Self: This is Not Really a Post.

Image Credit: Stock Photo by Karen Humpage

In December of 2010, Faith in Ambiguity was born. I invested no time in site design or graphics and haven't since. I just set up a Blogger account one afternoon and wrote a silly post about winter squash. I posted erratically, often going months between posts, and put everything on Facebook. Family and some of my friends were my only audience, but they seemed to like my writing and soon a few people would come up to me in the supermarket or at church to tell me that they enjoyed my blog. The next fall, I had put up only 30 posts or so since I'd begun, but I was ready to have people really read me.

I geared up to run a marathon. I participated in Reverb Broads. I signed up for NaBloPoMo. I joined GBE2. I learned a bunch of how-tos about blogging and tried to carry them out, one by one. I participated in Leap Blog Day and accidentally met a kindred spirit and writer with whom I have a vibrant email friendship. I went to the Erma Bombeck Writer's Workshop. I was ready to play big, to get my blog noticed. I joined Linked In. I created an editorial calendar. I revamped my blogroll. I got up to spending twenty hours a week on my blogging activities. I started to see some results, as the occasional post got picked up on message boards and page views spiked.

And then the weather got warm and people, apparently, stopped reading blogs. Someone accused me of racism in the comments on an old blog post. I posted an interesting question on a message board and nobody understood it. Lately I sometimes find myself having spent three hours researching and writing a post and getting 20 page views. BlogHer fixed "reads" counter so that it reflected actual reads, proving that it is really not worth my cross-posting to BlogHer. My stats graph lowered its standards. And then lowered them again.

A couple of readers have told me that they hope that someday I will publish something. Nellie of Buttons are Not Currency even said "I always look forward to your posts, but I also find myself a little disappointed when I see that you have something new for me to read. It only means you are not working on something that would certainly get you published."

So, I am changing priorities a bit around here. I love Faith in Ambiguity. I love my community. I love the Ask Team Ambiguity posts and I still hope they, and things like them, catch on like wildfire. I look forward every week to posting for GBE2. There is much that I have to say that lends itself well to blogging. But I am, perhaps, too obsessed with some sort of fictional "making it" in the blogging world, the bar for which will simply get higher and higher with time and success. There is a sensation of immediacy to blogging, with its comments, page views, and retweets. But this can also be a pitfall when you feel compelled to put something up, and when the constant production of blog content interferes with writing anything else.

So, I have this book that wants writing. It is a cross between a book of memoir pieces and a book of personal essays. The essays and memoirs are intended to be like conjoined twins. And I have two hours of writing time scheduled each morning. It takes a surprising kind of discipline to make myself give up some of the instant feedback of blogging, to use Word rather than Blogger, to see through a much longer project. And without Faith in Ambiguity, I wouldn't have the body of work and the audience feedback to see that I should even bother.

I started by trying to respond to a prompt about "Self." And, somehow, weirdly this fits, although it's not at all what Beth had in mind, I'm sure. It's not my best writing. It's full of clichés and something that smacks vaguely of self-pity. It sounds like the Academy Award acceptance speech given by Moaning Myrtle, who didn't even win. And yet, this is where I find myself. And because you're all apparently at the beach, I think it's probably OK.

I see myself along some sort graphic continuum of evolution as a writer, beginning with a knuckle dragging scribbler of histrionic adolescent poetry who regards the deletion of a single word as an insult to her character, progressing to the producer of prose choked with adjectives, unable to breathe. At some point, I became a blogger–one part used car salesman, one part Jerry Springer guest, one part writer. Now, perhaps I will reach the next stage of evolution: person who spends copious hours producing content that, as of yet, nobody reads. This will be followed by more used car salesmanship as I whore my book around town. And yet it feels like a departure. Next, when I am actually published and reviewed, I will grow enormous feathered wings and be shot down by the army.

Somehow this has turned into the take-off on a scene from X-Men. We will see if anyone notices. Or sends a beach ball bouncing into my comments section in reply.

Broken Bits of Mother

Photo Credit: Flickr by Cea.

Since I had my first child almost fifteen years ago, at the age of twenty-two, I have not had a career. I have conceived of myself, when the notion of career is referenced, primarily as a mother. Any economic activity I have been involved in along the way, any volunteer activities, were adjuncts to that primary, central role. What I wanted to be was a mother–other things as well, certainly—but a mother was my first obligation, the large middle bubble on my mind map from which all other notions sprung. 

I have three sons, the youngest of which is now seven. And a year and a half ago, I started writing again, a longtime practice that had been mostly abandoned over the years of cloth diapers, of parent-teacher conferences and shopping trips. My husband was more than supportive of this. He had been telling me to. Mike believes in my writing more than I do, despite my sitting at the computer long past when it is time to start dinner and other irritating things. I wrote. I threw a little blog up onto the internet, patched together with craft glue and scissors on a Blogspot page, and some friends and relatives read it. Then some strangers read it. Within the last six months, I became interested in page views, in guest posts, in putting up quality content. My blog stopped being something I did merely to amuse myself. 

And somewhere in this process, I was changed. Sitting at my computer at the end of a day that has consisted of writing, planning my writing and thinking about writing, I realized I had started to conceive of myself as a writer first and a mother second. How hard to type those words–the words that seem to betray those whom I love most. 

But, my story goes like this: All my young life I knew I would go to college, get a degree and be brilliant. In difficulty or victory, I counted on it, with the arrogance of the only child. I knew I would go out into the world and do something wonderful. I took my own lazy sweet time, making college span five years and getting no further than my general ed., but, all the while, I was being told by professors that I was brilliant and full of potential. So my present was this mediocre life of coffee shops and cigarettes and AA meetings, but my future was a promise of greatness. 

And then I got pregnant.

It all turned on a dime. I never got my degree. I ended up in an unstable marriage, waiting for my electricity to be turned off. I threw my intellectual focus into reading reams of books on the subjects of child development and education. I taught pre-school with my child in tow. Periodically, I would form a plan to do something that looked like a career identity. I lead an important environmental committee and thought that might turn into a paying job as a project manager. I was trained as a volunteer in a transformative education and I thought I might be able to lead a course, if I first went through years of training about as rigorous as a Shao-Lin monk's. I wrote a column for a newspaper. 

But everything I did was always just potentiality. When I went back to school, I got pregnant again. When I was ready to take the next step with something, I became distracted and disorganized and trashed it. So, I ended up just being Mama. Which was fine.

But here I am writing and, at some point, it dawns on me: it's no longer a hobby. It's my job. And it is somehow my real job, more than the one that pays me, although I take that one very seriously. So I am now working over forty hours a week, between both jobs, and doing this with a chronic illness. I still have all the unpaid jobs I had before, based on my being the one who worked part-time: make dinner, shop, plan trips, plan birthdays, buy teacher gifts, field all logistics. I am dropping the ball left and right. I lack motivation. And I'm furious. Why the frack, I think, do I have to do everything? 

You have to understand that I make $10k at my regular, part-time job and all this writing, however large in my mind, doesn't generate a cent. Comments and page views are not redeemable at the grocery store. I am telling myself that I never will be able to succeed as a writer if I don't treat it as a real job, but I half wonder if I am just being self-indulgent. Should I instead look for a way to make cash writing copy? Should I stop posting free content on my blog day after day and do something respectable?

And inside, all this emotion is boiling over and screaming: It is my turn now! I have waited. I have diapered. I have attended soccer practice. I have meal planned. And I have been the person who keeps it all going for everyone. When do I get to do what gives me joy? When do I get to throw my full weight behind a dream and see–just see–if I can damn well do it? But I know that this a luxury most people never have. My own husband doesn't have it. Were he to tell me tomorrow that he wants to quit his job and go to seminary, which he might just love, could I support that? I squirm to imagine. So, I am troubled by the fact that my family might need me to keep doing what I do: working, making lunches, updating calendars, packing bags for a number of more years before I really have the right to say that I want to play writer and they can pack their own damn lunch.

The biggest sticking point for me is the idea of settling for a messy house, a messy life. The thought of it hearkens back to a time when I felt an enormous lack of control over my life, a time when I felt as tossed and stained as the laundry scattered on my floor. When I got divorced and then later had my third child, somehow I re-made myself to be organized. I never, ever was before. When I did this, I felt I had mastered something that had forever kept me under its thumb. And the thought of letting go of this crutch of organized officiousness feels like picking up a bottle. It feels like falling off a cliff. 

Perfectionism. It is always hard to know where the devastating urge to make the world flawless is what has me, and when, conversely, I am just being honest about what I need to avoid going crazy. Maybe those two are really the same. Looking at this also requires asking myself again what the perfect mother even is. Is it one who has made your lunch, folded your clothes, attended your soccer practice, hosted your play date and corrected your homework with you, or is the woman who you watched bound and determined to invest in her dreams and yours, to teach you that you could do it yourself? The truth is probably somewhere in between. We all need a sandwich in our lunch boxes. We all need someone to help us fix the mess we made of our book report. And we all need someone to believe that we are bigger than we think we can be, and to show us that a life can be lived this way.

My third child took the last little bit of mother in me that I had. I have no extra mother left. What is there is sort of stretched out like taffy. Sweet but brittle when stale. Each incremental stage of growth that this child makes is accompanied by an urge to push. I want my body back, my bed back, my brain back. So everything happens by committee. This Wednesday that my son is seven my mother has him because it is a Wednesday, which is her day with him. I did not insist that I have him because it is his birthday. I love him, but everyone is welcome to have a scoop. I've got lots, you know.

I suppose it is always dangerous to be defined by another person, even if that person is the product of one's own DNA, one's most honest love, one's heart walking. I was so often told, at twenty-one, that I was too young and stupid to have a kid, that I became very stubborn in my definition of myself. I was told I wouldn't be able to deal with natural childbirth and so I endured it even though my labor lasted a week. I was told I wouldn't have enough milk, and so I called La Leche League, pumped, prayed, and prevailed even though my baby was a premie and kept falling asleep at the breast. I nursed until my sons were old enough to drive me crazy. I'm stubborn, and I ended up being a career mommy because I wanted to say screw you to the perceived chorus line of feminist critics that were letting me know that I had ruined my life. All anyone has to do to get me to do anything is to tell me not to. The mother I have been is an answer for my accidents. She is the filling of a need, the proving of a point, the solution to a quandary. And she is a reliable source of love. I trust this woman implicitly. She knows what she is about. So, I find it hard, very hard to let go of this mother that I was. 

But I feel pulled toward the future, pressed out of the earth and away from the comfort of warm soil into heat and hail and wind. I feel compelled to make a different self, to shift just so to allow the writer to occupy her place next to the mother. I feel curious how the two will knit together, what will be left behind and what brought along. Every time I have been here, pressed out of the earth by the force of a dream, coughed up into my future by the past, I have grown stronger.This faith in who I might be made me a mother in the beginning. So, perhaps it can make me now a mother to my own ambitions.

But if I am being made anew, first I am being broken. I lie in broken bits of mother on the ground. Broken bits of wife. I am trying to see if the pieces can be made to resemble a writer. I am trying to see if, when whole, the reflection in those pieces, cracked and warped though they may be, is my own.

Note: The image used in this post is Creative Commons Licensed and can be used or modified if attributed.

Dear Dr. Blogheimer,

Today's post is a parody as assigned by the amazing, talented Elizabeth Grace of Word Nerd Speaks for the GBE2 Blogging Group.

Dear Dr. Blogheimer,

I am writing to share with you that I have been trying to follow your helpful advice in promoting my blog. Thank you very much for the numerous articles and seminars that you have offered on this topic. I especially enjoyed the $2,000 weekend retreat on How to Generate Income Blogging. Since attending, I have attempted to do everything just as you described, but have met a few roadblocks. I wonder if you'd answer a few clarifying questions for a loyal fan.

1. What sorts of things should I tweet to my followers? It is been my understanding that a solid stream of content is best, so I have tried to tweet every hour or so with details of what I am eating for lunch and dinner and links to the same "evergreen" post I wrote two years ago on how to tell if your cat has diarrhea. This does not seem to have generated as much response as I was hoping. In fact, I seem to have lost some of the followers I had before. Which brings up another question. Most of the new followers I have seem to be very young women with surprisingly few clothes and a lot of wet cats. Perhaps they are pet enthusiasts living in tropical climes? Often, to be helpful, these same send direct messages to me with links, which I appreciate. However, when I open these, I often find later that a virus has been installed on my computer. I cannot explain this pattern. Can you advise?


2. I am using Facebook to promote my blog, but I am having trouble keeping my family from ruining the fan page experience. My sister keeps writing things on my Facebook wall such as "Nice post, you big fat loser!" I wonder: is this a typical problem? Also, my mother has begun reading all of my posts and then using comments on Facebook to reference embarrassing things I did as a child. (i.e. "This piece you wrote on goldfish euthanasia reminds me strongly of the fact that, when you were two, you would wet the bed every night and then undress and sleepwalk naked through the house." I am concerned that this kind of thing will undermine the establishment my brand. Any thoughts?


3. I have been using Pinterest avidly, as you suggested. I pin images of cat diarrhea with quotes from my post on that subject and a link back to my blog. So far, no dice. What am I doing wrong?


4. I see that I now have a Klout score of 21 and am considered influential on the topics of diarrhea, cats, bed-wetting and sibling rivalry. But how can I leverage this expertise to get paid speaking engagements?


5. I am having a hard time finding guest blogging platforms interested in publishing my work. I have contacted all of the top-notch ones, such as The Bloggess and Dooce, but they don't return my emails. I have an excellent piece on an experience I had while clipping my dog's nails, which I am shopping around, but I can't seem to break into the market. How do you recommend I keep the faith through this trying time?


6. You have spoken frequently about the importance of using links in my work and referencing the work of other bloggers, public figures and journalists. I have attempted to link daily to certain people, in order to capture their attention. One of these is Dan Quayle, whom I find a way to work into posts as often as I can. My thinking is that he is not so followed in the media right now that this would be beneath his notice, and yet he remains a man of some importance. I would love your advice on how to up my game here. Here are some examples of my work so far:

"And this is why it is hugely important to check every inch of your dog for scabies. Just as Dan Quayle checked every inch of his desk every day of his vice-presidency for matters of importance. Thoroughness is crucial."

" In summary, my cat and I thoroughly enjoyed watching The [2011] Muppets. The only improvement I could imagine to this work of genius would have been a cameo by Dan Quayle. Or if I had been able to go to see the movie with Dan Quayle. Either of those." 

7. I think I may have accidentally joined a pornography message board. I thought it was a group for bloggers posting on cat bathing. My mistake. I guess I should be more careful in future.

In conclusion, although right now, my page views are in free-fall and my husband is filing for divorce and custody of our nine cats, due to what he is calling my "obsession" with the unpaid work of blogging, I continue to feel hopeful. Given everything you taught me and the good money I spent on your excellent seminars, I think things can't help but turn around soon.

Yours sincerely,

Katrina Katermand

Blogger at "Your Wet Pooty Tat"