The Problem with Blogging and Living

I have blogged on and off since about 2007. In shorter periods of time, people have garnered book deals and minor celebrity from blogging. There’s even a marketplace to teach people how to market blogs from cyberspace to meatspace — through search engine optimization and advertising and contests and competitions to join the media Borg.

But sometimes in that upward climb to popular culture and acclaim, blogs lose accountability. There has to be a check in place beyond what is marketable or what is most searched and what garners the most comments. At some point, one has to wonder, “Is this good? Is this the best I can do right now? What will others gain from my work? What do I want them to gain?”

Most blogging successes derive from schticks: a hungry girl or stuff white people like or bitchy amusing observations or kitschy popular feminism. But sometimes a piece of work needs more. To give it more, a writer/artist/creative mind needs time, positive reinforcement, resources to thrive, and inspiration.

What happens to that creativity when a true talent lacks some or all of these? Who or what should be held to account?

It is difficult to blog as a marginalized person. What you write affects your relationships with family and friends, your job prospects, your day-to-day functionality. To turn blogging into a more substantial living takes chronic investment and engagement — neither of which stems from how good you are or what you have to offer. It takes knowing the right people and the courage to own your words. And more than anything, it takes honesty.

So what happens if the world’s inability to accept you as you are hampers you in a venue where you want to thrive? What happens when holding people accountable in cyberspace hastens your demise offline? How do you reconcile what you want, feel, and believe with what’s expected of you?

These are the concerns of those who care about truth, but for whatever reason, they have to go through hell to be able to tell it. They have to ignore their families and the news reports saying having opinions and convictions can destroy their futures. Those people have to live and share their stories, and for all our sakes, I hope they survive. I hope they make something precious of themselves, beyond the marketplace.

I hope they keep living and writing.

Adventures of Independent Me

Long time, no write.

I’m still not lawyering, and I’ve been trying to write independently for the past few months. But the discipline to put my words on a page — it’s not there. It’s something I have to work at, and I’m not doing it. Not even things that could save me are hitting pages.

It doesn’t help that I no longer have full Internet access at home. Any engagement with online life now happens through my smartphone. I don’t like taking my laptop out (I am far too accident-prone) and I am reluctant to start loading up my quiet home with Internet and cable. I tied so much of writing to blogging that words on private spaces don’t get written. I figure there is no space more private than my mind. I have my mind for storing those seeds of stories, acorns of anecdotes. This post is the most I’ve written in a while, and it helps to consider it writing because it is on a blog. My words in my cyber place.

Speaking of which, I do have my own literal living place now. It’s been a month. I am slowly acquiring the things I need for my apartment, and I am stalling on unpacking and organizing all the knick-knacks I’ve accumulated. But it is fun to walk into a space and be able to call it home. Literal, spiritual, emotional – home is a place to feel affirmed and safe.

Home affirms. There is nothing more dangerous than a disaffirming home. Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a brilliant fictional account of this principle. If you can’t heal and thrive in the place created by you and for you, it’s time to move on.

I am on a journey to heal and thrive.