Blogging For Humanity

When I began my blog, I was not really a blog follower. I didn’t know, and to a certain extent still don’t know, what kind of blog I will end up being. No big Big picture but I’m working on it. I have many interests. I love to write and ponder and I love decorating and I hope I’m as funny as I intend to be.

My homework was to pick random bloggers’ sites and follow them. And so I poked around some sites, found other sites on their blogrolls, and began following about a half dozen blogs.

I followed writing blogs, a blogging blog, and a couple decorating ones too. After a year of following them, I’ve discovered a few things about the world, women, and myself. This has been a very interesting and compelling exercise in how humans are human.

The wonderful benefit of connecting with many random people is that you begin to see our collective humanity peeking through. Our knee buckling doubts of ourselves and our varying purposes and processes. We all feel sad or crazed or unworthy at times. So many bloggers doubt their purpose in continuing to blog and need assurances as to their purpose or their audience. And some of them are brilliant people that are just plain Nutz.

I am familiar with and tolerant of this state of being. I understand the uber-creatives who are raging egomaniacs. And their contributions to the world are necessary. I was following one such woman. Designer, actor, painter, and wordsmith with titillating words I would never use on my blog. I followed her for some time. Until she made a fatal mistake.

She solicited comments from her audience on her choice of sheets for her daughter’s bedroom. The beautiful headboard fabric had been hard to coordinate.  She said she knew this green gingham was bad and wanted suggestions. She also posted pictures of the inside of her cabinets she claimed to have cleaned in an attempt to prepare for a possible move. She described grandma’s dishes in detail. Not too alarming since she’d share her latest intestinal problem or zit in a heartbeat.

The next day she says, “April Fools” in July, haven’t we heard about it? And lambasts her followers for believing she would ever even consider gingham sheets or show the insides of her cupboards to anyone. Shame on everyone. Her audience then makes comments like “Ha, ha, you got me” and “I knew something was up so I just didn’t comment.” There are many followers and not one of them called foul. They wanted her to still like them.

I kept thinking about Kathy Bates as Misery. She’s got James Cahn the writer imprisoned so she can force him write another Misery book. And in one scene, she’s raves to him about being cheated. She watched a TV serial when she was a kid where the car goes off the cliff in the end. And when the next episode came on, the hero had gotten out of the car safely without explanation. She screams,”He never got out of the Cocka-Do-Dee car!” She was furious she’d been cheated. That’s a foul, a no fair, a boo hiss. And that’s how I felt.

I had no reason to believe it to be other than true. I did not pass her loyalty test. Needless to say, I immediately unsubscribed. As consumers, it is always in our power to stop consuming. And I felt like I was choking a little on the crazy there.

I feel sad to see that someone so incredibly talented and eaten up by low self-esteem continues to rage and test and sabotage her world constantly. Except, again, humanity will do as it is. And I have had human moments too. No hard feelings. We all can do what we can do until we choose to do something else. She won’t apologize. And I won’t be choosing to read her world anymore.

It is an understatement to say Thanks for reading my blog. I am truly grateful. Please be kind and compassionate to me and to you. I would understand if you no longer feel my writing adds quality to your life and you unsubscribed. But as long as you’re reading, I will continue to write from my heart and sometimes my humanity will seep through too.