There I was at the auction again, with not much to report on the matter. I hardly see those people at all anymore, which in most cases is heartening. Of course I had to go with Ruby as her date, and that was fun. My nemesis recycled a dress that was not good the first time around, and I conspired to find out her auction number so I could write it on anything in the silent that vaguely resembled a turnip twaddler.
I have a funny exchange I have to tell you about. When I was taking a break from blogging last spring while I was considering a meatspace career change, I attended the auction and won a place at a book club dinner party, hosted by Ruby. The picture in the corner is of me during clean up. SJ: Bottle Snuggler. The topic was Julie & Julia, which, zzzz for the most part. I confess I skimmed it.
There was a good deal of time allotted to slagging blogging during the party, and who do those people think they are that they feel they must put their know it all trite trite-isms on the internet, those attention whores. After about forty-five minutes of this I made some point by starting with “Well, I have been writing a blog for eight years, and…” GASP. Dropped fork. Awkward. I live for moments like that.
Jump to last night, when I saw a mom there whom I have not seen since the book club.
“Oh are you still writing that mysterious blog of yours,” she said, by way of drunken conversation.
“Yes,” I said, “and I started a new one at the beginning of the new year on Victorian culture.”
“Are you…like…really bored?” she said, perplexed.
“No, I’m a writer,” I said.
“Ohhh.”
Oh well.
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I like blogging as a means of communicating with strangers because, among other things, nobody has to “listen” to you if they don’t want to. This gives it a big advantage over more traditional methods of letting other people know how you feel, such as the loud drunken monologue on the subway, the harangue at a family get-together, the drunken “conversation” with people next to you at the bar who are in fact desperately looking for an excuse to leave, the long complaint session that stretches the weekly staff meeting out by 15 minutes, or the shouting monologue to passerby on a street corner.
(Another advantage is probably the fact that you can review and edit blog content before you post it, which is more than one can say for any of the other methods!)
I feel like writers have trouble enough being taken seriously, and that the sub-classifications of writing styles, while perhaps helpful to the writers themselves in terms of connecting quickly with people of their own ilk, are not helpful in terms of being understood by people who were having trouble at “writer”. And since they can’t understand, they tend to think it must be ridiculous. Matters are not improved by the fact that some writers are pure attention whore hijink nose to ass annoyances. But seriously, that’s true of any group, right? I’m just noticing an awful lot of punchlines in movies and television are either “blogger” or “slam poetry” and while… okay, yes, it can be ridiculous; on the other hand, why are the people WRITING these movies slamming on other writers (like “he’s working on a screenplay” is not equally approaching a punchline?) and why are the people in the audience, many of whom cannot write a grocery list, feeling compelled to laugh?
And yes, Julie whatever seems irritating. But Elizabeth Gilbert is not a blogger, and she rubs me the same way.
Paul: Yeah, I like that it’s optional too–or less confrontational. I like getting feedback from people who are in a different setting and are not worried about hurting my feelings.
Anne: I’ve noticed that blogging is a punchline now too. There seems to be a lot of scrabbling for legitimacy, and yeah, I think a lot of people writing in “legit” mediums should be justifying their existence as well.
This makes me think of when I first started blogging, too. I tried to join groups and found doors slamming in my face because of my URL, because they were trying to do “legitimate” Serious blogging. Now I don’t really try to join anything. It’s reassuring in a sick way that even with bloggers there is ridiculous jockeying.
I think what made me sad about the conversation is when a hobby/passion/vocation whatever can be interpreted as something that fills a void created by boredom. I think it says more about the person making the comment. I will be chewing this one over for a while. Not grudgingly–I just need to think about it.
A curiously rude exchange too. It reminds me of the seven year period when I had no TV.When it came up (usually because I couldn’t participate in a TV related convo) people could not help bursting out with, “But what do you DO??”
I got this about four years ago when I was a stay-at-home mom. “What do you DO all day?” Some people cannot think outside their little boxes. HMMPH I say.
You must be a pacifist because her tween-like remark would have been met with my fist.
A: I just go I AM SEW BLOGGING THIS LATERZ. HUFF!
A friend of mine used to say, every couple of years when I would (still) say “hey, you know, this blogging thing is, you know, pretty good” or something similar, and she would respond with the same thing: “I really don’t know how you could FIND THE TIME to do something like that”!
AKA “I’m much too busy for such trivia”.
If it was netball or 4 hand bridge, of course, it wouldn’t attract that comment.
I miss the blogging. It’s funny, though, that I didn’t consider what I did on the blog “writing.” It was more of a discourse and keep up with the community. I think THAT’S the part I miss . . . all the commenting and link-trading and cross-posting.
That’s film noir there baby.
–Are you really bored?
–No, I’m a writer.
Lerve that.