The Blog She is A-Changing

I'd love to have your feedback on the new look of the blog. What do y'all think?

I've putzed around way too long on this to want to undo it, but I would like to hear your thoughts. It just felt like it was time for a change.

So, let's hear it....

Let's Get It Started

Well, hey, y'all.

Wait. Are those crickets I hear? Am I all alone here after abandoning my post lo these many days, nay weeks?

I just haven't been able to get it together to write. I feel mentally fatigued. Lost. Wondering why I write and if I actually have anything of value to say. I was thinking about just walking away.

However, A. has a post on her blog that hit very close to home for me. I feel like I've been treading water in a sea of stress and dismay related to behavior problems (Brendan's and my own) and my inability to balance my part-time job, my duties as a wife and mother, and my desire to have a life that isn't solely consumed by cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. At least this blog gives me an outlet and keeps me connected with like minds – shoot, better minds! – and allows me space to figure out my purpose in this world.

Anyway, despite wondering how I can balance my need and desire to write and remain relatively honest with myself and you all with an apparently growing need not to offend or upset anyone else, I've decided to give this another go. I've thought about taking the blog private so that you'd have to register to read it, but that just seems too depressing. I might then find that no one actually gives a damn. I don't really want to do either of those things... Force readers to register or find out what a pathetic loser I am.

Or I could suck it up and be me, whoever that is.

So, I thought I'd start with a layout change. Unfortunately, I screwed up saving some of my links. If I've left you off my blogroll, please forgive me. I added the blogs whose urls I knew off the top of my head. If yours isn't there, it's because I'm going to need to find the url and add you. It's not that I don't love you to pieces!

Alright. Here we go. Again.

'Night, Y'all.

None of Us are Free

I suspect that if I were receiving a report card today, it would say does not play well with others. And after reflecting on this, I think I've always been this way, to some extent.

I do not like being part of a team. I want to be given a project and told to go at it. If I have to work with someone else, I want them to do their part and let me do mine and for them to keep their mouths shut and not tell me what they think about my work. And I'll do the same.

Now, why am I on about this, you ask? Well, I started a new job. There's the boss, who can give me feedback. That's part of the inherent, unspoken contract between a boss and an employee. There's a tech guy. And there's me... the marketer, the writer.

The tech guy thinks he can criticize my writing. And that pisses me the hell off. Especially when the writing is on a blog.

Ah ha! That was an example of exactly the thing he'd criticize... a sentence fragment.

I'll be more specific. I have a new job as the part-time marketing director for a small company. I am writing a blog on the subject matter of that company. I have worked with the tech guy on the blog because it's on WordPress at his suggestion and I am finding WordPress very user-unfriendly and ugly and it doesn't handle text well, etc. So, I've lots of questions.

Because it's a blog and I'm ghostwriting it, I've tried to find a way to match the conversational tone of my boss and keep it readable. I'm writing about specific subject matter and I need to sound like I know what I'm talking about without being stuffy or pompous. As I've shown here, I think that a blog is a conversation. And I tend to write in a conversational tone, phrasing things as I would say them if I were speaking to friends. I do not write in the formal manner, using all the conventions of correct grammar, as I would were I writing an English paper or an article for a magazine or speaking in front of a group of English professors who weren't also my friends. (You would be shocked at how many of my friends and Scott's are actually English professors.)

In writing this other blog, which has kept me away from here for more than a week, I think, I have used a sentence fragment for effect. I have begun a sentence with And (more than once), also for effect, and I have been soundly called out for those things by Mr. Techy-Smartypants. To my boss!

I met him for the first time yesterday and he gave off a cold and smug vibe that really rubbed me the wrong way. During the meeting, I learned that my boss is hiring another writer who was recommended by this tech guy, who by the way, I now think is a dirty louse for recommending another writer.

My boss says I shouldn't be insulted. He wants me to manage the marketing efforts and not write. But I love writing. LOVE IT. It is the one thing, other than my family and friends, that I am passionate about. Marketing is just something I do. Not what I love... what I wake up thinking about in the middle of the night. I don't compose marketing plans in the shower every day, but I do mentally write... fictional stories, blog posts, love letters to my husband and children, letters to congresspeople, magazine articles.

I know that if I were a better person, a team player, as it were, I'd be egoless about this. I would believe this is what is best for the business and I will be able to focus my efforts on generating great marketing ideas every day if I don't have to write the blog and web content. But I'm not there. I'm not selfless and egoless. I do believe I am a better writer than anyone else my boss will hire. I went to Agnes Freakin' Scott, dammit! No one trains better writers than Agnes Scott.

So, now that we're clear... Dawn doesn't play well with others and thinks she's a better writer than 95% of the people available to be hired as writers and she doesn't like being corrected by know-it-all techies... I feel much better. And I hope you don't think less of me for venting about it. Or for actually having the feelings in the first place. I never claimed to be perfect, right?

I will see letting go of the writing aspects of the job as an opportunity to focus those energies here and on other writing projects and I will try to see focusing on the marketing efforts as my actual job and the building up of those muscles.

Wish me the best.

*Tech dude actually criticized me for writing directly into the blog, as opposed to using a text editor and cutting and pasting. First of all, if WordPress actually came with a built-in spell check it wouldn't matter, and second of all, he must not know who he's talking to. I can only compare it to folks who do crosswords in pencil.

So, y'all, how do you write? Directly into the blog or with a text editor? Do tell, because I think he's insane and presumptuous to believe that I would need to do that.

Midnight Train to Georgia

Happy Friday, y'all.

I'm having a bit of a rough day emotionally, so I don't feel like writing much, but I wanted to share something cool with my Georgia readers that I just learned about.

It's the Georgia Blog Carnival, happening today over at Georgia Politics Unfiltered. Check it out for some links to some fascinating Georgia-centric blogs. And for a more complete, in-depth list of many, many cool Georgia-based blogs, check out the Georgia Blogroll over at Georgia On My Mind, a really cool site run by an elementary history teacher that features Georgia history, Georgia blogs, and Georgia goings-on. I just discovered it recently and love it.

With a Little Help from My Friends

When I set out to write a blog, my only real intent, or rather the foundation of what I was doing, was simply to have an outlet.

I found motherhood so isolating and life-changing (duh!) that I had to find a way to explore my own essence, the little bits and bobs of who I am that come to the surface through personal writing. I realized that the hopes and dreams of the life left unrealized, along with the frustrations of the life I chose, were grinding me down and somewhere along the line I just didn't feel like me anymore. Hell, I didn't even look like me, but it took me three years to realize that. Blogging gave me a way to draw my own map out of the darkness, a light to shine on the parts of me I'd just as soon keep hidden so that I could scour them clean, repair them, or cast them aside.

At some point, I realized that there were other women out there who felt in ways very much as I did. By blogging I was not only adding my voice to the chorus of joy and woe being sung by countless other mom and dad bloggers, but I was also giving a voice to those not yet ready to share their own experiences.

In reading other blogs, I found hope and encouragement. At times I've read things that broke my heart, others that made me laugh out loud. Many, many blog entries have made me pause to appreciate this life of mine and the many blessings in it, while others have made me yearn ever more for the freedom I gave up to become a parent. The one thing the blogs I enjoy most have in common is the way they make me feel connected to humanity as a whole.

I know. It's crazy. A little mawkish, perhaps. But honest and real.

When I read that A.'s children aren't sleeping either, it allows me to see that I'm not the only one and serves as a reminder, that like millions of mothers before us, both she and I will survive this time in our lives as difficult as it is. And when I see Evilynmo's list of the seven songs she's currently into, it gives me a peek into the life and interest of someone else and opens my eyes (and ears) to new possibilities. It's the same way I feel when I read cable & tweed. I may not listen to half the stuff I read about or go to any of the shows listed, but reading the blog keeps me aware of all the possibilities and who wouldn't want to do that?

Where am I going with all this?

When I first started to write, I often wondered what the hell I was doing. I wondered if anyone would ever read what I wrote and if they did what they would think. I wavered between thinking it didn't matter what anyone thought and actively hoping someone, anyone, would read my blog and react positively to it.

Right now, a friend of mine, who writes a killer blog is thinking of dropping it because he's not sure that it's relevant or that anyone will want to read it. Other friends suggested that his interests are too specific and only people interested in the same stuff would want to read it. At least that's what I took from the e-mail he sent me today.

The thing is neither of us knew the other had a blog until yesterday. I sent him a link to my entry about my NY trip because I was short of time, but wanted to share what happened with him. In turn, he told me about his blog and what's going on.

I think it would be a shame if he quit blogging. Of course, he may convert it all into a web site that is less personal and more focused on his musical interests and that's fine. I just would hate for him to be discouraged and think it's not worth blogging because someone thinks his interests are too narrow.

That's such a big part of why I read blogs. I love taking a peek into the lives of others and seeing how they're not only similar to mine, but different. It makes life far more interesting and rich and varied. I was so happy to read Jeremy's blog and get a peek into what he's reading and listening to; hearing stories about his son.

This was a long and roundabout way of saying thank you to all the wonderful bloggers that help me keep it real even if they don't know they're doing so. And an even longer way of saying to a friend that what you're doing really does matter.