When you become a parent, there are certain things that everyone tells you will happen yet you might not have believed would be true in your case. Not surprisingly, many of these exact things turn out to be true. One, at least for me, is birthdays cease to matter (or be celebrated) nearly so much. For the most part, I’ve been just fine about my birthday becoming a low-key affair (okay, I’ll admit to being a little sore about this last one, although the walk to Herrells for ice cream with the three kids in town was pretty deliciously fun). And to be fair, at 40 I had a totally awesome dance party in the backyard, with a fantastic mix of music provided by my dear husband and the honor of having the cops shut us down around midnight. Being shut down by the cops seemed an auspicious beginning to the decade!
These days, I pay more attention to my kids’ birthdays than to my own. In a way, their birthdays feel a tiny bit like mine. The kids’ stations in life—teenager to toddler at present—mark me, too, as I stretch to become a parent to teenager, or return to parenting a toddler. My view, my prism if you will, has been so changed by the small and now not so small ones.
But hey, this is my blog’s birthday, the blog-o-versary, and I found myself pondering how to observe this little writer’s rite of bloggerly passage. I’m terrible at math. Still, even I can work out that over the past fifty-two weeks, I’ve written three posts pretty consistently, generating North of 150 entries here (go, me! Go, readers, for sticking with me!). I cap the year off with a very exciting win: Best Local Blog in the Valley Advocate’s reader poll (the Valley Advocate’s my gracious host; I also write for Preview Massachusetts magazine). And somehow, it seems I should do something, even if it’s just reflect upon a year of blogging.
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I am a pretty fast writer and I’m pretty disciplined. Still, the sheer volume along with the work it takes to let people know about the blog certainly involves a lot of effort, much more than I’d imagined. So, a year in, to be totally honest, along with all else, I am pretty exhausted. The exhaustion comes from working hard and from the hefty personal challenge of pushing myself to self-promote. I’m a former political organizer and an insanely good networker. I am not very comfortable putting my work out into the world. However, when you’re working this hard, you realize that it’s stupid not to.
How does a self-conscious writer step out from, well, the shadows? For starters, I put a signature with a link on my outgoing email messages. Believe me that felt brave (and a little pushy). I wrote a piece about being an accidental blogger for the paper. Once my friend (and fellow blogger) Amy Meltzer, started a fan page for her Homeschuling blog, I followed suit (yeah, copycat) and Standing in the Shadows got a fan page on Facebook (although now there aren’t fan pages, people like things; I prefer to call them admirers). I send out weekly-ish updates to a group I have on email and I try very hard to alert people when I’ve linked to their cause/blog/issue. I joined Twitter (@standshadows), although even after a brilliant tutorial from another Amy, I’ve yet to achieve tweeting mastery. Oh, and I tell people about my blog, you know, in conversation, in real life.
Over the course of the year, I’ve definitely delved deeper into the blogosphere. I read more blogs and comment more often. That’s something I never used to do, yet I now understand that writers of blogs like comments (not so subtle hint, tempered by the fact that I appreciate the Valley Advocate’s not a commenter-friendly site, so no actual pressure, reader). I’ve even made some new, real friends via my virtual adventures. One thing I most admire and enjoy about blogs is this: I love how varied the range is of interesting, engaging blogs. What may have begun as a virtual journal form really has morphed; blogs are many things to many folks. While, as a reader or viewer, the blogging world is almost too huge, there are so many terrific surprises to be found. In honor of my blog-o-versary, I’ve added to my blogroll some new favorites, and invite you to take a click or two.
I’ve also struggled with the fact that my blog—like my writer life beyond the blog—is not neatly focused upon one topic. I do not write about adoption or pink boys or the planet or reproductive justice exclusively. I’ve had to accept that I don’t quite fit in a single category and that this potentially makes for slower going (you know, in that writing career sense). At the very same time, I think I’ve accepted myself as a person whose interests and passions are varied. I’ve pretty much settled—almost more comfortably through this process of blogging—upon the fact that I write what I write and I’ll get where I get, which will be, uh, somewhere.
The main thing I feel as year one winds down and year two begins is this: grateful. I wanted to take this moment to thank you for reading. Whether it’s on the blog or on line at the co-op or faraway and I have no idea that you’re reading, your reading my work has made the adventure, thus far, extremely satisfying. And who knows? Maybe my day will involve cupcakes.
