The dilemma of bloggers and blog readers everywhere …..

I think this image accurately depicts the “trauma” all bloggers and blog readers go through.

I have got much braver about commenting on blogs in the last year.

I know in the beginning I was all wide-eyed and red-faced at the very thought of commenting on some cool person’s blog.  I would read the post in awe, and then sit there and think “I can’t comment, I can’t think of anything clever to say …. everything sounds so naff….” and then I would sit there.

I have a similar problem with Facebook and then often my “comment” runs through my mind so much and I evaluate then re-evaluate, and then try to think what the person will read, that it becomes so “paralysing” that I go back and delete it.

I think Mommy Bloggers have it a bit harder than most .. but I can only speak as a Mommy Blogger.

Blogging can be very cliquey (is that the correct spelling?) and there is some inherent bitchiness, and new bloggers compete to be noticed, and there is always the “IT” blogger whose attention everyone is vying for.  <<it by the way is not me, in the event you needed some guidance on that issue>>

Or am I just reading a bit more in to it than it actually is?

I think blogging does start as a personal vomit about your shit, and that is why people read it.  A bit like slowing to look at a car accident and gawking at the blood spatter and seeing if you can see the injured person in the ambulance – or am I the only person who does this?

The problem with “blog traffic” is that at some point you stop writing about what you really think and how you feel, but you start to write what appears to be “popular” and then you lose the plot from there.  Or so I think at any rate.

I am as guilty of that as much as the next person of being aware that someone is reading this now, so maybe I need to tailor what I say.

It is sometimes difficult to stick to your opinion and put your neck out on an issue when you realise the “popular” discussions are going in another direction.  So as much as I want to say what I think, I do start to question how acceptable it will be to put it out here, or there.  And then I start to think too hard about what I say, and who I say it to.

And then I just become a cookie-cutter blog ….. sad but true.  Don’t you love social paranoia??  It rocks!

<< apologise for not being able to credit this image, I dropped it on my desktop ages ago, and unfortunately there was no reference on it …. so apologise for no credit on the image>> 

Speed dating for Bloggers …..

On Thursday, 6 October there is a blog hookup in Cape Town.

It is a bit like speed dating for bloggers.  But with wine.  And prizes.  But without the pressure of having to put on clean underwear and shave.  I have my doubts whether there will be much in the way of the anticipation of se.x later in the evening.

But it is my first blog get together, so I have no idea how these things usually play out.

Kodak, Canderel, Braun and Pringles are supplying awesome giveaways. Cape Town’s leading digital design Academy (Friends of Design) will be giving away part-time courses (I so want one of those)!

What’s not to love?

I am excited to my proximity to wine.

I am excited to see some folks who I have spent many an early morning stalking while I could not sleep.

I am excited that I might win something.

I am a bit nervous to physically meet people in real life.  I am a bit of a social retard, and I feel high anxiety when I encounter new people, or a large group of people.

My mind goes into overdrive and it usually ends with me saying something inappropriate and awkward.  A certain measure of self-flagellation is also standard course of affairs.

I keep asking myself:

“What if they don’t like me? What if I am not as funny and endearing as I appear on-line? What if it is like the popular girls at school and I don’t quite fit in?  What if they run out of wine before I get there?  What if there is karaoke? What if I trip and smash my two front teeth out?”

I am really excited and I am so glad that other bloggers have got their shit together sufficiently to organise something like this, because god knows that right now I can’t organise anything.  So big ups to them.

I am experiencing excitement and anxiety in equal proportions.

I really hope other people go straight from work.  If other bloggers look like they have gone home and had a shower, and spent 3 hours on their hair and make-up then I am definitely going to look like the Ugly Duckling amongst the swans.

I hope they have nice wine.

Bloggers, wine and maybe a little bit of song ….

Natasha from Raising Men (with her possé) have arranged a Cape Town hook-up for bloggers, those people who want to be bloggers, those people who stalk bloggers, those people who get annoying updates from bloggers in their junk-mail boxes on an almost daily basis.

Johannesburg had a great get together earlier this year, and I was a tad green with envy.

Now it’s Cape Town’s turn.  I am not sure what is says about Cape Town, that Johannesburg bloggers need to organise our arses for a get together … but we can discuss that other another post, another day.To be honest I saw “wine” and I was immediately intrigued.  The rest is just details.

I am not sure who will be there.  Will you?

I know that ScaredMom will be there, and I am hoping that Being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic or Two will also be there.

Kodak (I am trying not to swoon too much…….), Canderel, Braun and Pringles have all stepped forward with awesome giveaways.

Here is a post by Lucky Pony  who helped organize the Joburg event. Some print media will also be in
attendance to cover the event.

Interested, but still a bit scared, and require some visual motivation?  Here are some pictures by Emma Jane Nation of the Joburg run

I am not sure who else will be there.  But I think it might be nice to see some people I “chat” to every day, and whose lives I troll through.

Granted I will be nursing my social phobia with some wine and marinated olives in the corner. I will be looking awkward and might say several inappropriate things.  Probably to you.  Probably which might leave you with your mouth hanging open. It might even require you to leave early in a huff.

Here is the place - see you on Thursday?  I hope.  Please RSVP so that there are enough olives for all of us.

Natasha has also volunteered to do an impromptu karaoke song if there are more than 63 people, so I hope you can make her dreams come true.  I am already jotting a few songs that I think she will be brilliant at.

So far I have a short list which includes Britney Spears “Whoops, I did it again…” and a little ditty from The Rocky Horror Picture Show “Touch Me!”  I am very excited.

So there will be wine, possibly olives, and possibly a bit of singing.

Whoop-whoop!

Good things do happen to good people ….

The strange things about blogging and belonging to forums, is that it introduces you to a world of people you may not have had the good fortune to meet through any other route.

Through the powers of words, you start to connect with others.  You start to recognise soul-connections in other people – for what ever reason.  They might live down the road or on the other side of the world, it really does not matter.

It is something about them that resonates with you, and you feel a connection to them and their world.

A while ago I  had the good fortunate to befriend Lisa-Marie through blogging and we have remained in touch via a host of routes.

You know when you meet a “nice” person.   Someone who is truly just a good person, but is being faced with all the hurt and the pain that is the “I want a child, but for what ever reason we cannot have one.”

And how your heart just dies a little for them each time they take a knock.

Lisa and her partner Travers are those people.

The great thing about Lisa is that she is not one of those shiny-happy-nice (slightly annoying) people.   She is a nice people who still screams and rants and swears at the thunder, and sometimes just wants to throw it all away to go and travel and discover new countries and say “just fek it all”.

A while ago they made the difficult decision (and it is hard) to look at adoption as another possible route on their journey.   No doubt what ever they had gone through and maybe some of their experiences had led them to this as an option.

It is a difficult decision, no matter who you are or what your background, to decide that maybe the path you have walked for so long, is maybe not the path that is going to get you to your destination.

You scream and cry at the unfairness of it all.  Curse all who can be cursed, that what you have done and sacrificed for so long is just not working.  And you then decide to change course on your ship to motherhood, which must come with it’s own share of pain and heart-ache.

I was thrilled that Lisa had ventured into this as an option.  But I ached for her, and was worried that maybe a new waiting game was going to begin – maybe she will be faced with further hardships on this new path.

But sometimes life … not often … life is not a sack of shite, and sometimes, just sometimes, it allows the good stuff to rain on the good people.

Last week Lisa and Travers got the call and today …. today …. today their beautiful Isabella Helen is being born and they get to meet their daughter for the first time.

You know when you get to cry for happiness for someone else … someone who you have never met … but you feel you are connected in so many ways?

Today is that day  …. yay a thousand times over for Lisa and Travers who get to become parents  T O D A Y !!

http://ttcnot2easy.wordpress.com/