blogging

Since the 1990s, a significant part of my social life has lived online. I started “It’s all about me! (the column)” in 1997 before we called websites of online essays “blogs.” I spent a great deal of time in AOL chat rooms and in the usenet newsgroups misc.writing and alt.music.soulcoughing. Several of the relationships I formed back in the late 90s, including the one with my ex-husband, have continued all these years. The relationship I have with my online-only friends are real; that’s why I don’t call offline life “real life” when I’m talking about online and offline.
A couple weeks ago, I began changing how I use social media. I’m cutting back on it. I’m not the only one, I know, who has found it a time suck. It’s a common refrain, “I’ve been Facebooking/tweeting/Instagramming way too much! I need to cut back!” I made one significant change and I’m now considering other steps to find more balance in my life.
What I can’t figure out is how to cut out Facebook. On the one hand, I’d love to simply delete. I know a few people who don’t use Facebook and they seem to be fully functioning members of society. So, why can’t I pull the trigger?
Honestly, I resent the fact that I feel my professional and personal life depend so much on Facebook that I would be affected negatively if I quit. What kind of world is it that a corporate product has that kind of power over me?
If I were to quit Facebook, I would miss my friends. I know that. I would miss the ease with which I can catch up with people all around the country, even around the world. I would miss the easy way I can stay semi-informed about pop culture, including politics. But, that’s part of why I don’t like it. It’s so easy. It’s seductively easy. Is it like Fight Club?

Tyler Durden: We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.

Narrator: Martha Stewart.

Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.

Is it leading us to Bladerunner? Are we becoming replicants?
Am I quoting and referencing mass media movies try and process my philosophical considerations? (Yes.)
What is keeping me beholden to Facebook? I want people to read my newspaper column. That’s one thing. It’s a neat place to share that link once a month.
Then there are the real friendships, both close and casual. When I considered deleting a month or two ago, Facebook friends reminded me they enjoy my updates about my personal life. I don’t mean to sound self-important, but it matters to me that people would miss me. That’s what kept me from deleting then.
But, ugh, I don’t like Facebook. I really don’t like it. I don’t like how it feels so necessary! I’ve seen many people do very good things with it as an organizing tool. I believe it can be used as a force of good. But, ultimately, it’s a corporate product and more than one billion people use Facebook every day. How can that kind of dependence on a single corporate product be good?
Obviously, I’m not deleting Facebook yet (though I’m sorely tempted to do it right now!). And, of course, I’ll share a link to this blog post on Facebook. (Ugh!)
Here I am using a corporate product (WordPress) to make a post on social media (my website/blog). It feels a little different, though. I remember when I first started in 1997 and I used some html and an Internet connection to write my “columns.” I used Earthlink and then AOL to get online. I don’t remember what I used to write the text and code, but it certainly wasn’t something I felt was necessary to have a fully functional adult social/political life.
I’m going to shut my computer and go watch a puppet show. Then I think I’ll do some painting. Whether or not I share about it all on Facebook later, we’ll have to wait and see.
 
 
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Hot summer, sitting with a dear friend at a street-side table of a hoppin’ restaurant in Uptown Minneapolis. It’s 1997 and I’ve just found out it’s possible to be cool and do cool things while not drinking alcohol. My cool friend and I are talking about our cool dreams and cool ideal futures, especially about our super-cool dream jobs. I’ve begun calling myself “a writer” and have been posting “web essays” (aka, these days, blog posts) every week.

Back then, I took my web essays so seriously I would stay up all night to be sure something worthwhile was published by Thursday morning each week. My topics varied from “What’s happening in Rwanda?” to “How I survived the beach in my bikini” and “All Whites are Racist.” Mostly, though, I wrote about me, myself, and I. As my friend and I laughed about ourselves while basking in our wonderfulness, we came up with the name for my web essays. I began calling my website, “It’s all about me! (the column).” The name was meant to be self-deprecating; poking some loving fun at my self-centeredness.

In the 90s, the most fascinating thing in my life was me. I was newly recovered from alcoholism. I was in my late 20s (becoming an adult). And I had left a relatively long-term relationship just a year or so before. “Who am I” was everything to me at that time. So, my friend Lisa and I were laughing about how self-centered we were. We knew even then, however, our self-centeredness and deep interest in “navel-gazing” wasn’t really about ourselves. We wanted to understand how we related to the world around us.

Who am I in relation to the world? What do I think of… racism, sexism, politics, art, relationships, social justice, sex, or anything that happened to cross my mind at the moment. What were my opinions? What role did I have in everything? And, most relevant to today’s “Blog Action Day,” what are my responsibilities to, for, and with the world outside of me?

During my earliest days of posting web essays, a fellow writer in the newsgroup where I hung out online, really let me have it about how vapid my perspective on life was. She counted the number of times I used the word “I” (14 times) in one of my essays. She railed against the uninteresting content of essays that were about me and only me, as she saw it.

It’s true there have been periods of my life where what I share online has been so much about my intimate self-discovery I’ve found it surprising other people have had any interest. But, many still seemed to enjoy my writing.

I no longer spend much time publicizing my now-it’s-called-a-blog. I also don’t write as regularly. I don’t spend hours researching so I can put together informative and in-depth essays about current events or important social issues. I write about thoughts I have that interest me. I write about experiences I have or about things that I’ve read. I write about me, myself, and I in relation to the greater world whether directly or indirectly.

Some people find their energy being with people. Their “power of we” comes from physically being with other human beings doing something social, political, creative, or otherwise. My “power of we” comes from within my own mind and from the connections I make with individuals, almost always one person at a time. My connection with other human beings, my true “power of we,” tends to be infrequent and almost always quite intimate and even intense.

It’s only through a fuller understanding of myself that I am able to engage in relationships with others. I still find me fascinating. I understand, now, that counting the number of times I write “I” doesn’t mean I think I am the only interesting topic. It doesn’t mean I think I am the only thing that matters. In fact, the reason I want to continue discovering myself is so I am better able to be in the world. Being alive in the present moment, fully connecting with myself and who I am, allows me the freedom to care for others close to me. It also creates in me a desire to make the world a better, more loving and just place for all of us.

My self-centered and self-discovery focused expositions are in a sense about me. But, ultimately, they are about the intersection of individuals with each other and in relation to each other. The mindfulness I practice helps me be fully alive and most able to be present, to care for and love others.

My blog’s name is no longer “It’s all about me! (the column).” Since around 2005 or 2006, this blog has been called, “It’s all about we!”

It’s through me, myself, and I that I uncover the “power of we.”

For these are my own particular opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe, and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure, be another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to change me. — The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne, Volume 1, page 187

Thanks for stopping by serenebabe.net. I’m in the process of redesigning the site. I’m also reconsidering everything about this “blog.” (I still flinch a bit when I refer to my writing-that-I-share-on-the-Internet as a blog. Pretty funny, huh?)
With the over-saturation of the ‘net with personal blogs, I’m taking some time to decide what I want this blog to be. Will I post thoughts as they come to me? Will I mindfully craft posts, revising until they are only of the highest quality? Will I add advertisements or product reviews? (Ew, but all options are on the table.) Will I have themes? Will these be op-ed style opinion pieces? Creative writing? Mommy blogging? A combination of all of those? I’m not sure.

moose
me and the girls
It’s been a rocky few years. Things are flowing more smoothly now, though, and I’m emotionally connected to my website. My blog. Urp. I am amazed that people still, after all this time and all these variations of the site, come to read my words.
In the next few weeks I’ll be adding more of the nearly 300 posts that are now in the drafts folder (imported from the old site). It’s been educational and touching to read through these old posts. I’ve reposted some of them here already (see the archives).
So, again, thank you for stopping by. Now that I’m using wordpress, it should be easy for you to receive these posts by email as several of you prefer. I do hope to get back to writing and posting new content very soon.
I appreciate all of you.
–Heather