The Little Posts that Couldn't
It’s been two weeks since my last post (Bless me Father, for I have sinned), and for some reason two weeks seems like the longest I can go without my blog seeming abandoned. So I’m dragging myself over to my dashboard to click that “new post” button and try to work up some magic. Having a baby and being back at work full time, there’s just so little extra time and energy. I always feel like I’m a little behind at work. I always feel like I’m a little behind at home. (Where are those fairies )?) And now I’m feeling behind on my blog. I admit it. I’m blogging out of a sense of obligation.
But no, not entirely. Because so many cool little post ideas have come to me in the two weeks since I creamed my drawers (see below), and at various points in the last week I’ve been really excited about writing one of them. But I haven’t had an extra twenty minutes. Here’s a brief list of the germs of posts that have grabbed my coat, ridden around in my brain, but never had the luck to get any keyboard love. (My apologies to those germs of posts that came and went and have been totally forgotten.)
1. A post about the sentimentalization of babies: how it annoys me when people uses images of babies or the idea of babies to promote some program, position, or ideology that I mistrust, and yet how spending time with a baby makes me understand why people are prone to sentimentalizing these appealing, needy creatures whose crying we’re hardwired to find distressing and whose laughter we go great lengths to elicit, and who in a real sense personify innocence and trust.
2. A post about femininity and its discontents, inspired by Orange’s musings on Twisty’s post on the pitfalls of feminity. How extreme femininity of the kind Twisty excoriates is clearly problematic and limiting, but how for those of us who aren’t hobbling around in high heels 24-7, getting our breasts fashioned into flesh basketballs, or applying and scraping off inches of make-up daily, femininity is still a fraught terrain given that every choice we make related to personal style is coded either as feminine or masculine. And even though masculinity likes to sneakily pretend it’s invisible and merely human (rather than artificial, as so many aspects of femininity clearly are), it too is culturally constructed.
3. A post about teaching creative writing and how some days commenting on my students’ creative work is invigorating and I feel like I’m connecting with their writing on its own terms and giving them useful advice, while other days I’m saying something insipid and generic in order to avoid saying “This is lame. Write something better,” or (worse?) “This is great! Good job!”
Those are the ones I remember. And those are the short-term germs, whose neglect is less haunting than the several long posts I’ve been chewing on but not getting to (partly because there’s so much to say) about my two kids and their relationship to each other, my feelings about having two kids after agonizing over the decision of whether to have a second child, my gratefulness at my good relationship with my amazing mom, and my sadness at my broken relationship with my messed-up dad.
I sometimes toy with the idea of euthanizing this blog, simply due to the scarcity of time and personal resources in my current life. But clearly there’s a lot I want to say. And I sort of assume I’ll have a bit more time and a few more resources to do so at some point in the future. Summer is coming. Roo will continue to grow and develop and get less needy. Eventually both my children will go to college. Stay tuned. (And let me know if you catch any typos.)
But no, not entirely. Because so many cool little post ideas have come to me in the two weeks since I creamed my drawers (see below), and at various points in the last week I’ve been really excited about writing one of them. But I haven’t had an extra twenty minutes. Here’s a brief list of the germs of posts that have grabbed my coat, ridden around in my brain, but never had the luck to get any keyboard love. (My apologies to those germs of posts that came and went and have been totally forgotten.)
1. A post about the sentimentalization of babies: how it annoys me when people uses images of babies or the idea of babies to promote some program, position, or ideology that I mistrust, and yet how spending time with a baby makes me understand why people are prone to sentimentalizing these appealing, needy creatures whose crying we’re hardwired to find distressing and whose laughter we go great lengths to elicit, and who in a real sense personify innocence and trust.
2. A post about femininity and its discontents, inspired by Orange’s musings on Twisty’s post on the pitfalls of feminity. How extreme femininity of the kind Twisty excoriates is clearly problematic and limiting, but how for those of us who aren’t hobbling around in high heels 24-7, getting our breasts fashioned into flesh basketballs, or applying and scraping off inches of make-up daily, femininity is still a fraught terrain given that every choice we make related to personal style is coded either as feminine or masculine. And even though masculinity likes to sneakily pretend it’s invisible and merely human (rather than artificial, as so many aspects of femininity clearly are), it too is culturally constructed.
3. A post about teaching creative writing and how some days commenting on my students’ creative work is invigorating and I feel like I’m connecting with their writing on its own terms and giving them useful advice, while other days I’m saying something insipid and generic in order to avoid saying “This is lame. Write something better,” or (worse?) “This is great! Good job!”
Those are the ones I remember. And those are the short-term germs, whose neglect is less haunting than the several long posts I’ve been chewing on but not getting to (partly because there’s so much to say) about my two kids and their relationship to each other, my feelings about having two kids after agonizing over the decision of whether to have a second child, my gratefulness at my good relationship with my amazing mom, and my sadness at my broken relationship with my messed-up dad.
I sometimes toy with the idea of euthanizing this blog, simply due to the scarcity of time and personal resources in my current life. But clearly there’s a lot I want to say. And I sort of assume I’ll have a bit more time and a few more resources to do so at some point in the future. Summer is coming. Roo will continue to grow and develop and get less needy. Eventually both my children will go to college. Stay tuned. (And let me know if you catch any typos.)
posted by E. | 11:47 PM
1 Comments:
I could have written this myself. In fact I almost did do a list of things I wanted to blog about but didn't have the time but then, guess what, I didn't even have the time for that. I just bitched about what a sty my house is. (OMG it's so bad. Where are those f-ing fairies?)
I also feel like jettisoning the blog on a daily basis but I don't. I know it's cyclical and at some point I will be really sad if I don't have my little corner of the Internet. Somehow publishing intimate details of my life for strangers to read is healthy. Not sure how, but pretty sure that is the case. Keep on keeping on, E!
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