Wednesday, March 25, 2009

just to make it clear

The irony of writing about not reading blogs on my blog does not escape me. Wow. That was two nots in one sentence. I rock.

Monday, March 23, 2009

In which I ramble...


I guess the question is what will I do with myself when there is nothing to do. I’m taking a rest from other people’s blogs. A week-long rest from reading about other people, with other lives, with things that I want or don’t want, a break from the weird anonymous world of lurking. It’s only been one day, not even, and I’m already climbing the walls, so to speak, of my cube. Drawing bull after bull after bull.

Don’t get me wrong. Absorption is good. It has its time and place. But since I’ve gotten a 9 to 5, I spend quite a bit of daylight looking at blogs. Because they are a quick break. Because they are better for me than a Diet Coke, because I can surf the internet and eat chocolate at the same time.

This is a test for me, a test to see what I’ll do with time, confined time but time nonetheless. (It’s also just a way to differentiate a week. To interject some sort of different-ness to the 9 to 5 routine.) Because blogs are, in some respects, not far from TV. They are a way of feeling like you’re doing just because you are watching someone else do. The question is what will I do when there is nothing to watch.

I read a quote not too long ago; I’m sure on one of my marathon blog wanders. “Never hope more than you work.” I google it now (I’m allowed to google) and find that Rita Mae Brown said it. It’s been ringing in my head since I read it. That’s what I do when I read blogs. I read about people at home, in their art studios, in their sewing rooms, and they’re making things. And I read and I read thinking “I’ll do that…and I’ll do that.” And I don’t. And at the end of the day I’ve hoped more than I worked –albeit not the work I do for money but the work I do simply because I am in this world and taking up space.

The other day RT said we live in a world where if you don’t have a blog you don’t quite exist. He didn’t quite mean it, and I don’t quite believe it, but it is a weird world. Where everyone can have a say. Everyone can have a presence. Anyone can start a conversation.