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Word Press, Cell phone novels, and Me (again)


Okay, so because I haven’t joined nearly enough blog sites (MSN-Spaces, dot.mac, LiveJournal, Blogger, Blogher, NaBloMo) or have blogs enough, I went to WordPress the other day and started a whole new account and am rebuilding this site essentially at WordPress. A really neat function allowed me to transfer all the stuff at Blogger (which are the same posts as here) to WordPress. I called the site Anniegirl1138 which was my “handle” at the YWBB. In my first post there I explained the story behind the name too. While most people at the widow board tend to create monikers based on their loss, my name was all about me. What an selfish little thang I am, eh? But I saw being there as being about me anyway. Not Will. I was there to see if I was normal (found out that normal is a bit more relative than I had believed it to be) and to rant (as I had no outlet for it in my real time) and I wanted to find people who were coping, internalizing and moving on – which is what I was more than ready to do. Rob was teasing me a bit this morning about naming my site for myself as he is grappling with what to call his on site. I named this site Second Edition because it was the second blog after my Widowed:The Blog at MSN-Spaces, literal name and boring, but I like the idea of my blog being christened with my online persona.

WordPress is a bit more complicated and I am still playing with the free features before I upgrade (which I think I will have to do to get the cool stuff) but I think it will eventually be my permanent – and only – online home. I want to continue this blog there and also have a page for my writing and a page of resources for widowed people – just cause I want to help and I haven’t much of an outlet for that right now.

Cell phone novels are a big Japanese thing right now. I went to look at a couple of blog articles on them and wondered if I could do something like that myself. It made me wonder too if I could, or should, put some of my own fiction online. I used to write fanfic in the long ago. It was fun to get feedback and have an audience that was so immediate. It reminded me of when I was a sophomore in high school and I was writing a soap opera satire that all my friends (and even kids who weren’t my friends) were asking to read it. I couldn’t write fast enough. I love writing for people. How did I lose that? Why did I forget that? Oh, yeah – I was told I wasn’t quite good enough when I tried to go back and get into the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa. Now if that happened I would chalk it up to a problem with the source but then I was twenty-seven and very insecure.

Rob and I have talked more about the Texas move and my working and my writing. I am being silly to worry about what feminist society thinks about my role. Shouldn’t my role be whatever I choose for it to be? I choose to be a writer who does the stay at home stuff. Men are practically applauded for that but women are selling themselves short and up shit creek at the same time. As Rob has pointed out on many an occasion, who decided that career and all its material accouterments were the be and end all? If everyone let fear of failure or loss of status or society’s aversion to living a scaled -down material life get in the way of the pursuit of one’s true talents, interests and dreams what a real shit-hole this life would be.

Taking a Vacation


The summer is nearly over. Fall, ironically, is the time of new beginnings. At least for me. So, I have decided to take a week off from blogging. I apologize to those few of you who read regularly, but as the day approaches for my daughter to start back to school, I feel the need to formulate a new schedule. I have never been unemployed, even once, in my entire adult life. Actually, I haven’t been without  a job since I was 14, that’s nearly 30 years, and now that I have the opportunity to focus on things that are important like my husband, child, writing and just envisioning possibilities……well, it takes time to reflect on all of this. 

 

I’ll be back after Labour Day for those of you who are still around. Don’t forget to bookmark me though. I might be hard to find otherwise.

Entry 150


 

I have been blogging for just over a year now. I started on MSN’s Spaces with a blog I called Widowed: The Blog which I just recently closed down and after I salvage from it the pieces I want, I will delete. Why? Because it’s mine,  because it’s served the purpose for which it was created, and because those services are no longer needed. I used the blog as a way to vent, sort through feelings and work through the issues of my life at the time. Occasionally I even wrote something that was topical and entertaining. That blog however represents a time in my life that is over. I was okay with sharing my early journey for a time, but I decided recently that I have shared enough. I could say really that the time has come to move on, because that is what I have done, but Rob hates that term. Normally I use “move forward” out of deference to him, even though that merely implies a forward momentum that is taking you from the point where you were to the point you are. It doesn’t convey, in my mind, the struggle and the introspection that  propelled you. Perhaps moving on then is also inadequate. Maybe what has occurred is that I am living now as opposed to existing. I am planning instead of waiting. I know what I know. I am pretty darn special, and I like myself. 

 

This blog too will one day exist only as an archive. I can’t write forever about my personal journey simply because it’s not all that interesting, and it’s not what I am interested in doing. I read other blogs. Blogs by widows. Blogs by women on a myriad of issues big and ordinary. Blogs by snarky wanna-be sports commentators and political pundits. I learn a little bit from everything I read. Makes me think, sometimes. Makes me laugh, depending. Makes me marvel at the beauty and complexity of thoughts captured in the written word like images in a camera lens. They remind me that I am not nearly the writer I need or want to be. They inspire me.

 

Today is my 150 entry on this blog since I began it on March 13th of this year. I blog nearly every day now. Somedays I even manage to be something other than egocentric. I am not going away anytime soon and even then it will only be to a website I am going to create for myself as opposed to using someone else’s templates. I have found that I like being a blogger. And I would like to take this last sentence today to thank those of you who have read, for whatever reason, and those of you who have commented.