I mean, there are way more than two kinds of people in the world. I really loathe when people try to be pithy by "boiling it down" to a two-types-of-people-in-this-world scenario. It just never works--I know because before I was someone who hates this tendency I was someone who tried to apply it to everything from restaurant customers to sexual partners. And every once in a while, I find myself
doing it again: having an experience or conversation that really seems to crystallize some aspect of the human condition and reflexively thinking that I've found it! I found
my very own original axiom.
Then my mind is flooded with exceptions to my bright new rule and I'm back where I started (see above--like, where I started).
This just happened to me, not thirty minutes ago. My friend W. called, stricken.
But wait: let's backtrack...I finally finished the baby quilt for our friend J's new daughter, and this morning W. requested that I send her some photos. Knowing that of all my friends and family members, W. would be the most understanding of this little confessional endeavor, and caving into the pressure she applied upon hearing about my blog, I blurted out the address. Then I went to the post office and the grocery store and the gym and the fabric store. I hadn't been home very long when she called to express her sheer flabbergastedness over the extent of my no-longer-secret, considerably-less-anonymous public journal.
She was careful to point out that it's not this guy's existence that has her rattled, but rather how very much it reveals about my heretofore-unknown-to-W. doings here on the borders of Appalachia. I've been coming here for like nine months now (W. exaggerated a little when she gasped
"nearly a year!"), and still the only person who knows both my true identity and of the blog's existence was, until this morning, my husband. And he doesn't even know the address!
Geez, when I put it like that it does sound a little bat-shit crazy. Especially because I am not secretive. Well, that's not wholly true. I am extremely forthcoming about almost everything relating to my tumultuous inner life, but I do keep guilty secrets like
I forgot to pay a bill, or
I was supposed to send a thank-you card two months ago. But this doesn't fall into that category. I'm not doing anything shameful on here.
OR AM I???
Which brings me to the two-types-of-people thing. It almost brings me there, anyway. W. and I discussed the fact that this is weird but she can accept it because she likes to read blogs. And she used a phrase which I loved and will here repeat with joy at its sheer perspicacity*: We are both readers, and are therefore both "desperate for content." I love that! I'm totally desperate for content. I want so badly to have something new to read every time I turn to my computer! Or really, every time I turn to anything. And blogs are so tailor-made for whatever we want at any given moment, or over any given period of time. And some of them provide us with something new every single day!**
Anyway, W. is a blog-reader, so while she was disconcerted by my revelation, it wasn't the internettiness of it that threw her, it was its secretness, its thoroughness. This isn't one of those ghost ship blogs you sometimes come across, you know? The ones that were obviously for a school project or were born from some swiftly forgotten impulse to share.*** Although I am no pioneer woman, my output is hefty when one considers the fact that if you had asked yesterday, W. would have called it non-existent. And while I often go tangential on your ass, the central precept of the blog is sewing. And W. had no idea that I've been doing so much sewing.
(W. lives in the Northeast. We hardly ever see each other but frequently, almost daily, we have hour-long phone conversations. It's amazing what you do and do not share with someone in that kind of relationship. You know?)
The blog reveals a secret life that took her by surprise. That's an understatement, but I can't go further into that now because this post is obnoxiously long as it is.
We discussed telling J. about the blog. Two of us have never, ever, not-even-once managed to keep a secret from the third. There is no question that the new mama will be clued in very soon. She, however, does not read blogs. At least, to the best of our knowledge she doesn't. We've got evidence to back that up, too. 1) She is not a voracious reader. 2) She is not desperate for content. 3) She is also not really one for sharing, as a general rule. We all share everything with
each other, but where W. or I might tell a grocery store cashier that we're going off the Pill, J. would not. She would do no such thing. She would, in fact, be speechless to hear that it had happened. At all. Ever. To anyone.
She, in other words, is the second type of person. For one thing, the urge to share, which drives the blog in its myriad incarnations, is not so strong in our J.
For another thing, blogs are an acquired taste. At least, they are to people our age and older (let's say over 30? Even 25?). They're such a new phenomenon that we have no reasonable expectation of understanding them in any inherent way. They compare to absolutely nothing that came before them. At least at first glance, keeping a blog seems more like an exhibitionist's compulsion than a new way to communicate and connect. And isn't it egocentric to
assume that anyone would be interested in reading your blog, anyway?
Once a person starts reading them, though, they cease to appear quite so alien or presumptuous. I couldn't say exactly what prompted me to start writing here, but the desire to do so certainly struck only after I had been inculcated by several months of
reading blogs.
Forster's famous inscription is knocking around in my head, so I'll put it down even though I know it's the most overstated: "Only connect..."**** By invoking that epigraph and waxing philosophical on the nature of blogs, I'm also venturing into the uncomfortably outdated territory of, like, all the cultural commentators of 2002.
But if blogs are such an old-hat phenomenon, then why did I treat mine like a shameful secret?
OK, look: I think I have an answer for that, but I'm pretty sure it would take us in a gigantic, word-filled circle. And NO ONE READS THIS BLOG! Even W. said she didn't save the address so as to honor my wishes for anonymity. So I'm going to leave this here because I've gotten carried away. And I'm really cold and I want to go take a shower.
I will post pictures of the finished (!!) baby quilt on the morrow. Or the next time I post, whenever that is.
*Thank you,
thesaurus.com. I knew the word was out there, but had to go through "appropriate," "perfect," and "precise" to get there.
**I recently had a dream that I showed up at the
Pioneer Woman's house totally unannounced and we were both really uncomfortable and shocked that it had come to that. I check her site a lot less anymore--totally do not want to become a
fangirl, especially not of that brand of...well, that brand of Kool-Aid. There. I said it. I still totally enter the giveaways for mixers, though.
***I once stumbled onto a childhood neighbor's three-post blog about finding out her husband was having an affair and leaving her and their infant daughter. It was devastating and weird, but a form of catharsis we could all learn from, probably.
****I mean! It's TWO WORDS! This is an amazing achievement, a seriously mind-boggling thing that happened in literature. It is stirring and so often quoted as to be a most terrible cliche, but whoa. Who cares? It is an exhortation and a blessing and a sad, sorrowful sigh. And it's only two fucking words. Plus that ellipses--that perfect, winsome line of dots...
The back:
The back:
The binding:
The dedication:
The way it looked when I sent it off:
