On liking, but not “Liking”

If you peek through my blog, you’ll notice I haven’t been as active lately as I was a couple of weeks ago. This is 1.) because I was on vacation and went crazy for awhile there and 2.) I’ve had some stuff going on in the real word, and it’s not the kind of stuff I think you want to hear about. Which brings me to the Like button.

The stuff has kept me busy so I haven’t stayed as up to date on the blogs I follow as I prefer. I’ve spent the last few hours looking through posts, and finally had to stop because they were blending together. During that time, however, I found myself considering reasons not to hit the “Like” button.

Aside from the obvious (“this is a stupid post,” “I hate mayonnaise, so I’m not going to read about it,” and “I have no idea what they’re talking about”), I repeatedly had four reasons for skipping over the Like and Comment sections:

1.) The Depression Journal: Some people write fantastic posts about depression. I’ve enjoyed (and even liked, oh my) a few where the person was trying to enlighten their readers about particular mental illnesses, some of which included depression. I appreciate anyone who is willing to share their story. As a collector of stories (aren’t we all?), I tuck them away and try to remember them when some instance occurs in my life and that story could provide me a little more empathy.

I do not, however, like posts when the writer has “Depression” as a category. Categories and tags are different. Tags are about the topics in a post. I can handle depression as a post topic, but when a person has a whole slew of posts about how their college courses make them want to cut themselves, well… I feel that isn’t my place.

If I thought I could craft a comment that would dissuade a person from self-harm, I’d do it, but I don’t have that kind of confidence in myself. I’m also a cynical person who isn’t sure whether the writer really has a problem, or if they want attention. If I already don’t feel I can make things better, I don’t want my otherwise useless comment or like to encourage anyone, whether they’re making it up or not.

2.) Politics: I went through that phase of my life where I had an opinion on everything and thought everyone needed to hear it.

But they didn’t need to hear it. And most of them didn’t want to hear it. The ones who did didn’t like my opinion so much as they liked arguing so they could hear themselves share their own opinion.

Discussion of politics has its place. I’ll talk to most people about my beliefs, but not on WordPress. This blog is my creative outlet, not a place for me to argue or scare people away from my words. While I’ve read some great posts about political issues, I’ve found that a large number of them are those same people who are writing for the sake of enjoying their own opinion, rather than trying to change anything.

3.) Religion: You’ll also notice I don’t talk about religion. My feelings here are very much like my feelings about politics: I’ll talk to you in person, but my blog is my creative outlet, not a place to debate whose god is right, or wears the coolest outfit.

4.) Diets: I have plenty of admiration for people who take control and make themselves healthier, whether it be by diet, exercise, or other. The problem is that a lot of the people who blog about dieting say things like “I can lose a pound a day if I don’t eat and drink Diet Coke all day.” Since I never know if the writer is a starve-yourself addict who lives off Diet Coke, I skip over these posts as well.

Another important belief of mine is that there’s an exception to every good rule. I don’t believe in absolutes. Today I liked a post that had politic ties, because it was an interesting perspective from a person who felt guilt about the decisions of their local leaders. I also seriously debated commenting on a post where a writer asked “is it okay for Christian writers to swear in their books?”

That was an almost. The answer seemed simple to me, but then again, we tend to find our own beliefs to be the obvious.

What do you think? Should I break my rules more often? Do most people have restrictions about their online presence? 

My Stick Figure Family

Like a lot of people, I spent a large portion of Memorial Day weekend in a vehicle.

A lot.

I couldn’t help noticing all of the stick families on the backs of people’s cars. I had expected people to be over them by now. Maybe they are, but they’re too lazy to pull off the stickers. I’m not sure. The way I see it, if the stickers make them happy, then I’m happy for them. They just won’t be on the back of my car.

On the off chance you don’t know what stickers I mean, here’s an idea of one:

Okay, I may have gone a little over the top with the words.

In addition to the standard family, I saw a bunch of goofy decals: A dinosaur eating a stick family, Star Wars figures (with Luke and Leia as the parents – I was a little disturbed), military themed figures (very appropriate for the weekend) and all sorts of others.

One was missing.

If someone had this, this sad, lonely guy, on the back of their car, I would want to be that person’s best friend.

Of course, then that would ruin the whole thing, because lonely guy would have a crazy girl waving in the distance:

Look, it’s me! With fancy hair and everything!

Actually, better yet, I want to see this person:

I’d love the see the single figure, happily haunting the back of the car. Who needs to show off kids when you’ve got a fun gold crown?

So what about my family? I think I’ll go design a figure of two cats giving orders to humans and frame it in our living room. That’ll show the world who we are.

…

…

…

Now I’m going to go reflect on how depressingly accurate that statement was. Maybe this is why I don’t have a stick figure family on my car…

If only it were Hemingway

The Internet really likes to pretend that fun quotes belong to famous people. One I’ve noticed a lot lately is attributed to Hemingway:

“Write drunk; edit sober.”

I’m sitting in my nerd-ed out home office, where my husband banished me to write, thinking about that quote. In particular, I’m thinking about the novel that I’ve put aside for the last couple of years. At first I stopped working on it – and all other non-essential writing- because my hands were bothering me. I was using the number pad on my keyboard a lot at the time, and my right hand was beginning to ache throughout the day. Since my mom had carpal tunnel at a young age, it worried me.

That’s no longer the case. Sometimes my hands hurt more easily than they should, but I’m not having the same troubles. Trying to write again after so long, however, is intimidating. One of the purposes of this blog is to get me doing just that.

Yet that novel sits untouched, waiting for revision. I know what needs done. I know which chapter needs discarded, which needs a little love, which needs significantly more than a little love, and which needs to be removed from my head and put on paper.

But all I can think is that working on that book right now makes me want to do the exact opposite of what “Hemingway” says.

I figure that’s a bad idea. Okay, so is basing one’s writing methods on the advice of an an author, whether the quote is legitimate or not. If I’m going to do that, I should at least look to advice that resonated with me specifically.

*34 minutes later*

Okay, I’m just as bad as the rest of the Internet. I’ve been searching interview after interview with Joe Hill. I love him because he writes easily digested horror, but he writes it with such obvious care. The first page (and chapter) of “Horns” ends with a man peeing on himself, and when I read it, I thought “damn. He hooked me with that?” I read an interview with him once that stuck with me, and I can find no trace of it. I’m certain I didn’t invent it. Then again, maybe that doesn’t matter? Maybe what matters is what I got from it: If you aren’t having fun with what you’re writing, then you shouldn’t be writing it. Maybe you’ll have fun writing it tomorrow. Maybe it’s never going to be fun, so it’s not right and needs changed. Maybe the whole thing needs scrapped.

Don’t get me wrong, actual Hemingway definitely beats out Joe Hill.

I think working on that novel will be fun again. Today isn’t the day. I need to focus on the basics, and to practice on you poor people who stumble across this blog.

I think I’ll spend the rest of the evening enjoying the environment in my office. What’s more inspiring than Halo toys, Pokeballs, an abnormally large Darth Vader figure, and all sorts of other nerdy goodness?

Maybe I’ll even write something.

The Journal Saga (or The Incredibly Detailed Life Story of the Average Person – Me)

Out of the Well recently posed a question to readers: What is the value of keeping a journal?

The purpose of my journal has changed with almost every phase of my life. My earliest journal existed because diary-style fiction was popular for young girls at the time. An earlier version of myself fantasized about falling into some grand adventure and leaving behind a marvelous journal detailing the excitement for posterity (though I certainly could not have used that word at the time).

As an early teen, my journal existed to hold my loneliness. Friends weren’t a common commodity for the awkward girl who walked around with her head down and arms crossed all the time, but a journal would listen to her ever-so important rants, her questions about boys and fantasies about living a fairy-tale.

In high school, I journaled for release. I could complain and say all of the horrible, scared, mean things that ever crept through my mind, just to get them out and away. My fear of someone getting a hold of that side of me was so strong that I carried it everywhere – class to class, room to room. Though it contained some happy memories, that journal existed to help me deal with some of the anger and confusion that comes naturally at that age.

Its purpose once again changed with the next phase of my education. The college journal held not only personal words, but it existed as a creative outlet as well. Until then, I had always kept creative writing in separate notebooks, but combining the two had a drastic impact on my writing. I like to think that my personal recollections became more creative, and my writing more personal.

Now that I’ve settled into life and a career, my journal has become the constant that it was in high school again. It’s gone from the bulky thing sitting on top of my stack of textbooks to a sleek notebook kept inside my purse. It lets me hide away the grievances that I’m not yet ready to share. It’s a record of my life and relationships, holding everything from details about my wedding day to last week’s grocery list.

Through those phases of life, and all the phases to come, I do not think my journal was ever a complete reflection of myself, but it’s certainly been more than words and poor drawings. Rather, the journal’s purpose has been to house whatever I’ve needed to process or remember, the very best, and very worst of me. I still have them all.

Well, except one. One journal that went into a fire 3 years ago. I never worried I’d regret it, and I still do not. So often, my journal existed as therapy, and in that one case, I went through something bad enough that it was therapeutic to see the memories turn to flames. It’s not something I would ever recommend to anyone else, and this isn’t the time to explain what happened to cause it. What’s worth noting is that while I value every journal I’ve written and enjoy flipping through their pages on occasion, some are still not pleasant to read. I guess that’s what I meant by the worst of me. It’s not just my best and worst traits held in those books, but the best and worst experiences as well.

Okay, and some really bad drawings.

Because pictures are always better…

A friend for my early teenage self

Below is a picture of my journal from sometime in middle school. I have no idea what this entry was about, but in case you were wondering, I still cannot do the Electric Slide.

True Love as a young teen – the kind that can last 2 weeks without the other party’s knowledge

A place to process

I remember being young and thinking it’d be really awesome and dramatic if it looked like there were tear stains on a diary page. Since I couldn’t muster up any tears, I sprinkled the page with water. I remember thinking about that, and that tear stains were not, in fact, awesome and cool, when I wrote the entry below and found myself crying through it. Confession: when I flipped through my old journal and spotted this picture, I started to tear up. I’m not sure of a better way to define the value of journaling than those tears.

This was high school. Notice the handwriting didn’t improve at all since the picture above…

At some point in my youth, I thought it’d be really dramatic to have tear stains on a journal, and I’m pretty sure I faked them on an entry. I couldn’t find the original, but here’s the first time the tear stains were real.

And a for happy thoughts as well

Another high school (maybe early college? I should have looked at the date) picture, that I took entirely because I saw the Avatar: The Last Airbender flip-book stickers. If you decide to read the text, I’ve got a spoiler for you: I married someone else. It was nice seeing that bit of happiness from my past though.

Another high school journal. I was so cool that i was into Avatar: The Last Airbender then. I was not, however, cool enough to be willing to share that knowledge with anyone besides myself. Clearly I’m over that.

A pile of history that’s just for me.

Finally, a picture of the mess I made of my middle school to high school journals while going through them the other night. There are plenty more. The one on the bottom left is actually fiction. I wrote it for a project in my 8th grade English class, and applied my superior knowledge of writing diary fiction that I’d learned at age 9. I’ve never gotten rid of it because of all the time I took sewing the darn thing together.

A pile of journals from my teen years. Once day I’ll organize them.