7ToT: I laughed at all of your jokes, my love you didn't need to coax

1. Since the last time I've posted a personal update, we flew down to Texas for a family wedding. It was the first time I've flown since February 2020. It seemed pretty safe-- I've had covid, and since there are many medical or medical-adjacent people in our family, most have been vaccinated. 

2. I don't think I told you that when I had covid last November, I didn't notice any changes to my sense of taste or smell. But then about a month ago, suddenly I could taste and smell again. It was subtle enough that I hadn't really noticed until it came back. Sort of like going from black&white to technicolor in the Wizard of Oz.

3. I've lived in Montana for so long now that I've lost the ability to dress the way people dress in other places. Around here, dressing up means you wear your new jeans. Or maybe your black jeans. I've never been to anything in Montana, no matter how fancy or formal, where there weren't people wearing jeans. Of course, if it's formal, some will dress up, but there are always jeans. 

4. The wedding in Texas was stated to be formal on the invitation, which is something I don't think I've ever even seen on a wedding invitation here locally. I ordered a couple of dresses from Nordstrom's, neither of which suited me or fit right, so finally I sent them back and pulled an old dress out of the back of my closet. Since I almost never dress up, even though it's an "old" dress, I'd only worn it once. It fit perfectly, and it was comfortable, and I had a pair of shoes to match, so I thought it was a total win. But there were no sequins or shiny bits, and I don't wear high heels. I didn't realize how under-dressed I was until I started looking at pictures after we got back. Oops. But I was only aunt of the bride, so probably nobody cared. 

5. This week's Interesting Listen: George Saunders (author of Tenth of December and Lincoln in the Bardo) has a new book out and he's been making the rounds of several of the podcasts I follow. He is always interesting. I was fascinated by his conversation with the So Many Damn Books guys. He is both a great writer and a long time teacher of writing (at Syracuse)(where Mary Karr also teaches, an embarrassment of riches), so if you're interested in Saunders or writing or teaching writing, definitely worth a listen. 

5a) bonus listen. I'm more cheap than I am vain, so chances are slim I will ever do cosmetic surgery or procedures (never say never, I guess). But if you're curious about what exactly people mean when they say they've "had a little work done," I thought this episode of Laura Tremaine's pod was fascinating.

6. This week's Interesting Read: Also if you're interested in writing or teaching writing, don't miss Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses. It's about reimagining the writing workshop, which has been hallowed ground in creative writing programs since the 1950s. He talks about the experience of being someone who is not a white straight cis male in a system that was designed for white straight cis males. Even when I disagreed, it was fascinating, but usually I was nodding my head. (for the record, that is not an affiliate link).

7. I got so tangled up trying to write part two of that last post that I punted. And because the problem was that I really, truly couldn't figure out what I was trying to say, it led to several days of deep thinking (danger, Will Robinson). Which in turn led to the not-very-surprising realization that I need some time away. I told you I was going to do this a couple of weeks ago, but then I kept on posting. It's hard to get out of the habit! Thanks for checking in. See y'around.

7ToF: There and back again

1. Since Doug (see below) and I are both post-covid, we have 2-3 months of immunity. It's the only good thing about the experience. And since our kids both work in hospitals, they were able to get the first dose of the vaccine fairly early. So we decided to take the risk and get together for the week after Christmas. It was wonderful. We drove south to a rental house and did our best to isolate there-- we went for walks and hikes, and there were a couple of rounds of golf (not me), but other than that and trips to the grocery store, we didn't go out. We got take-out or cooked for ourselves, and played games and watched movies (all three extended edition LOTR movies--not kidding--it took all week.)

I feel somewhat bad about this, because there are so many millions of people in the entire world who weren't able to meet with their family or get away for a vacation this year. But not bad enough to not do it. Mea culpa.

2. I was an internet early adopter. My first experience with email, online forums, and bulletin boards was in 1985 when I started a job in Research Triangle Park, NC, with a company that was on ARPAnet. I loved it--I loved the job, I loved the proto-Internet. Within months after being hired as a technical editor, I had moved onto their IT team. 

3. I'm telling you this to explain why I've never been forthcoming with personal info here in this blog. Back in those days, you weren't supposed to reveal your true identity online. I remember being told that you should never reveal your name and your birthdate, because that would pretty much hand your identity to anyone with nefarious intent. So when I finally signed up for Facebook, I used a fake birthdate and insisted that my kids do the same, which eventually caused all kinds of problems with their age restrictions and had to be sorted out by their tech support, back when you could still get to FB's tech support. 

4. Anyway. For the first fifteen years I was online, everybody had screen names and avatars and personas. You lived with the vague fear that a serial murderer was going to figure out where you lived and come after you and your family. All these years later, it's a hard habit to drop. I tried to stop using fake blog names for my family members a few years ago, but it just felt wrong.

But you know, it's 2021. Now it's considered poor form to use a fake persona on social media, because how are people going to trust you if they don't know who you are? And to my surprise, I'm finding that I agree. So, I'm trying again. My husband isn't Dean, he's Doug. And our kids are Melanie (Mel) and Sam-- although now that they are 30 and 23, respectively, they don't show up here all that often anymore.  We really do exist, and we live in Northwest Montana, where we moved in 1992 (still can't quite bring myself to say exactly where, but most of you know anyway). I haven't made as big a deal of hiding my own name, but I'm Barb. Just in case you were wondering.

5. The other thing that has changed since I started blogging (in 2003!!) is--well, blogging. No one does it anymore. Of all the blogs I followed religiously back in the early 2010s, only one is regularly updated anymore, and she has a team of people helping her create content. The others have either quit or moved on to podcasting or Instagram Live or something similar. But I don't want to do 90-second takes on Instagram Live (and lord knows I don't want to have to look at myself on camera), I want to write. So I'm still here, and even though I've (obviously) not been posting much recently, I don't really want to quit. 

6. I did seriously consider quitting, because it feels like I'm just setting myself up for irrelevance, and we've already talked about that. Yup, I'm still blogging, and I use proper punctuation in my texts, and I like my 1980s hairstyle, too. But I still have things I want to write about. I know I took kind of a long break over the past few months, but honestly, I just didn't know what to say. In fact, I had planned on posting earlier this week, but then things kind of went to hell, and it felt wrong to ignore it, but what was I going to say that a million Twitter users hadn't already said? 

7. So I'm considering a lot of things-- like pre-writing a series of posts on a particular topic, or changing up the whole thing with a new name and a new look, and maybe I will do both of those things. But for the time being, nothing is changing. Which begs the question of why exactly I'm going on and on here, but you know, I needed to catch you up after weeks of not posting. 

Hope you had a lovely and renewing holiday season, because good lord, things are already off to a crazy start. See you next week. 

a pseudo-survey

The short version is: please click here if you read this blog, either regularly or occasionally. (That's all you have to do, just click-- there's no real survey.) For more info, read on.

I'm trying to decide if I want to continue blogging, and those of you who have been around for awhile know that this happens every so often, and usually even if I think I'm going to quit, after a few weeks I start back up again. But really, having a blog--even when I'm not posting very often-- is always there in the back of my mind, and maybe it's time to free up that energy and use it for something else. I'm not sure what, but I've always liked to jump off a cliff without knowing where I'll land.

Since most of us (including me) use some kind of reader app for following blogs without actually visiting the blog itself, it's hard to get an accurate idea of how many readers I have. Blogger/Blogspot, the blogging site I've used for more than 15 years now, doesn't have the most sophisticated stats page, so I don't know if you've read something unless you click through to the actual site.

So this is kind of a pseudo-poll, because if you, just this once, click through to the website, then I'll have a more accurate idea of how many people are reading this nonsense and I can figure out what to do. It's anonymous because if the service I use (Blogger) has a way to track where pageviews come from, I don't know what it is. And if you're actually reading this at the website, then you don't need to do anything because you've already triggered a pageview.

On Feedly, there's a button at the bottom of every post that says "Visit Website" so you could click on that, or you could just click on this: To Square a Circle (Barb's blog).

Thanks.

smoke screen

Remember I was supposed to come back from my mini-vacation all tanked up and ready to shower you with my brilliance? yeah, well, it might not have happened. The vacation itself was great, and I got to visit two beloved friends, Julie in Oregon and Laurel in Seattle, who have put up with far more of my nonsense than I have any right to expect--Julie, for almost a decade now, and Laurel, since seventh grade. 

I returned home on Friday night and spent the weekend with Dean catching up on all my home-again things. Then tonight it got late and I had one of those moments of realization you sometimes have late at night and it occurred to me that for the past couple of months I've been using this blog as a means of avoidance. Avoidance: my spiritual gift.

If that isn't exactly clear, rest assured it isn't exactly clear to me, either. But it appears I need to prioritize some other things for the moment, so I'm taking some time off from blogging. I can't imagine it will be very long, but probably at least a month. You can email me (address: bnelson four seven seven at gmail dot com), or find me on Instagram at @bhnmt61 for real, or @bookspate for books.

Blogging

Here’s the thing about blogging. When I started (back in 2003, which when you think about it is a really long time ago, both in terms of years and cultural shifts), blogs were an obscure new idea. Hardly anyone had one, and there were no rules about what you could do. You just wrote posts and put them out there, and maybe people found your blog and maybe they didn’t. Thousands of people started blogs and then quit after half a dozen posts. A few hit the big time, and a few, like me, kept going just because they liked it.

Then six or seven years ago, there was a major shift in the “blogosphere.” Suddenly blogs became a thing, part of your Branding Strategy, and journalists and writers and Internet personalities all started blogging. There started to be rules—spoken and unspoken—about what you should blog about, how often you should post, how long the posts should be. Always include a picture! Keep your paragraphs short! Have a theme!

A lot of very good blogs started during this time period, blogs I still follow. But there didn’t seem to be a place anymore for bloggers like me, who don’t have a brand or an online presence or a following. I just like to write about what I’m thinking about, and I like to put it out there instead of shoving it in a drawer.

The blog branding wave seems to be subsiding, at least in part because doing a major branded blog like that is nearly impossible to do by yourself. (Especially if you don't like to write. Why would someone start a blog if they don't like to write?) Even the ones that started small have folded or become group blogs with multiple writers, “sponsored” posts, advertisements, and associate links to make them financially viable.

I have no complaints about this. I read some of those blogs regularly (and some of them, like Melanie Shankle’s and Anne Bogel’s, are still run by individuals). I’m happy for them that they’re able to make a living doing it. But I’m also happy that the Eye of the Internet seems to have moved on to other things so that there is less pressure to blog in a certain way, and the peons like me can keep doing what we like to do, which is writing what we’re thinking about and posting it.

It is a little difficult sometimes to keep going when you’re writing a blog that hasn’t “caught on,” because there is so much value in our society placed on success as measured by numbers. But I’m used to that, and that isn’t why I ended up not posting this past week.

Nope, I took a blog break this week because I read some opinion pieces about the Emmys, and watched some videos of new artists whose work they felt was unfairly ignored by the Emmy voters. And I realized with very great clarity how hopelessly irrelevant I have become, sitting in my 3-bed, 2-bath house, married to a man who makes enough money that I can choose whether or not to work, unworried about drive-by shootings or whether or not our heat will be turned off because I couldn't pay the bill.

I am that supremely inconsequential thing, an over-educated, financially stable, middle-aged, straight married white woman. Women in my demographic are pretty much the opposite of Influencers (a term I only read about this week). It’s both humbling to realize that my people no longer matter and also enormously freeing because I don’t have to worry about trying to be relevant or influential—it’s not going to happen, and the harder I try, the more I prove that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I don’t know how other people are living out there, and the contentious issues that are facing our society are not ones that directly impact me. I can discuss them as an interested observer, even as a passionately opinionated observer, but it's not about me. I mean, seriously— I can write about my experiences with sexual harassment when I was younger, but frumpy 56-year-olds don't worry about it. (apologies for the way that was worded previously. I was trying to be funny but it missed.)

Sadly, the main way that women in my demographic make their presence known is as consumers. Unsettling, that is. We wield a lot of cash. (Insert here Kathy Bates' parking lot rage scene from Fried Green Tomatoes. I'd link to it but I'm pretty sure you've all seen it. It pops right up on Google if you haven't.)

All of this leaves open the possibility that I could quit blogging. But as you know, I’ve quit plenty of times before and I always start again. Maybe I limit my topics to things that directly affect me and those of you who read here. Maybe I just keep going with better awareness and a more humble attitude, feeling grateful that I live in a place and a time when I can do this just because I find it satisfying, and I like to write. And extra grateful that a few of you take the time to read it.

7ToF: How did it get to be the end of 2017 already? and the year-end reading report

1. Earlier this week, I thought I would be able to pound this one out quick on Thursday night, because I was just going to post the titles of 7 books I read during 2017 that were worth reading. But I just scrolled down through the list of books I read this year, and for some reason, none of them seem essential at the moment. I liked Station Eleven, Everything I Never Told You, 11/22/63 (my first Stephen King novel!), The Opposite of Everyone, and Magpie Murders well enough to give them each four or five stars, but I can't really remember them very well.

2. Splitting this up to make it easier to read. There were some good non-fiction books, too: Springsteen's autobio, Amy Poehler's Yes Please, Hillbilly Elegy (and a couple of others, see below).

3. And some good plane/beach reads: Act Like It, The Thousand Dollar Tan Line, Sorceror to the Crown. And I'm in the middle of a couple that I doubt I'll finish before Monday so they will have to go on next year's list. I was flying through Uprooted last week. If it had ended at the halfway point, I might have said it was my favorite read of the year. But suddenly the heroine has gone from being understandably naive and rough around the edges to being annoyingly, obtusely stupid, and I was so disappointed I haven't picked it up in days now. I really should, because maybe it will get better again.

4. And believe it or not, I'm still reading Betty Neels. You know what they're perfect for? I've suffered periodically from insomnia all my life. When I was young, I couldn't go to sleep. Now that I'm old, I fall asleep no problem, but I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep. If I flip open my e-reader to a Betty Neels, I'm back asleep in about five minutes. Love.

5. I've been fascinated by personality types since the life-changing event of discovering that I was an introvert when I was in my mid-twenties. Being an introvert was not a thing when I was a kid in the 60s. I used to get lectured regularly about not being friendly enough, reading too much, not wanting to play group games with the other kids/reindeer. When I was 24 or 25, I took a Myers-Briggs test in a group I was in and found out that less than 5% of the US population is my type (INTJ). Suddenly I realized I didn't feel like a Martian because I was weird and bizarre (well, OK, maybe I am), but because I had an unusual personality type. It was like someone handed me a reprieve from a life sentence of torture, always forcing myself to be outgoing and chatty. Bliss. One of the few truly life-changing moments I've had.

6. Then at work this past fall, everyone in my department went through DiSC personality typing, and then two bloggers I know of published books about personality types, and the bottom line is: I've been thinking about these ideas a lot. So if you're interested, Anne Bogel's Reading People is a good overview of the different systems out there, and Gretchen Rubin's The Four Tendencies describes different ways people respond to internal and external expectations. I find this stuff fascinating.

7. And, in fact, the reason I finally decided to start blogging again is because of a book about creativity based on personality types (Creative You: Using Your Personality Type to Thrive, hat tip to Anne Bogel for recommending it). I didn't read the whole thing, mainly just the section for my type, but it helped me solve a problem that has plagued me since I start blogging back in 2003: it seems pointless to blog if only a dozen people are reading it-- I could just email it to you, right? But when I started telling people about my blog and trying to promote/market it, while it worked (I got over a hundred readers the first time I mentioned my blog on Facebook), it made me really, really uncomfortable. Seriously uncomfortable.

But this book pointed out that for people of my type, sharing our work with others isn't the point. Of course you don't want to promote your work. This seems so obvious now that it's been pointed out to me that I feel a little stupid, but I was genuinely flummoxed by this problem. The whole point of the blogosphere is to go viral, to attract thousands of readers, to get pageviews and link backs and I don't know what else. But I hate that. I just like to write about what I'm thinking about. So I've only told one person besides Dean that I've started again. I can tell some of you are reading, and I appreciate it more than I can say, but I'm trying not to pay much attention to that.

That last one really should have been its own blog post, but whatever. I have another idea to tell you about, but I think I will save it for my next post. It's an experiment!! for the New Year!! If you need things to read and you want a preview, try this.

Have a great weekend.

you have to start small, like oak trees.

I love a good road trip, always have. One of the main reasons I love them is because you have time to think. We've been so busy for the past few months that I got behind on my thinking. So when the opportunity came to drive to Seattle last week to retrieve PellMel, I jumped at the chance. Really, she could have driven herself, but I wanted to do it. Two of my dearest friends live in Seattle, for one thing, and there's all that time in the car.

It was a lot of fun. PellMel and I had a great time bopping around downtown Seattle, we had some great food, we had lots of fun with our friends Laurel and Kami. But also, thankfully, I had lots of time to think.

And you know what I realized? Almost like a voice said it in my head: I am done blogging.

I think I've known it for awhile, but I'm a stubborn person, and I didn't want to be a quitter. This blog has never really taken off, and I didn't want to give up on it.

My previous, more successful blog was fairly anonymous, but this one is not. And one of the things that happens when you tell people you have a blog is that you start getting feedback. Most people are completely uninterested--in fact, they look slightly panicked when you tell them you have a blog, because you might expect them to actually read the thing. And then there are the few, my beloved readers--you--who are supportive, and make it all worthwhile.

But there is also a third group, whose voices sometimes sound loudest in my head, who react with criticism or disdain, or who are so stunned and surprised that it's a little insulting, or who can't understand why I think anyone would want to read something I'd written. Or the woman who said with great warmth and kindness, "I remember when I used to have time to do things like that." She didn't pat me on the head, so there's that.

And those responses made me stubborn. Even though I've wanted to quit several times over the past few months, I didn't want to prove the negative people right. I didn't want this blog to fail. So I kept going.

Finally, when I had the time to think these past few days, I realized that I can't let the naysayers make my decision for me. If I'm done, I'm done. Maybe after more than a dozen years of blogging (my first post was in December of 2003), it's time to move on.

So *hiccup* this might be my last real post (see postscript below). It's possible this is a temporary decision, but at the moment, I'm pretty sure it will be permanent. I had three or four posts planned for the next couple of weeks, but once the idea of stopping took hold, it seemed kind of pointless to continue. 

I am forever grateful to those of you who have followed along. Hugs and love and happy trails.

p.s. There may be one more post after this one--when I have time to put it together-- with links to the posts from this blog that I think are worth reading, sort of like an index, but it won't have anything new. So if you're subscribed, you can safely unsubscribe without missing anything.

p.p.s. the post title is from the end of The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. It seemed better to end by looking forward.

you wouldn't know me with this golden glow, soakin' up sun in Mexico

We returned from Mexico on Sunday. We don't usually do major vacations for spring break, but it's our last one with our last kid, so we decided to go big. We went in with two other families and rented a condo in Puerto Peñasco (sometimes called Rocky Point).

We flew Allegiant (a bargain basement airline) to Mesa, AZ, then drove four hours to PP. Allegiant charges for every little thing-- you want a reserved seat? $10. you want a carry-on? $25. you want a coke? $2. But even after we paid all the fees, our airfare was still less than half of what we would have paid on a traditional airline. In spite of a few things we'd heard, they were actually pretty pleasant to deal with. I'm a fan.

Puerto Peñasco is still fairly undeveloped. There is a ring of hotels and condos along the beach, a small "downtown" area, and practically nothing else. It wasn't fancy. There are a few decent restaurants, and a couple of shopping areas with typical Mexican souvenir stuff. There are jet skis and ATVs you can rent (some in our group did, we didn't). The weekend was a bit noisy, but it was blissfully quiet on the weekdays. The water is that gorgeous turquoise color that you see in postcards. For our purposes--getting out of cool, overcast Montana without paying a fortune-- it was perfect and we had a great time.

You can, and we did, feel some discomfort at the contrast between the beautiful resorts and the poverty surrounding, but two things helped with that. First of all, tourists from the U.S. were far outnumbered by vacationing Mexicans. And secondly, their economy is decidedly improved by the tourist industry. There are jobs. I know you could argue about this. We decided to enjoy our vacation.

~~~

I've had plenty of time over the weeks since I last posted to think about blogging. I've had some pretty demoralizing things happen in the past few months, and I'm afraid I let "not a famous blogger yet" contribute to my feelings of failure. One or two fails you can chalk up to experience, but several spread out over a year and a half start to feel indicative of your worth as a person.

But at least as far as the blog is concerned, I had to remind myself that I don't really want to be a famous blogger. Every time my number of pageviews starts to tick upward, I panic and quit posting. So here's that.

I also had time to realize that I was occasionally trying to do something with this blog that I'm not good at. Instead of just writing about my own experience, at least in my head I was trying to speak for all women at my stage of life. Which is ridiculous. I don't think I even realized I was doing it until I had an a-ha moment while reading another blog.

I can't write for anybody else, I can only write for myself. So it's entirely possible that this blog will become tediously boring from here on out--I'm not exactly doing anything thrilling these days-- but I suspect it has already been that, at least sometimes.

So, with that said, on we go. I did not come to the conclusion that I need to quit, which is what I was thinking back when I said I was taking a break. For the time being, I'm planning on sticking with my original schedule--posts on Tuesday and Friday, with the occasional TBT (throwback Thursday) re-post of stuff from my old blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Day 25: oh the weather outside is frightful

We had our first real winter storm today. It was a typical winter storm for us, the kind we get 2-3 times a year: half a foot of snow coming down sideways. (Hmmm, is it coming down if it's blowing sideways?) Of course, there are the ones that are considerably worse, which we only get once a year, or maybe twice.

And although I never like it when this happens in November, it's not like it's the first time we've had one this early. The worst experience I had during the three years I drove back and forth to Missoula for grad school was in November.

We lived through this one. A friend ended up in a ditch, I saw three fender benders, and traffic was a bear, but the house is warm and we didn't lose power, so it's all good. And the boys are thrilled because skiing.

Square what circle?

Months ago, not long after I started this blog, I wrote a post about how my wacky midlife hormones had left me angry all the time. Not just vaguely irritated, but spitting-nails-run-for-cover-don't-bother-mom pissed. In fact, when I was trying to figure out a name for the new blog, that was what I started with-- I wanted a title that reflected how downright mad I was about life. My favorite possible title was "Flying the Bird." Because... well, *clears throat* because.

Fortunately, everyone I checked with told me that was a dumb title. Wait, one person said. Do you mean "flying the bird" like "extending your middle finger"? She was a bit unsettled by the idea, but yep, that's what I meant. I'm really glad I didn't go with that, because like all hormonal moments, the constant anger passed, and I would probably be embarrassed now if my blog was called Flying the Bird.

Probably.

So anyway. I had to think of something else, and it occurred to me that Dante's Divine Comedy is really the story of a midlife crisis. Midway through life, he loses his way in a wood, and before you know it there are the gates of Hell before him: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." I spent a really wonderful semester a few years ago studying Dante, so it was fairly fresh in my mind.

My favorite moment in that long poem cycle is when Dante and his guide Virgil emerge from hell. After long hours of slogging through ever more horrifying scenes of torment, weighed down by the stinking, putrid air, the screams and howls of the damned ringing in their ears, they emerge into fresh, cool night air and the sight of stars twinkling above them.

I wanted a line that reflected that moment, but the actual words "then we came forth, to see again the stars" didn't make much of a title. To See Again the Stars sounds like a cheesy romance novel. Not that I have anything against cheesy romance novels.

So I flipped over to the very end, after Dante has continued his journey through Purgatory and the lower levels of Paradise, until he finally reaches the heavens in all their splendor, a sight so spectacularly gorgeous that words cannot describe it. He likens the dilemma of trying to explain what he sees to the ancient mathematical conundrum of how to square a circle--in other words, an impossible task.

I haven't had any visions of glory (if I do, you'll be the first to know), but I liked the idea-- at midlife, I'm pretty thoroughly aware that trying to get a handle on my experience is beyond me. Way beyond.

But I still try. Hence "To Square a Circle." And then, when I was reading Ulysses last spring, I found the line there, too. And that clinched it. 

I told you in the very first post in this blog that someday I would explain the title, so there you go.

(And p.s. I know I told you we would be out of range today, but the weather turned wet and windy so we ended up staying home.)

blog names and why I'm dumping them (plus a note about my posting schedule at the very end)

I've decided to stop using blog names for my family members. Here you go: PellMel is really Melanie (Mel), MadMax is Sam, and Dean is, and always has been, Doug. You already know that I'm Barb. If you're curious why this is happening, keep reading, but if that's all you need to know, off you go to your next activity.

When I started blogging a dozen years ago, I was freaked out about publicly over-sharing. My first couple of blogs were shrouded in secrecy. Other than Doug, I don't think anyone in my "real" life even knew about my first blog. So I came up with cute blog names for my people to shield them from Internet Notoriety.

But times have changed. For one thing, I don't think any of us believes in the illusion of internet privacy anymore. It would take you two minutes of digging, if you even cared, to find out more about me and my family than I've ever shared in a blog post.

For another thing, my blogs have never generated much traffic. Everyone who blogs both fears and longs for their blog to go viral, but twelve years later (I wrote my first post in October of 2003), that's never happened to me. A couple of posts on my old blog have over a thousand page views, but that's the most traffic I've ever had. Most of my readers (you) are people I actually know, either in real life or because we've met in some internet forum. I think I can stop worrying about exposing my kids to the glare of the paparazzi.

And also, they--my family--don't really care. I'm a privacy freak, but none of them are. Sam, who is a bit on the introverted side, might care if he hadn't grown up in the internet age where everything any of his friends does immediately shows up on Instagram. But Doug and Mel have always thought it was a little odd that I didn't just use our real names. So now I am.

Coincidentally, and a little off topic, just last week I was reading a book (One Plus One by JoJo Moyes) which has a teen character who starts a blog. By and large the book is down-to-earth and relatively realistic (given that it's a fictional work with a plot and a number of common tropes of current fiction), but one thing was absurdly not real. This kid starts a blog, writes a few posts, and without doing any promotion at all--as far as the reader knows, he's never even told anyone he was blogging-- suddenly he has hundreds of readers and dozens of comments.

Right. Not happening. My times of highest reader traffic have all been when I was telling people I had something for them to read. Speaking of, thanks for reading this one.

And while we're discussing blog issues, about my posting schedule: I've been keeping a Tuesday-Friday schedule for awhile now and for the most part that works well for me. But I have a couple of multi-part posts coming up that will be posted all in one week, so there will be some in-between posts, too. Scroll down or check over on the calendar to find anything you might've missed. Thanks.

Blog thoughts

It never occurred to me that creating a new blog would take so much thought and strategizing. For some reason I thought that I would just start the new blog, keep writing posts, and voilà--new blog.

But it hasn’t turned out to be quite that simple. On the old blog, within a week of publishing a new post, I would have 20-30 pageviews. If it was something that people found interesting enough to share, I might get 50 or even considerably more. That’s plenty for me. As I’ve said before, I’m not interested in world blog domination.

But for some reason, those readers haven’t transferred over. In this blog, a week after I’ve put up a new post, there are one or maybe two readers. And although those two readers mean the world to me, it doesn’t quite seem worth the effort of maintaining a blog for the three of us. I could just type things out and email them, you know?

So I started doing status updates on Facebook when I put a new post up. That worked great--the first time I did it, I had over a hundred pageviews, an enormous success even by my old standards. But then the next time there were about 45 pageviews, and the time after that, only 17. Which is a little demoralizing, to put it mildly.

Also, at some point a bunch of people un-friended me, which could be completely unrelated, but it’s hard not to take it personally. Really? It was that bad? I’m not sure exactly when it happened, because I didn’t notice until yesterday. I'm paranoid enough to think that I embarrassed myself with my ranting last week, but then I go back and read that post, and it just doesn't embarrass me. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.

Or maybe it was because I dropped an f-bomb. Profanity doesn't bother me all that much. (although I've been reading the Thug Kitchen cookbook, which takes the use of profanity to knew and untold heights and causes even me to raise an eyebrow. whoa.) But I know it is a total deal-breaker to many people. After all, my parents--fully grown adults--use(d) phrases like "H-E-double hockey sticks" and "mell of a hess" to avoid saying the word hell, which barely even qualifies as profanity on my personal scale.

Whatever. I’ve always said that the reason I do this is for me, and that is absolutely true. The benefit I get from typing stuff out and posting it far outweighs the minor embarrassment of finding out that most people don’t find it worth reading. But I’m feeling a bit burned at the moment. So, no more Facebook updates for awhile, which means for the time being, it's just us.

The case of the disappearing comments

Comments are disappearing again. Sadly, it seems to happen randomly but more often than it should. I love comments and I don't want to lose any of them--you guys often have more interesting things to say than I do. So please bear with me while we get this figured out.

Also, if you want to try out commenting, this is a good post to try it on, you don't even have to say anything interesting (well, you never do, because not having anything interesting to say never keeps me from writing blog posts, so the precedent is set).

Here are the things that I know help:

- if you have a google account, log into it before you try to comment (Google owns Blogger/Blogspot, so the accounts are the same). Since my blog is so small, I have it set up so you don't have to have a Google account, though. You should be able to leave an anonymous comment. It's just more likely to get lost (apparently).

- change the security settings on your browser to allow "third-party cookies." According to this post, the commenting system uses CAPTCHA to make sure you are a real person, which uses cookies. If your browser blocks third party cookies, the CAPTCHA system won't work, but you don't get an error message, your comment just disappears. So when you click on "publish," nothing happens.*

- If you remember, before you click "Publish," press "ctrl-a" and then "ctrl-c."  That will highlight your entire comment and make a copy of it. Then if your comment gets lost, you can try it again and not have to type it all over again. Just press ctrl-v to paste the copied text into a new comment box. It's a pain, and I only occasionally remember to do it myself, but at least it's something.

There is a setting in the comments section on my side of it that I tried changing this week so that when you want to leave a comment, it will pop up a new window. Supposedly this is a more reliable way of leaving comments, but I'm not all that happy with it because it disables my ability to reply to comments (and also your ability to reply to other people's comments). So after about 24 hours I changed it back. If disappearing comments continue to be a problem, we can revisit this.

* To change this setting in Chrome: click on the Chrome menu icon (three horizontal lines in the upper right corner), click on "Settings," scroll down to the bottom and click on "Show Advanced Settings," click on "Content Settings," and uncheck the box that says "Block third party cookies."