for good. There are so many stories about sites dedicated to hating another blogger or posts being written about how another is wrong in their personal life choices and because of a few bad apples, we often forget about those who have not only helped themselves but also others, with their words.

Flutter’s site had been a knitting blog had been using talk therapy to overcome a sexual assault that had happened at 13. She instead wanted a legible history of where/who she was now and where she was coming from as the events of her past had affected her present.

Lovebabz was awaiting sentencing for a white collar crime. At the same time her husband left her with four children and she was facing foreclosure. She started blogging to get it all out. She didn’t want to be all about whining but about how she chooses to live and love even in the face of all of this adversity. She continues to keep a good spin on things.

Laurie Kingston and Susan (aka WhyMommy) are both mothers living with cancer. Laurie was not a blogger before it all started but used blogging as a tool to explain her feelings as she was fighting this disease. She now has a book coming out. Susan was a ‘typical mommyblogger’ who was diagnosed with cancer right before she was supposed to attend the BlogHer conference last year. When she made her announcement thousands of other bloggers rallied around her after a fellow mommyblogger wrote a post about her cancer and then posted a blog badge to go along with it. Other bloggers read this post and added the badges to their site. People continue to add them each day and each time Susan is touched and helped in a way that couldn’t have been done without this community.

These women have done what they have and have been successful at it in that they have healed and found the good in themselves and each other. They all believe that we - as people - are all connected and that by using their words they are concsious of what they and others say and use writing to provoke thought and are ‘arbiters of careful speech’. They have all found that they can go to their individual blogs and write exactly how they feel at that moment. Whether it be 4 PM or 4 AM. It is agreed that there is a “community of people who want to be there for you…[but are] safe behind a computer screen”.

Susan says that blogging helps her to rely on people who aren’t there all the time in order give her partner or those close some space. I sit back and recall all of the times, especially as of late where I’ve just written something instead of regurgitating the same stories and issues to friends of mine. It isn’t that anyones friends or family are uncaring it’s just that it’s hard for them to have to deal with issues no matter how great, and have these issues piled upon them one after another.

Babz has found - and at times I couldn’t agree with this more - that people in the virtual world tend to be more forgiving.

Other points: There is a sense of community that you don’t get in face to face interactions because so often we put up a wall in public. It’s easier to pour your heart out online. (Both of which are so true that I found myself nodding right along)

Babz says: There are no perfect people. “I have to be my own superhero. I have to be the one that I love” and has used blogging to find that force within her.

An audience member asks: “How was the community of your blog helpful in getting you through…?”

The panel: Bloggers bringing healing to other people with what they’ve shared - by what you’re sharing you’re giving out as much as you have received from others in the community. Laurie and Susan agree with the helping yourself by helping others sentiment and through that they have harnessed another community called Mothers with Cancer which is a group blog by women and for women who have had or are currently living with cancer.

The conversation then moves to the use of other forms of blogging and community such as microblogging using Twitter. Susan says that she used twitter to let people know right when she was about to go under for her surgery and then when she came out from under anesthesia. She then asks the audience if there are other communities with the same healing force and while it seems that there might be one for victims of sexual abuse (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) it seems that the communities that these women have built for themselves have had a power like no other.

I should point out that while this session was going on the Naked Blogging session in which several good friends of mine (Tracey, Loralee) had to share painful stories of trolling and meanness that they have encountered via their blogs. And while this session may have been depressing as hell (mothers with cancer and crying, people. CRYING) it was still nice to bear witness to extreme kindness and thought that we often forget about in the blogher-sphere.

Storytellers

July 21, 2008 | Filed under: Blogology, Once Upon A Time..

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”  ~Sylvia Plath

I started blogging not because I thought myself to be a fabulous writer but because I always had the most ABSOLUTELY INSANE stories EVER. That is all in caps because the hyperbole would be through the roof and suddenly a simple story about watching Katherine Harris (who I will dislike with a fiery passion from the deepest part of my soul for a very, very long time) play bumper cars while parallel parking is suddenly a huge OMFG YOU ALL MUST HEAR THIS type moment. Complete with hand gestures and facial expressions and a hearty laugh and then theories about her cracked out driver’s ed teacher and then how she may or may not have run over a squirrel. Little bit of truth and a little bit of lie.

As a writer or blogger or ‘creative whiner’ (which I am totally trademarking) you want stories to be interesting and mind-blowing so that people laugh or cry. I wasn’t going to write about stories today. I was actually going to write about crying in the lobby of the Westin St. Francis while drinking wine out of a paper cup and Angella looking at me like I had just lost my damn mind. Instead I have the esteemed pleasure of telling the awesome story about how I found out my credit card had been used without my authority. Which would have been panic attack inducing from home but when checking into a hotel for five nights in a city that you’ve never been to, you suddenly get the joy of experiencing vertigo. Possibly because it’s midnight and you have no voice and you look like a homeless person carrying all of your bags and wearing a shirt that says ZWAGGLE. And while people in the south are very kind people you can tell that the woman at the front desk is all ‘what the flying fuck is a zwaggle?’ And then you call your father because your mother has disappeared off the face of the earth (when really she’s just sleeping in her perfect summer house on a perfect little summer island and you’re stranded in New motherfucking Orleans at the start of hurricane season) and he’s like “Wait, who is this again?” And then the woman at the front desk can tell that perhaps you might die right there and then on the lobby and hey! now it’s 1:15 AM and you’re fishing around your bag for a klonopin because death is knocking at your door. Of course because of karma nothing too terrible happens and the front desk lady kind of feels bad because you seem to be in a bit of a precarious state and she doesn’t want to have to call a the paramedics to lift your catatonic body off the marble floor so she says “I’ll charge you for one night” right at the time when you hoist your bags back to your shoulders and say “Ok, thank you” and start to walk out the door. She does it not because she has to but because (and I quote) “There was no way in hell that I was going to let you walk out that door”. And when you type those words you will start to cry again because the past five days have been one amazing thing after another and all you can do is mouth thank you because all that god damn wine and screaming over rave music has left your vocal chords somewhat paralyzed. But you are so fucking thankful that you want to give her your first born and name it Sabrina (after her of course).

The next morning you wake up ridiculously late to give a talk on the politics of pedagogy (your favorite topic ever right next to using The Internet for community building) but the first thing you think is “Oh my fuck, I MUST tell The Internet this story”. And so you do.

The end.

Gone fishin’

July 17, 2008 | Filed under: Humdrum

“Yo bitches. Here I am in San Francisco. I don’t miss any of you but I know you miss me.

Love,

Heather”

- That note was dictated by Miss Leah as I sat on the floor of her guest bedroom trying not to toss myself out the window because YOU GUYS, I am so fucking stressed. Incomprehensibly thrilled no less, but stressed.

If I’m Not Here…(Volume 1)

July 9, 2008 | Filed under: If I'm not here...

“Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.” ~John Barrymore

For the most part Tuesday was horrendous. A little bit of this and a little bit of that made up for a hellacious day where by nightfall I was hoarse due to a throat full of phlegm from all the heavy sobbing through out the day. Never before have I been so thankful for an office door. That evening, after a lengthy Come to Jesus talk (the result? I was right! PWNED! The end) I flipped open my laptop before sleep. I was in a bit of a Jack Daniel’s haze so I was most certain that my brain along with Gmail had concocted some scheme to terrorize my psyche. Alas I hadn’t been hallucinating when I read that I had won $250 courtesy of HP in a contest for BlogHer. I did a little dance on my bed while rather scantily clad and flopped back down to an ice cold drink. Seconds later I opened my laptop again - I always check my mail twice before bed. I’m obsessive-compulsive like that - and there, right where my HP email had been was a separate email stating that a post of mine had been chosen for me to read - OUT LOUD - in the BlogHer Community Keynote.

If you recall, when the Community Keynote process started, I was on the search committee. Due to other deadlines and work and poring over the brilliant words of others, I hadn’t even thought of submitting a post. I even recall Eden asking if I had and I said that I hadn’t because there was no time and then promptly forgot about it all. So imagine the utter surprise that coursed it’s way through me when finding out that an anonymous reader - Elisa won’t tell me who it was and only says that it was a Secret Admirer - went and found a post that s/he enjoyed and then submitted it to have me read out loud. Like in public with other people around. I don’t care if half the audience has seen me drunk and obnoxious and I’ve slept in their guest bedroom, it’s still public speaking. But never mind that, the point is that my utter shock upon finding out was warranted and whoever you are (please tell me, I don’t like surprises and it’s killing me!), I appreciate it more than you know. I’m really excited for this and I hope you all enjoy it. If not, well, most of you might be drunk by then anyway. So whatever.

And so that ended Tuesday. Now it is Wednesday evening, my favorite moment of the week. When I can sit back in my hot ass apartment with no writing deadlines looming over my head trying to eat me alive and with all of the words and synonyms and analogies sucking the life out of me. As much as I enjoy writing, by Wednesday at 3PM when my MamaPop post is due, I’m done. The timer has gone off. The little plastic piece has popped out of my ass. Just done.

After Aimee’s suggestion, I’ve decided to do a weekly link post to all of the damn words I’ve written for the week. That way you all can see that my mind doesn’t always revolve around drinking and my boobs. Sometimes I think about the state of the economy and why screenwriters put forth such asinine shit. Really important things going on up in my head and out via my finger tips. Obviously.

This week there is no BlogHer post because Denise is kind and lovely and pretty and perhaps if I kiss her ass enough she’ll give me another week off for being so damn awesome. I’ve guest posted at Mocha Momma and well the word ‘racist’ came up once in the comments. So… yeah. And at MamaPop, I finally took myself on a date to see WALL-E and I haven’t been that delighted by a junk collecting robot in quite some time.

Now I am off to practice not contorting my face every time I speak and not having a face that resembles a squished prune when smiling. I imagine looking constipated with a cockeye when doing my reading. I hope you all can be there to witness the beauty!

The Dumbest Story Ever Told

July 9, 2008 | Filed under: Oh The Stupidity You'll See, Once Upon A Time.., The District Of Columbia

“I always look for a woman who has a tattoo.  I see a woman with a tattoo, and I’m thinking, okay, here’s a gal who’s capable of making a decision she’ll regret in the future. ” ~Richard Jeni

On June 25th 2001, exactly one day after I donned a red cap and gown and played my clarinet in a formal setting for the last time at my high school graduation, I moved to Washington, DC. I say that with a tear in my eye not because I am recalling how sad I was to pack up my shit and move to a place where humidity would take you in its clammy hands and immobilize you and suppress your ability to breathe; but because I was so god damn happy to get the hell out of that place. As I recall on the outside I may have cried while crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge but on the inside I was screaming “THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I AM FREE AT LAST”.

I was retelling the story of my Independence Day to coworkers yesterday because despite the oft-crippling fear of The Newness, I still do far better as an independent person, far away from what is most familiar to me. Which is how I lasted six full months in another country with absolutely no one I knew and a one sided grasp of the language. Meaning I could understand what was being said and was fully literate but the only thing I could respond with was “OK!” and lots of head nodding. I was a beacon of brilliance and compelling conversation.

So when I moved to DC, with my new-found freedom I did what any proper 17 year old with half a brain would do when sent 400 miles away: I procured myself a fake ID. Not just any fake ID, as you see, in New York the licenses of yore were made of a more flimsy, cardboard material. This made it easy to write and generally deface said license. With three colored pencils and a simple flick of the wrist, I turned 1983 into 1980 and was on my merry way.

(I should stop here and say that the awesomeness of this idea and patting myself on the back and being smug is called ‘foreshadowing’ and maybe one day I’ll tell you the story of what happened to that license)

And with my license I didn’t set out to start drinking, because I wasn’t much of a drinker at the time, I instead – and again - did what any FREE! 17 year old would do; I went out to get my tongue pierced. I found a tongue piercing to be cool and edgy which would in turn make me cool and edgy (I of the clarinet playing and non-drinking flavor of High School student). I could insert a very long diatribe as to the flaws in this logic but at 17 you are in your own little universe and whatever you say goes. You’re practically invincible of course and when you’re 17 and have just moved to a major city from East Bumblefuck, New York, well the world is your oyster. So you deface your body with a large needle. Again, count the flaws in this logic.

Full of adrenaline, I went to get my tongue pierced and was turned away not twenty minutes later due to a very large vein coursing it’s way smack in the middle of my tongue. I think this is why my tongue can reach the bottom of my chin, all that extra blood pumping through it. It’s also why I can tie a cherry stem quite expertly and I’m also a most excellent make-out partner. If said vein were to be nicked I could bleed to death and die and the Washington Post B section would read “17 year old girl with false ID bleeds to death after tongue piercing. Friends say she was a nice girl but such a dipshit”.

I was left dejected but I did what I do best, which is to get what I want, right when I want it. And if I can’t get exactly what I wanted in the first place, I go after the next best thing or I just obsess about it, whine, yell and scream and get it anyway. And my god, I sound like the most charming person on the planet. In lieu of the tongue piercing I decided on a tattoo. Yes! A tattoo! A tattoo would solve all of my problems. And only at 24 can you laugh hysterically at your 17 year old self at 6:30 AM because your 17 year old self was obviously missing a large part of her brain. The part of the brain that does cognitive thinking. The important part.

I walked my ass into that tattoo parlor – Jinx Proof on M Street in Georgetown, they also did my rook and tragus piercing – took out my fake ID, went to the wall of tattoos to pick out exactly what I wanted. The perfect piece that would adorn my body for all eternity. Something that would represent me for the rest of my natural life, forever and ever, amen. And I picked out a motherfucking butterfly. A Butterfly (it’s on my right ankle). An insect with wings that I have zero connection to except that I think they’re pretty. Not even pretty really, but mostly just nice to look at in passing if I happen to stop swearing and drinking and raising hell to notice that there butterfly right by my head.

Here’s a lesson; If telling your parents that you’ve defaced your body with a drawing of a bug on your ankle, start off by telling them that it’s not really that bad. Get them all worked up and worried that you’re dying or pregnant (first words out of my mother’s mouth “ARE YOU PREGNANT!?!?”) and then say, no, I got a tattoo. And then they’ll be too busy thanking God that they won’t be grandparents and/or planning your funeral anytime soon and hugging you because your stupidity will have cost them a grand total of ZERO dollars.

This all occurred seven years ago. I am far cooler and smarter now – or at least I pretend I am – and the minor pain from getting the first tattoo has long passed. I never thought I’d be one of those people who were decidedly unafraid of having needles stuck every which way. Which explains why I get a random ear piercing because I’m bored. Now with some modicum of an identity and something resembling a brain, I am a little bit more prepared and nervous-excited to get my second tattoo. I didn’t think I would get another one but over the last few weeks I’ve had the itch. And then I knew exactly what I wanted and where. It’s fun but more importantly has meaning and reminds me of where I was many years ago and thankful of where I am now. When it arrives you all will be the first to know and all I’m going to say is, no, it isn’t a damn ladybug.