Guess what - I'm moving! In fact, I've already moved.
I'm talking about my writing space. (There might be other types of moving in my future, but for now...)
...it's time for me to head in a different direction. I've been struggling with Fancy Notion over these recent weeks - material has seemed just outside of my reach. I've heard an insincerity in my voice. My haphazard post about blogging actually started me thinking about: what am I doing here, really? But most of all, I started to resent the time I spend searching my mind for interesting topics, because it has left me less time for the other writing that I'm doing, the creative, painstaking, for-publication kind that takes a shit-ton of practice and a great deal of time set aside for failure.
(Which I'm rocking at, by the way - the failure! Apparently this is normal for the new writer. Unless the Internet is just full of lies, which it simply cannot be. Right???)
But, I don't totally want to leave. I enjoy writing for an "audience," as far-flung and mysterious as it may be. And then I read this post by the lovely Alice Bradley,who blogs at Finslippy and Babble and is one of my favorite voices on the Internet, and - excuse my lame earnestness when I say this - it inspired the hell out of me (to say nothing of her tremendous follow-up to that post).
So on October 1 I started a new website. A real one, that I bought with cash money, and everything! Okay, okay, with credit... you got me. It's quite different from Fancy Notion - simultaneously more and less structured. More structured in that it consists of a limited few "types" of posts that will all be creative writing based - think posting less for the relevance of the topic, but for the writing of it. Less structured in that it isn't a linear march through my life - what I'm dong now, and what I'm doing now, and what I'll be doing tomorrow. Of course, I will try to cover any big events that happen to pop up (see possible move, above) - but what I've learned here is that I can write such better stories when I have the luxury to properly mull over them first. And there are a lot of scenes in my life that occurred way before there was ever Fancy Notion that I'd like to paint. And I want the freedom to fiddle with fiction, without Oprah getting all James Frey-tastic on my ass someday. And there are already so many friend-blogs that I read and love, bloggers who write about the same events and puzzles and life oddities that I experience, but write them, well, better. (At least that's my opinion. You guys are a bunch of stinking geniuses. Yes, you).
So...thank you for reading me here. It's been more fun than I can tell you, really, so I won't try. I don't expect you all to like the new website - but if you'd care to join me there, I will be the first one jumping up and down to give you a hug when you walk in the door. Just don't bring me a plant, because I will kill it. Bring vodka.
Forwarding address: http://www.spottytypewriter.com/
10.10.2011
10.05.2011
...and a good time was had by all.
Please allow me to play "wedding blogger" for a day - I just can't keep this gorgeousness to myself.
Photos from Doni (Craig's bro) and Sara's (my very dear friend) 's wedding. Shot by Calynn Berry out of MI.
I mean, come on. Right?
10.03.2011
Interlude.
It's a few weeks past the fact, but I'm still mourning the tiny chip of my heart that broke off when I heard that R.E.M. gracefully ended their career. I listened to Nightswimming on repeat in my high school boyfriend's bedroom, the summer before we went away to college. Talking, dreaming, kissing, fighting - embarrassingly intent on planning out a future that I'd later learn had no chance at all. I wish that relationship had ended as sweetly as the band's. I'm no Michael Stipe.
When I was young these types of songs helped me think about the future. It's that piano baseline, you know - it moves the brain to create. Now when I hear them, my mind hands me scenes from my past. What does that mean? Sometimes I worry that my nostalgia muscle is so much stronger than my anticipation muscle. I'm a reminiscer. A rememberer. A protector of dear snippets. A worrier. A dissatisfied optimist prone to wallowing contentedly in that which is done.
When I was young these types of songs helped me think about the future. It's that piano baseline, you know - it moves the brain to create. Now when I hear them, my mind hands me scenes from my past. What does that mean? Sometimes I worry that my nostalgia muscle is so much stronger than my anticipation muscle. I'm a reminiscer. A rememberer. A protector of dear snippets. A worrier. A dissatisfied optimist prone to wallowing contentedly in that which is done.
9.28.2011
Writing this post has made me sick of my own face.
Hey, commenters on my previous post: I fucking love you guys. The most. Forever, and ever, Amen.
It has been brought to my attention (via you steel-trap bitches on Twitter) that I never showed you my new hair color. And since I'm apparently on borrowed time before it disappears completely, I owe you pics! So I snapped this one on my way out the door this morning:
Why yes, I did don pinkish earrings and stood right in front of our orangey fence for full clash-a-bility! I would re-take, but I'm afraid I will get into perfectionist-land if I start playing Glamourshots for this post. You get what you get, and you don't get upset, even if your eyes bleed.
...by the way, have you ever let a friend look at your camera right after a embarking on a long session of "time for a new profile picture" photoshoot? And then they're flipping through, la-di-la, until they come to 250 straight pics of your face, and you have to be all, "I'm not obsessed with myself, I swear! It's for LinkedIn! I just want to present myself in my best possible light?"
No, this hasn't happened to you? Oh. Me neither! HAHA! Moving on.
The details:
What I said to Stephen the Stylist:"I want it red, but not like, crazy, you know? Normal red. Like it could have grown out of my head. A red known to nature. Not blonde-with-a-little-strawberry, not brown-with-a-little auburn. Red. Reddish? I don't know. I'm scared."
Stephen the Stylist's Interpretation: "So, you don't want to look like an angry teenager sticking it to her parents. And you don't want it to look like a mistake. Irish lassie. Confident copper."
How it went down: 5+ hours at the salon. Single-process, wash, cut, blow-dry, (very scary at this point, omigod), a second single-process, toner, wash, blow-dry. $150 out the door.
Number of hours I spent crying afterward: Roughly 12. Tips for you who want to dye your hair: you might think it's a great idea to to it over that weekend when your spouse and all your friends happen to be out of town, because you'll be bored, right? Do NOT do this. Without any friends to tell you it looks good, you will stare in the mirror for two days, drink way too much wine, and cry.
Eyebrow situation: My brows were a dirty blonde - much like the actual, unhighlighted color of my hair - and didn't look quite right with the red. So I bough an at-home facial bleaching kit and bleached them up just a tad (left the product on my brows for about 4 minutes). The resulting color was a strawberry blond that looks fine untouched - for work and nighttime I lightly brush them with cream taupe eyeshadow for definition/a hint of darkness
The reaction: Mostly positive. Although I will tell you, I get a real kick out of the people who tell me point-blank that they don't like it. Like my mom! And my boss! It's refreshing, really! Craig came home from LA and was afraid to kiss me. He said it felt like he was kissing a stranger, and I said "Enjoy it while it lasts, my friend." He likes the color, and I think he wishes that I would stop asking if it looks red (I can't help it. Sometimes in certain light I SWEAR it's brown.)
Percentage of my closet that now clashes with my hair: 90% Who let me buy so many pink and orange colored tops?
The upkeep: Brutal. Blond roots growing into red hair = a new giant part that looks like you are, in fact, going bald. Red fades notoriously fast, so after 3 weeks the color is totally different. The best way I've found to combat this is to use Aveda's Madder Root color-depositing shampoo and conditioner (that wrecks our white shower and white towels and oh yeah, costs a million dollars) and Pureology Colourmax leave-in conditioner with UV protection. YOU GUYS. NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS SPF FOR YOUR HAIR. I would have been using it years ago, had I known! I'm considering just moving in with Stephen. It would work perfectly - he could do my hair every 2 weeks and will happily answer my "Is my hair red?" question 3 times a day with "oh hell yes, gorgeous, it's perfect!" Despite a great deal of practice I cannot for the life of me get Craig to say that with the right inflection.
It has been brought to my attention (via you steel-trap bitches on Twitter) that I never showed you my new hair color. And since I'm apparently on borrowed time before it disappears completely, I owe you pics! So I snapped this one on my way out the door this morning:
Why yes, I did don pinkish earrings and stood right in front of our orangey fence for full clash-a-bility! I would re-take, but I'm afraid I will get into perfectionist-land if I start playing Glamourshots for this post. You get what you get, and you don't get upset, even if your eyes bleed.
...by the way, have you ever let a friend look at your camera right after a embarking on a long session of "time for a new profile picture" photoshoot? And then they're flipping through, la-di-la, until they come to 250 straight pics of your face, and you have to be all, "I'm not obsessed with myself, I swear! It's for LinkedIn! I just want to present myself in my best possible light?"
No, this hasn't happened to you? Oh. Me neither! HAHA! Moving on.
The details:
What I said to Stephen the Stylist:"I want it red, but not like, crazy, you know? Normal red. Like it could have grown out of my head. A red known to nature. Not blonde-with-a-little-strawberry, not brown-with-a-little auburn. Red. Reddish? I don't know. I'm scared."
Stephen the Stylist's Interpretation: "So, you don't want to look like an angry teenager sticking it to her parents. And you don't want it to look like a mistake. Irish lassie. Confident copper."
How it went down: 5+ hours at the salon. Single-process, wash, cut, blow-dry, (very scary at this point, omigod), a second single-process, toner, wash, blow-dry. $150 out the door.
Number of hours I spent crying afterward: Roughly 12. Tips for you who want to dye your hair: you might think it's a great idea to to it over that weekend when your spouse and all your friends happen to be out of town, because you'll be bored, right? Do NOT do this. Without any friends to tell you it looks good, you will stare in the mirror for two days, drink way too much wine, and cry.
Eyebrow situation: My brows were a dirty blonde - much like the actual, unhighlighted color of my hair - and didn't look quite right with the red. So I bough an at-home facial bleaching kit and bleached them up just a tad (left the product on my brows for about 4 minutes). The resulting color was a strawberry blond that looks fine untouched - for work and nighttime I lightly brush them with cream taupe eyeshadow for definition/a hint of darkness
The reaction: Mostly positive. Although I will tell you, I get a real kick out of the people who tell me point-blank that they don't like it. Like my mom! And my boss! It's refreshing, really! Craig came home from LA and was afraid to kiss me. He said it felt like he was kissing a stranger, and I said "Enjoy it while it lasts, my friend." He likes the color, and I think he wishes that I would stop asking if it looks red (I can't help it. Sometimes in certain light I SWEAR it's brown.)
Percentage of my closet that now clashes with my hair: 90% Who let me buy so many pink and orange colored tops?
The upkeep: Brutal. Blond roots growing into red hair = a new giant part that looks like you are, in fact, going bald. Red fades notoriously fast, so after 3 weeks the color is totally different. The best way I've found to combat this is to use Aveda's Madder Root color-depositing shampoo and conditioner (that wrecks our white shower and white towels and oh yeah, costs a million dollars) and Pureology Colourmax leave-in conditioner with UV protection. YOU GUYS. NO ONE TOLD ME THERE WAS SPF FOR YOUR HAIR. I would have been using it years ago, had I known! I'm considering just moving in with Stephen. It would work perfectly - he could do my hair every 2 weeks and will happily answer my "Is my hair red?" question 3 times a day with "oh hell yes, gorgeous, it's perfect!" Despite a great deal of practice I cannot for the life of me get Craig to say that with the right inflection.
9.26.2011
And now, a word about my mental state.
So remember a while ago? Why yes, of course you do, dears. But more specifically, remember how crazy and insane I was back then? Here is where I would provide linked evidence of some of the more depressing and woeful posts that I wrote in the past year, but I deleted them (see previous post for explanation). They included a lot of sighing, and asking of advice, and dumb story-telling because I wasn't doing anything in my life to write about.
Now, before you tsk-tsk me and say, "Honey, you were never insane, that's just life! A little sensitivity and female response to stress! If you want insane, let me tell you about the time I packed all my belongings in trash bags and walked to California, stopping only to shave my head and go on a hunger strike on the corner of Michigan and Ontario when I hit Chicago..." I have to step in and tell you how bad it was, how terrifyingly upset I was earlier this year, all the time. I wrote a lot of manic posts around then and I wrote a lot of sad posts around then and mostly it was all drivel because I was constantly typing through tears. You know, when I wasn't screaming and throwing things around my house. I kid you not.
From, oh...July 2010 until May 2011? I think I cried every single day. About something. Sometimes I would cry over things that made sense, like failing to emotionally support my mother or my best friend through their breakups, but sometimes I would enter a violent sob-fest over the color of the pillows on our couch and how much I hated them and WHY DID I BUY THEM and THIS FUCKING HOUSE and my life is SO HARD AND GETTING HARDER FOREVER. I cried at work, sometimes in front of my co-workers, over stress that I couldn't articulate but was somehow preventing me from getting projects done. I cried when Craig came home from work, sometimes because I had missed him, sometimes because I was angry that he had things to do that night that didn't involve soothing his mean wife's mystery unhappiness.
(and oh yes, you're right - we did indeed get married in the middle of this stretch of acute "blah." the wedding, and the majority of the honeymoon were stars in the night. they were perfect. the crazy took a backseat to the indescribable joy my life contained that week. i had actually convinced myself that it was all wedding stress-related, until the blahs picked up again right after we got back to the states - with the most vengeance, since this is when my mom got dumped and called me every day asking me to come back to her in chicago)
I raged over the tiniest things. I remember a particularly bad day when we had friends coming in from out of town and they called to say they were running a half-hour early and would be at our house sooner then I'd thought, and I felt unprepared and had a meltdown. I was so angry I felt like I couldn't move. I said horrible things. It was such a weird feeling - crying over something that at that moment, I knew was not cry-overable. But I couldn't prevent it - there was a connection missing, from my intelligent mind that knew what was normal behavior, and the emotional mind that needed to decompress. I had to get in my car and leave the house because the look on Craig's face made me afraid - his understanding was reaching its limit. Friends who read this blog are probably confused, reading this, because I did my best to keep most of this unhappiness at home. This meant that often I stayed at home, too. I only raged around Craig, only cried on the phone with my sister. I considered seeing a therapist, looked into my insurance coverage to find out about it. I grew intensely jealous of my friends (real and internet) who were helped by mood-altering drugs.
The idea of getting help brought on a sense of power, and I started to be able to think forward, to make a plan: Before spending the dough and time with a shrink,I'd start with the obvious and work from there. My moods seemed like a hormonal issue, and - oh hey! - by this point I'd been on hormone therapy (i.e. birth control pills) for going on 9 years. Straight. Never a break. So Craig and I talked about it, and decided that before I started seeing a therapist,and before he'd trade me in for a wife with all of her marbles, I would stop the birth control pills. And oh my god.
This post is not a bash against birth control pills. I feel it's undeniable that The Pill has been a historically, unbelievably positive invention. I LOVED being on birth control - for the first 8 years. They let me have the life I wanted. But I honestly think now that there is a limit to how many years of trickery one's body can handle. I can't explain to you, how just 7 days off of that pill, I felt like I had removed some sad-tinted contacts from my eyes. Everything seemed lighter, brighter, clean. Frustrating and upsetting things still happened in my life, but instead allowing them to define every day as a bad day, I could understand how they were just bad moments in a good day. Duh! I had the best summer I can remember. I've wanted to do things, and see people, and make plans in a way I haven't in quite a while.
But of course, as with all things, there are consequences to change. Craig and I are living in condom hell right now. Yeah, sorry to those who don't mind them (or those who just don't want to hear this - hi family!) but it we are beyond annoyed by this situation - but we're working on it. My skin, which has been sickeningly clear and beautiful for a decade, is rebelling a bit with some curious pimplage. And oh, just this week I've started to notice that my hair is falling out. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I just spent good money making it a fun new color and now I can only admire it on my bathroom floor. I feel great otherwise, just noticing a lot of hair in the drain and on my brush, so I did a little online diagnosis (always the best idea, of course) and lo and behold: there it is - Women who are predisposed to hormonal-related hair loss, or who are hypersensitive to the hormonal changes taking place in their bodies, can have hair loss to varying degrees while on the Pill or, more commonly, several weeks or months after stopping the Pill. Well, shit.*
So yeah. Right now I'm weighing being a thick-haired, clear skinned sex-loving homicidal maniac vs. an acne-riddled, bald but totally functional and happy human who occasionally has to go for a 2-am condom run to Walgreens. These are my choices. These are my choices? Good Lord.
Which would you pick? Which would you want your friend, or your spouse to pick?
*and yes, if this continues I will go to an actual doctor and have my thyroid checked, among other things. don't worry.
Now, before you tsk-tsk me and say, "Honey, you were never insane, that's just life! A little sensitivity and female response to stress! If you want insane, let me tell you about the time I packed all my belongings in trash bags and walked to California, stopping only to shave my head and go on a hunger strike on the corner of Michigan and Ontario when I hit Chicago..." I have to step in and tell you how bad it was, how terrifyingly upset I was earlier this year, all the time. I wrote a lot of manic posts around then and I wrote a lot of sad posts around then and mostly it was all drivel because I was constantly typing through tears. You know, when I wasn't screaming and throwing things around my house. I kid you not.
From, oh...July 2010 until May 2011? I think I cried every single day. About something. Sometimes I would cry over things that made sense, like failing to emotionally support my mother or my best friend through their breakups, but sometimes I would enter a violent sob-fest over the color of the pillows on our couch and how much I hated them and WHY DID I BUY THEM and THIS FUCKING HOUSE and my life is SO HARD AND GETTING HARDER FOREVER. I cried at work, sometimes in front of my co-workers, over stress that I couldn't articulate but was somehow preventing me from getting projects done. I cried when Craig came home from work, sometimes because I had missed him, sometimes because I was angry that he had things to do that night that didn't involve soothing his mean wife's mystery unhappiness.
(and oh yes, you're right - we did indeed get married in the middle of this stretch of acute "blah." the wedding, and the majority of the honeymoon were stars in the night. they were perfect. the crazy took a backseat to the indescribable joy my life contained that week. i had actually convinced myself that it was all wedding stress-related, until the blahs picked up again right after we got back to the states - with the most vengeance, since this is when my mom got dumped and called me every day asking me to come back to her in chicago)
I raged over the tiniest things. I remember a particularly bad day when we had friends coming in from out of town and they called to say they were running a half-hour early and would be at our house sooner then I'd thought, and I felt unprepared and had a meltdown. I was so angry I felt like I couldn't move. I said horrible things. It was such a weird feeling - crying over something that at that moment, I knew was not cry-overable. But I couldn't prevent it - there was a connection missing, from my intelligent mind that knew what was normal behavior, and the emotional mind that needed to decompress. I had to get in my car and leave the house because the look on Craig's face made me afraid - his understanding was reaching its limit. Friends who read this blog are probably confused, reading this, because I did my best to keep most of this unhappiness at home. This meant that often I stayed at home, too. I only raged around Craig, only cried on the phone with my sister. I considered seeing a therapist, looked into my insurance coverage to find out about it. I grew intensely jealous of my friends (real and internet) who were helped by mood-altering drugs.
The idea of getting help brought on a sense of power, and I started to be able to think forward, to make a plan: Before spending the dough and time with a shrink,I'd start with the obvious and work from there. My moods seemed like a hormonal issue, and - oh hey! - by this point I'd been on hormone therapy (i.e. birth control pills) for going on 9 years. Straight. Never a break. So Craig and I talked about it, and decided that before I started seeing a therapist,and before he'd trade me in for a wife with all of her marbles, I would stop the birth control pills. And oh my god.
This post is not a bash against birth control pills. I feel it's undeniable that The Pill has been a historically, unbelievably positive invention. I LOVED being on birth control - for the first 8 years. They let me have the life I wanted. But I honestly think now that there is a limit to how many years of trickery one's body can handle. I can't explain to you, how just 7 days off of that pill, I felt like I had removed some sad-tinted contacts from my eyes. Everything seemed lighter, brighter, clean. Frustrating and upsetting things still happened in my life, but instead allowing them to define every day as a bad day, I could understand how they were just bad moments in a good day. Duh! I had the best summer I can remember. I've wanted to do things, and see people, and make plans in a way I haven't in quite a while.
But of course, as with all things, there are consequences to change. Craig and I are living in condom hell right now. Yeah, sorry to those who don't mind them (or those who just don't want to hear this - hi family!) but it we are beyond annoyed by this situation - but we're working on it. My skin, which has been sickeningly clear and beautiful for a decade, is rebelling a bit with some curious pimplage. And oh, just this week I've started to notice that my hair is falling out. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I just spent good money making it a fun new color and now I can only admire it on my bathroom floor. I feel great otherwise, just noticing a lot of hair in the drain and on my brush, so I did a little online diagnosis (always the best idea, of course) and lo and behold: there it is - Women who are predisposed to hormonal-related hair loss, or who are hypersensitive to the hormonal changes taking place in their bodies, can have hair loss to varying degrees while on the Pill or, more commonly, several weeks or months after stopping the Pill. Well, shit.*
So yeah. Right now I'm weighing being a thick-haired, clear skinned sex-loving homicidal maniac vs. an acne-riddled, bald but totally functional and happy human who occasionally has to go for a 2-am condom run to Walgreens. These are my choices. These are my choices? Good Lord.
Which would you pick? Which would you want your friend, or your spouse to pick?
*and yes, if this continues I will go to an actual doctor and have my thyroid checked, among other things. don't worry.
9.23.2011
So yeah, about that...
It appears as though apologies are in order. Sowwy.
(ew. why did I just say it like that?)
For those of you late to the party, I had a little creative writing prompt up on my blog yesterday, asking friends and foes alike to describe a very good moment in their day in explicit detail. Since many of us here are writers (either formally or informally) and all of us are readers, I thought it would be kind of fun/terrifying to write for feeling instead of for update, and to share it and support one another's craft.
But then for the first 4 hours when no one trampled over each other to get to my comments to say "This is the best idea ever I love love love it, I'm writing it RIGHT NOW, I'll be back! (PS You're the best blogger ever!)" I grew tingly with fear at my little ditty moment hanging out there all alone and I deleted it and put up a lame post about expensive baby toys. Meanwhile, a handful of very sweet people were actually looking forward to this exercise, and working on it, and apparently, had other things to be doing in the middle of the workday and were going to get back to it later. What?
So yeah, sorry. I will be revisiting this prompt, promise.
But that leads me to a little explanation about how I blog, and why things like yesterday tend to happen over here at Fancy Notion.
I am a severely, cripplingly private person. I keep 95% of my thoughts in my head, always. I don't like to reveal them to anyone, not my best friends, not my husband, not my co-workers or strangers on the bus. It's not that they are bad thoughts (well, some of them are. let's be real some of them are really, fucking wacko - just like yours) just that they are mine, fresh and untouched and clear and original, and I like to treasure them without others' opinions transforming those thoughts. I am a very...porous... individual. I absorb other people's thoughts and comments to the point of insanity. Once I hear someone else's opinion on a song, on a book, on fashion or the taste of cilantro, I can't not remember it and take it into consideration. This makes me very sensitive, and obviously, very confused much of the time.
So then, why in god's name do I blog? And publicly, without anonymity, at that?
The fuck if I know, really. I came here during the wedding planning to find people to keep me sane, and then stuck around because I made friends and I didn't want to lose them, and then I learned how much I loved writing - producing something, seeing it before my eyes, sharing the craft. I didn't know about anonymity when I started, so it became impossible to change that halfway.
Everyone has a different system to blogging, and personally I follow the "scream and then run away" method. When I write a post, I write it all at once in about 10 minutes - bam, diarrhea of the fingers - and then slap it up there on the internet without even reading it through once -as evidenced by my frequent typos. I'm not an idiot, I just don't proofread, because if I proofread I'd give the fear time to kick in and I would end up NEVER hitting post. Most of the time this works for me. Some of the time I make bad choices, or embarrassing ones, or boring ones, and I've learned to live with that.
So anyway. Just wanted to let everyone know (mostly the non-bloggers because I think the other bloggers know this already) that keeping up this page is hard for me. It requires a lot of thought and more guts than I think I sometimes have, and a skin that doesn't tear like paper, as mine tends to do from now and then. And total, complete, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pantsness is the only way I've found to handle it. And when one is flying by the seat of one's pants, one will occasionally have a panic attack and run around screaming, tearing down all of the blinds and knocking over chairs and pull out the couch cushion stuffing (that's my description of yesterday.) in craziness.
I want to know - if you are a blogger, what system do you follow to create posts? Do you agonize, or hit-and-run?
(ew. why did I just say it like that?)
For those of you late to the party, I had a little creative writing prompt up on my blog yesterday, asking friends and foes alike to describe a very good moment in their day in explicit detail. Since many of us here are writers (either formally or informally) and all of us are readers, I thought it would be kind of fun/terrifying to write for feeling instead of for update, and to share it and support one another's craft.
But then for the first 4 hours when no one trampled over each other to get to my comments to say "This is the best idea ever I love love love it, I'm writing it RIGHT NOW, I'll be back! (PS You're the best blogger ever!)" I grew tingly with fear at my little ditty moment hanging out there all alone and I deleted it and put up a lame post about expensive baby toys. Meanwhile, a handful of very sweet people were actually looking forward to this exercise, and working on it, and apparently, had other things to be doing in the middle of the workday and were going to get back to it later. What?
So yeah, sorry. I will be revisiting this prompt, promise.
But that leads me to a little explanation about how I blog, and why things like yesterday tend to happen over here at Fancy Notion.
I am a severely, cripplingly private person. I keep 95% of my thoughts in my head, always. I don't like to reveal them to anyone, not my best friends, not my husband, not my co-workers or strangers on the bus. It's not that they are bad thoughts (well, some of them are. let's be real some of them are really, fucking wacko - just like yours) just that they are mine, fresh and untouched and clear and original, and I like to treasure them without others' opinions transforming those thoughts. I am a very...porous... individual. I absorb other people's thoughts and comments to the point of insanity. Once I hear someone else's opinion on a song, on a book, on fashion or the taste of cilantro, I can't not remember it and take it into consideration. This makes me very sensitive, and obviously, very confused much of the time.
So then, why in god's name do I blog? And publicly, without anonymity, at that?
The fuck if I know, really. I came here during the wedding planning to find people to keep me sane, and then stuck around because I made friends and I didn't want to lose them, and then I learned how much I loved writing - producing something, seeing it before my eyes, sharing the craft. I didn't know about anonymity when I started, so it became impossible to change that halfway.
Everyone has a different system to blogging, and personally I follow the "scream and then run away" method. When I write a post, I write it all at once in about 10 minutes - bam, diarrhea of the fingers - and then slap it up there on the internet without even reading it through once -as evidenced by my frequent typos. I'm not an idiot, I just don't proofread, because if I proofread I'd give the fear time to kick in and I would end up NEVER hitting post. Most of the time this works for me. Some of the time I make bad choices, or embarrassing ones, or boring ones, and I've learned to live with that.
So anyway. Just wanted to let everyone know (mostly the non-bloggers because I think the other bloggers know this already) that keeping up this page is hard for me. It requires a lot of thought and more guts than I think I sometimes have, and a skin that doesn't tear like paper, as mine tends to do from now and then. And total, complete, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pantsness is the only way I've found to handle it. And when one is flying by the seat of one's pants, one will occasionally have a panic attack and run around screaming, tearing down all of the blinds and knocking over chairs and pull out the couch cushion stuffing (that's my description of yesterday.) in craziness.
I want to know - if you are a blogger, what system do you follow to create posts? Do you agonize, or hit-and-run?
9.21.2011
FINE.
It has come to my attention that no one wants to play "Creative Writing Class" with me.
This reminds me of when I was eight and draged my six-year-old neighbor into my basement every day in the summer to make her play "school" - during which I would instruct her to copy penmanship from a book about different breeds of horses, while I watched. What can I say, I've always been a fearless leader that way.
So instead, let me share with you the AMAZING THING I found last night (thanks to Liz) during a Twitter conversation about the love/hate relationship I have with Restoration Hardware.
Please note that this was found on RH's "Baby and Child" site, under "toys."
This reminds me of when I was eight and draged my six-year-old neighbor into my basement every day in the summer to make her play "school" - during which I would instruct her to copy penmanship from a book about different breeds of horses, while I watched. What can I say, I've always been a fearless leader that way.
So instead, let me share with you the AMAZING THING I found last night (thanks to Liz) during a Twitter conversation about the love/hate relationship I have with Restoration Hardware.
Please note that this was found on RH's "Baby and Child" site, under "toys."
Vintage Schoolhouse Play Table, with chairs and easel
How. Amazing. Not only did I need this when I was a grouchy 8-year old schoolma'rm (?), I need it now. Just because it's fucking awesome. (Naughty schoolboy roleplay, Craig?)
And, the whole set can be yours for the low, low price of $1,050 plus tax. You're welcome.
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