August 26 2010
There are so many things to be addicted to nowadays. But I didn’t start this blog intending to bang on about ‘addiction’. Why does it seem to keep surfacing? The woman who stands next to me at choir each week said this morning, ‘I think I need treatment, I can’t stop doing crossword puzzles’. My friend D has a similar compulsive relationship with SuDuko. Leaves a wake behind him: the room littered with pens & newspapers folded to the puzzle page, a pen always at the ready in his shirt pocket.
And me, well there’s chocolate (a whole block today, Lindt Mint Intense, followed by intense remorse). And of course there’s also the new cyber-distraction. Yes, I know all its all pretty harmless c/w shooting up, or blowing the family food budget at the casino etc. But it’s still about hiding out/compulsion/avoidance of certain dreary chores/emotions that require attention. (pay accountant, change light globes, get a career etc)
Last night i went trawling through other peoples blogs, now that I’ve figured out how to do it. Click on one of the items in your profile, e.g. “Mary Oliver Poems” or “black humour”, and zap! there are the all the other bloggers who’ve got Mary Oliver or black humour (or Chinese medecine or opera or aerobics) listed as their interests. All those faces, mine too now, jostling among the cyber-throngs. All those lists of favorite books and films and music, all that offering up of cultural artifacts in an attempt to say ‘ See, This is the Sort Of Person I Am’. It’s strangely touching. (But I can’t help feeling it’s very little of who we really are....)
In my cyber-quest to find witty/inspiring/literary writers and poets among the bloggers, I reject almost everyone. I get sidetracked by occasional grandmas with the quilt they’ve sewn for their new grandchild, and by arty-crafty types showing me how to make colourful felt oven mitts. And by ‘Here we are on holidays with the kids’-type blogs. There’s something so reassuring about them. I dip into the blog-world of psychotherapy and find a lot of earnestness and wankery and dodgey ‘spirituality’. (Or maybe ‘real’ spirituality, how can I tell?)
Seems like hardly any of us bloggers have any ‘followers’. Though I am a unclear about the distinction between a ‘public’ and an ‘anonymous’ follower...hmm. The ones with heaps of followers - the ‘Blogs Of Note’ - don’t appeal to me, none of them... sigh...
Think it is time I went and planted those seedlings.
2 comments:
Hi Jane!
Welcome to blogging :) As you'll discover quickly, if you plant those seedlings, they often grow fast- I followed back to your blog from the comment you left on ours at All the World's Our Page.
If you want a very helpful tip indeed to know how your visitors are finding you, I highly recommend Sitemeter, which I've been using for about four years on various blogs. It's free, and it tracks where your visitors are coming from (it even tells you what terms they've searched to arrive at your blog). Very 1984, but also very useful- on my other blog, which is more parenting/ health related, I use the search terms to decide what to write about next.
Anyway- best of luck to you, and I hope you enjoy :)
Janey, try the very yummy Lindt Swiss Gold : White Choc with brittle and Whole Almonds ..... though I admit to feeling a tad guilty about consuming a block so fast, coz it's not that healthy dark stuff :~)
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