The case for anonymity

I started writing this blog ten years ago as a way to keep family and friends apprised of my impending move to Hawaii.  It was originally conceived as a chronicle - a record of what was going on - because I was getting ready to be on the other side of the world (almost) from the people I loved, and it seemed like a good way to maintain some contact on a bigger scale than email or the telephone could provide. Remember, this was before the days of social media.

Over the years, the blog has taken more of an intensely personal tone.  I feel like I developed a voice as a writer, and became a better writer, by making the essays more thematic - even when they were expository in nature - and by tackling subjects that were harder and more emotionally based than simply "here's a funny story" or "here's something crazy or sad or awful that happened."  In the process, I've developed a (modest) readership and have had people tell me that they were touched or moved or amused by something I had written, or that I had given a voice to something that they were feeling, particularly when it dealt with depression or grief.  And I am so, so humbled and gratified that anything I have written is valued - the internet is a huge place, and there are millions of reading options to choose from.  Particularly for readers who have stumbled on the blog and don't know me personally, the notion that anyone other than my mother would be take time out of their day to read and be interested in my ramblings is amazing to me.

But many readers do know me personally, and therein lies the rub.  As the blog has become more personal, my relationship with it has changed.  It's not just a place to record my life - although I love being able to go back and remember and relive things that I would have otherwise lost.  It's become a place to bare my soul, or to vent - it's become a form of therapy.  I write to work out feelings, to force myself to articulate what's in my head and my heart, and in doing so, to deal with it more effectively. Often I'll be thinking about something, and the urge to write about it in order to clarify how I feel about it or how I need to handle it is overwhelming.  And when the essay is written, it's cathartic.  I feel better - lighter and unburdened.

Much of that personal stuff I obviously don't mind sharing. But sometimes what I want to write about implicates someone else in a way that doesn't need to be made public, even if I make an effort to be as opaque as possible (which itself makes the writing feel contrived and fussy to me).  Sometimes I need to be careful not to betray someone else's confidence. Sometimes I can't say something because I'm legally bound not to. Or sometimes I just want to write about shit that my friends and family don't need to know about.

And when I'm not able to write because I feel obligated to self-censor, I've lost an important outlet for my own self-expression.

That is the case lately. I've got stuff swirling around in my head, and I can't write about it here, and not writing about it is giving me agita. I feel stifled.

So I've set up a separate, completely anonymous blog.**  It has no reference to who I am or where I live or what I do - just a place to be completely open and honest and raw as I want to be.  I'll still blog here sometimes, but many times I won't.


**I could keep a written journal, but I don't write as well that way, plus what if I die in a car crash and someone finds it in my house?  No fucking way.

We push and pull and I fall down sometimes

It is the dilemma of writing a public blog that sometimes the thing I want to write about is the thing I need to be careful writing about, either to protect someone's privacy or even to protect my own to a certain extent.  Which raises the obvious question of, "why not just write about it privately?"

And sometimes I do.  I have a journal that I scribble in, often when I'm trying to work out a thought or a feeling, or when I just want to think by engaging in the physical act of taking pen to paper. But I feel like I write differently, and more carefully, when I write for an audience, so usually when I feel compelled to write about something, and write it well, I do it here.  After nine and a half years, it's a hard habit to break.

Which brings me to my current predicament.

My heart hurts today.  That's all I'll say, because the details are tangential to the point of this post.

Over the weekend, I was voice-messaging with my high school friend Kristin, who is one of my favorite people.  She lives in Switzerland, and I haven't seen her in a million years, but we're in pretty regular communication nonetheless. Our favorite way to keep in touch is by Facebook's messenger system, which allows you to send recorded voice messages.  The wrinkle is that each recording can be no more than one minute long, so rather than type, we talk by sending a series of digital voice messages, however many it takes to form the sentences and paragraphs we mean to convey.  It actually isn't as cumbersome as it sounds, plus I don't have a problem hearing my own voice, probably from years of writing briefs and legal correspondence via dictation when I was in private practice.

Anyway. I was explaining my situation to Kristin, who, in addition to being a wonderful and wise friend, is also a therapist, so she's a great listener and gives good advice.  And I didn't really need advice so much as validation of my own sense of what I already knew I needed to do, which Kristin was happy to provide.

But one of the things that really struck me was when she told me that she could hear the pain in my voice, and that even though it sucks to be hurting, it's healthy that I'm allowing myself to feel and express the pain  - "you're in it," was how she described it - rather than bottle it up or repress it.  A couple of other people have made the same observation.

Which, in a way, I find comforting.  Because as much as I'm feeling heartsick today - some of it exacerbated by a lack of sleep plus the exhaustion that comes from crying - I also know that feeling like this means that I was willing to put myself out there, that I was willing to risk being hurt by allowing myself to be emotionally open and honest.  It's how I've said I want to live my life, so at least I'm practicing what I preach.

There's something to be said for that.

Put your pitchforks down.

When I got home today, J informed me that his phone had been lighting up with text messages and calls from various people who have read my recent blog posts. I'm not sure why today was the day everyone chose to get in touch - what I've been writing about the past few days is recurring dreams and me going back to my family's last name, neither of which really have any bearing on him.

In any event, everyone is very concerned that my posts are an indication that things have gone south and that our amicable separation has hit the skids.  People want to make sure he's OK, and have suggested he tell me to stop writing.

We both had a good chuckle.

Because everything is fine.  Really and truly.  All is well.  We hang out when we're home, we take care of the kids, we do things with them on the weekend.  He'll be coming to the Outer Banks when the kids and I are there with my family.  We have a camping trip planned for the end of July.  We're working out the terms of the separation amicably, making sure that the kids will be OK and that we will be OK.

Seriously.  It's all good.

A couple of points:

• J knows I write this blog, and can read it any time he wishes.  He doesn't usually, but any time I write about him, I always write it as if he were going to read it.  Additionally, whenever I write about anything that might be sensitive, I tell him about it, just so he has a heads up.  I did that with both the Out of the Darkness and the Gonna Build a Mountain posts.  He trusts me to be fair and to protect his interests.

• Though some may feel like I am "airing dirty laundry" or violating J's privacy, I have to point out that I've been writing this blog for 8 years, and I've written extensively about our marriage.  I have never revealed anything through this space that he hasn't revealed to our friends.  He does not hide the fact that his childhood sucked and that he suffered abuse, and he doesn't have a problem with me mentioning it here. I have never gone into the details, as those are not my details to tell, where he doesn't share them with others. But in terms of the fact that it happened, he knows that I have written about it.  He doesn't have a problem with it.

• When I write, I choose my words carefully and deliberately.  If you have read my recent posts and interpreted them as either a denigration of J or a sign that our separation has become hateful and contentious, then you're ignoring the actual words I wrote.  I repeatedly and unequivocally stated that my posts were expressions and explanations of my emotional state and my thoughts about what was going on, but not a criticism of J, and that I have nothing but high regard for him as a friend and a father to my children.  I have stated that we were so different in so many ways that it made it impossible to find common ground to build a life, but I have never said that his differences make him somehow inferior (and I didn't say that because I don't believe it).  Nowhere have I written, hinted, or suggested that we aren't getting along or that there is any acrimony between us, because there isn't.  

• Don't ask me to take down my posts.  I won't.

J is heartened by the expressions of concern for him.  It's always nice to know that people care about you and worry about you.  But truly, everything's fine.

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, and I'll try not to sing out of key

An interesting - and wonderful - thing about talking (or writing) about things that are difficult and that people don't often open up about, is that when you do, others who have been or are going through the same thing feel a kinship.  They realize they aren't alone.  They realize it's OK to talk about it.  They want the catharsis of talking about it.

Since I wrote my "Out of the Dark" post, so many friends, from all different walks of life, have reached out to me to offer their love and support.  And some also say, "oh my god, you are exactly describing what it was like for me.  It's like you're inside my head."

I've got dinner dates and phone dates and extensive email exchanges, all just from talking about what the past year or so in an unhealthy relationship was like for me.  It makes me feel like people have my back, and it makes me feel gratified that other people know that I have theirs.

I love that this blog has created another form of community for me, and is strengthening the community I already have.

The truth is, everybody's dealing with their shit.  Everyone has demons.  Everyone feels inadequate and lonely sometimes.  We all just want to love and be loved, and wish it weren't so hard.

In the last year, I've had a hard time blogging regularly - I was depressed and overwhelmed and feeling like I couldn't organize my thoughts to write about them.

Now that I'm feeling like my head is clearer and my mojo is returning, I can write again.  And I'm so, so glad. I love this little space on the interwebs, and the love it gives me in return.

Talk to me so you can see, oh, what's going on...

"Hello... [tap tap tap] ... is this thing on?"

It's been a weird month or so.  For a while I felt very fragmented and unfocused, largely because of depression cycle that I went through.  But I powered through it and it passed, followed by a period of great clarity.

was 

Like Thorough at Walden Pond, I'm trying to live deliberately.  Which is great, in terms of my desire to focus on my goals and tackle them, and in particular build my coaching business.

But kind of boring in terms of any interesting resulting blog posts.  I go through periods when every little thing that happens to me brings to mind a funny (I hope) or engaging way to tell a funny story in this space I'm occupying here.  But right now is not one of those periods.  

I did have a kickass ski day up at Copper Mountain last Friday.  I was 10 minutes away from the mountain when I realized I had forgotten my ski boots.  

"Fuck it, I guess I'm renting today."

Then I thought about the fact that my skis are 8 or 9 years old -- dinosaurs, in terms of the advances that have been made in ski design and technology lately.  "Hell, if I'm going to rent, I might as well demo some new skis and see what all the fuss is about."

So the nice young hippie working at the ski shop fitted me out in a pair of brand new K2 Superburnins.  And I proceeded to have the time of my life, while realizing what the fuss is indeed all about.

It's about precision and control.  

I am a good athlete, and I am a decent skier, particularly given that I didn't learn how to do it until I was 28.  And what I really like to do is go really fast down steep inclines.  But I've always felt that notwithstanding my willingness to let myself fall down the mountain the way I do, I haven't been exactly safe -- I've had the sense of skirting a very fine line between fast, fun skiing and crashing horribly out of control.  

No longer.  On these skis, I was still really fast, but totally in control and carving turns in a way I've never been able to before.  It was a totally different skiing experience.

I obsessed about the skis all day Saturday, doing Google searches and finding last year's model (which is essentially the same ski) for sale at a number of different places.  Including one retailer in Seattle that was having a close-out on the skis in my size, which I guess isn't that popular a seller because I'm such a shrimp.  What started out as a $850 pair of skis was eventually marked down to $370, by the time they took all the discounts at checkout.

So I bought them.  

And was able to afford them because of my new-found focus on building my coaching business.  I'm really, really determined to grow it to the point that in two years, I will be able to pay off all debts, fix up my million-year-old house, and no longer have to work full time if I don't want to.  I've signed a bunch of new coaches recently and am very excited about helping them build *their* businesses so they can achieve their goals as well.  It's pretty cool.  And it's working - every month I earn more than the previous month, so I'm chipping away at my target, bit by bit.

You can read more about it here.

So that's what's going on with me lately.

Looking for love in all the right places

I spent a lovely weekend reconnecting with old friends and meeting a new one.

Well, "meeting" in the sense that we had never actually met in person, because the truth is, we both felt like we already knew each other.  Back when I was a baby blogger and learning my way around the blogging community, I started reading Lisa's blog, PoliTits (at that time, she blogged under the moniker "DCup") which was linked on Lemon Gloria, my high school friend's blog.  I thought the name "PoliTits" was hilarious, and soon discovered that in addition to being of my political ilk (read:  a big ol' bleeding heart like me), DCup/Lisa was funny and warm and smart and a terrific writer.  And it wasn't just a political blog -- she wrote with heart and humor and raw honesty about her family.  I was a new mom at the time and whenever I experienced a crisis of confidence about my mothering skills, I appreciated her wry wisdom and advice, and her reasonable approach to dealing with children (she's a proponent of Benign Neglect, a refreshing antidote to the type of helicopter parenting that seems to be the prevailing approach among my peers).

So I mustered up the courage to leave her some comments on her blog, and she was always gracious in responding, and soon she started leaving me comments, and then we would email about various things from time to time, and then we were Facebook buddies, and before I knew it, I had a true friend, albeit one I had never actually laid eyes on.

She lives just outside of Atlanta, so when Kathleen and I planned our trip to Atlanta, I got in touch with Lisa to see about meeting for coffee.  We settled on a Starbucks halfway between us.  As I pulled into the parking lot Saturday morning, I noticed a woman walking up the sidewalk and recognized her immediately and she recognized me immediately and we waved and it was like meeting up with an old friend that I just hadn't seen in a long time, rather than one I had never met.

"Cheeeeeeese!"

There was none of that initial awkwardness that might come from a Match.com first date.  We sat down and immediately started talking about her kids and my kids and writing and marriage and politics, and we knew each others' back stories (mostly).  And she's as cool as I thought she would be.  Easy to talk to, generous of spirit, intelligent.  It was similar to the experience I had meeting Anne last year -- just hanging out and catching up with an old friend.  There was no bullshit about it.

This crazy blogging community is a funny thing.  I get the sense that for many people, the ease of interacting online fosters a certain wariness about face-to-face interaction.  You can be anyone you want to be if you're limiting your contact with people to that which is made through the ether, when you are simply sitting in front of your computer, in the comfort and safety of your own home or office.

And so can everyone else.  Meaning that cyber-friendships can be, and often are, between people who have utterly misrepresented themselves, whether in their physical appearance or their life circumstances or whatever.

But nonetheless, my blogging friendships are very real and very important to me, and at least in my experience, the people I have befriended are exceedingly honest about who and what they are.  And I care about them.  When I see a Facebook status update by Moosie or Suz -- neither of whom I have ever met -- I am as interested as I am in those posted by my IRL friends.

Plus, as Lisa noted on her blog yesterday, life is to be lived.  Take chances.  Reach out and connect with people, regardless of the medium.  It's worth it.

I'm not sure if it should be considered advice or a warning, but in any event, I'm honored

I received an email letting me know that this blog has been featured on a counseling website in an article about the 50 best blogs for marriage advice.

I don't know what it means for the state of your relationship if you're looking to me for advice, but at least I'm quirky and honest!  In any event, I'm gratified if I can provide any insight, information, or even just comfort for anyone looking for it.

Apparently, the traditional 3-year gift is leather. Rraawr.

Happy blog-iversary to me, happy blog-iversary to me...

I just realized today that a couple of weeks ago was my 3-year blog-iversary. I started this little piece of the internet in Hawaii, when I was there looking for a place to live. It was my way of keeping a journal and keeping up with family and friends who wanted to know about the details of the impending move and my life as a newlywed.

Over the years, it has chronicled both the mundane details of daily life and the emotional highs and lows of going through life -- my relationships with my friends and family, births and illnesses and deaths and triumphs and sadnesses. Struggling with depression. Life in Hawaii. The birth of my child, and the joy and hilarity he has brought into my life. Moving to Denver. The impending birth of The Joey. Trying to be a good mom. Learning how to speak "Aussie."

In the process, this blog has brought me new friends and reconnected me with old ones. I went to high school with Lisa, and we found each other on Facebook before finding each other's blogs. And it turns out that her husband, Nick, is law partners with a good friend of mine from college, who is married to one of my sorority sisters. And by clicking on links on Lisa's blogroll, I became friends with DCup aka The Other Lisa, through whom I "met" Dawn, through whom I "met" Suz. I was friends with Elizabeth before she started blogging, but through her I became friends with Anne (whom I've actually met in person -- she's awesome) and her husband Fred.

Not to mention the regular readers, some of whom I know from my non-internet life, and some of whom I know only through this blog, who regularly comment or send emails.

Even just tonight, I got an email from a woman who was a couple of years behind me in school in India. Apparently she has been reading the blog for awhile (after finding it through Lisa's blog), but only recently did she realize who I am --the older sister of her first boyfriend.

I love shit like that.

Particularly when I was in Hawaii and feeling so isolated, this blog was something of a lifeline. A way of feeling like I had a posse, even if I had never met most of them and they were thousands of miles away. And now it's just a regular, wonderful part of my life.

As a blog-iversary present, I'd love to hear from you (you don't need to send me something leather). Share a crazy small-world internet or blogging story, or just leave a comment and say "hello." You all make my life richer, and I appreciate it more than I can say.

This is why I love the internets

My friend Lisa is getting married tomorrow. I haven't seen Lisa for almost 20 years, but we reconnected last year via Facebook. We linked to each others' blogs and we leave comments when it's something we can say publicly but email when the conversation needs to be a little more private. Even though it's been ages since we've seen each other, I feel like she is a good friend and am all excited and thinking about her. Lisa, if you're reading this, have an outstanding day. Big hugs.

Facebook has also put me in touch with a huge number of people from both high school and college, including mutual friends that I share with Lisa. In fact, Nick, Lisa's fiance, is law partners with a guy who I was good friends with at UVa., and who is married to one of my sorority sisters with whom I am still in close contact. I discovered this connection when I was online researching DC law firms, came across Scott's law firm's website, and realized that Nick, one of the partners, was the same guy pictured on Lisa's blog in their "save the date" pictures.

Crazy small world. We are all getting together in DC in a couple of months, when Jason and Zeke and I go to DC to visit my family for Thanksgiving.

Susan, the sorority sister who is married to the guy who is law partners with Lisa's soon-to-be-husband, is part of a group of college friends that I continue to maintain contact with, largely via email (and also Christmas cards). A group of us is planning to go on a cruise next year. All of the planning has been done via email, and the reservations will be made and paid for online.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Kathleen needed some help writing a brief that needed to be filed ASAP. We commenced finishing the brief together by emailing drafts back and forth. The legal research that I needed to do to finish certain sections was all done online.

My friend Elizabeth is currently living in Norway. We play Scrabble online via Facebook, communicate via email or Facebook message, and have video conferences via Skype.

My friend Kristin, who is also an old friend from school in India, is also good friends with Lisa, and is also on Facebook. We recently reconnected on Facebook, but now correspond regularly via email. She is writing a book, and emailed me a draft to read.

I have become cyber-friends, via this blog, with a number of wonderful people. Suz, HKW, moosie, Anne, Dawn and DCup are all people I have never met, but I nonetheless feel a connection with them. They have supported me from afar via their comments and emails, and when I could, I tried to do the same for them.

Etcetera.

I don't shop anywhere but online. I read my news online. I watch television shows online. I keep in touch with my family and friends online, through correspondence, exchanging photos, video conferencing, social networking sites, you name it. I run my businesses largely online or through email.

What blows my mind is that I've only been online for about the past 11 years or so, but now I can't even imagine how I ever lived without it.

Technology is amazing.

Compromising

I originally started this blog as a way of keeping up with family and friends from far away (yes, I started it in Atlanta, but knowing that we would be going to Hawaii soon). It's evolved from being a newsletter of sorts to a diary of sorts. In addition to talking about the mundane details of my daily life, I've talked about depression and motherhood and gotten into emotional stuff.

The more I've written about what's going on with me personally, the more I've vowed not to self-censor. Only one time did I alter a post, and it was at the request of people that I love and for legitimate reasons. I was still able to get my point across, but without potentially enflaming an already flammable situation, so I didn't feel too compromised.

But as more and more people that know me in The Real World come to read this blog, the more I feel constrained to self-edit either to avoid unnecessary conflict or strife with people that might be the subjects of a particular post. It's a problem of my own making -- I freely talk about this site and invite people to read it. But as a result, I'm finding that if I want to talk about some of the heavy shit I'm going through, I either have to make it so vague as to render it incomprehensible to anyone but me, or simply create a new, completely anonymous account and start a different blog in which names and places might be changed to protect the guilty, but all other details can be discussed.

My life out here can be very lonely. I spend alot of time by myself, and I don't have any close girlfriends here that I can talk to. So this writing is kind of my therapy. And if I have to do it in a way that's constrained, in order to be sensitive to people's privacy -- including my own -- it kind of loses its value to me.

I haven't made a final decision as to what to do about it yet.

In the meantime, I guess I'll be vague.

An iconic movie from my teenage years is The Breakfast Club. So angsty, so Brat-Pack-y, so "oh, John Hughes feels my pain."

It's also got some really good acting, particularly by Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall.

There's a scene in which the kids are talking about how misunderstood and put upon they are by their parents, and Ally Sheedy's character -- the basket case -- is asked, "what do they do to you?"

And in one of the more perfect line deliveries I've ever seen, you can almost see her heart breaking as she responds, "they ignore me."

That line always killed me. Because as rough as it is to be overtly mistreated by people that are supposed to love you, it's even worse when they just act like you're not there.

The Ten

My 10 "Excellent" nominees, in no particular order:

1.    Lemon Gloria 

2.    PoliTits

3.    Good American Wife

4.    Striped Socks and Skinny Jeans

5.    I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet A Wino

6.    Stuff White People Like

7.    *moosie*

8.    Lawyerish

9.    The Wonder Keeping the Stars Apart

10.    The Slightly Disorganized Mind

Thank God for my crazy brain, and for all of you

The truth is, I don't live a very exciting life.

So many people are all, "oooh, you live in Hawaii! Whee! Paradise blah blee bloo."

But it's not like I spend my days hiking through the jungle admiring waterfalls and vistas like the cast of Lost.

In fact, because I work from home, my exposure to the outside world is pretty limited. Yes, I'm in Hawaii, but I spend most of my time sitting in my normal suburban house working on a computer and occasionally getting up to eat, exercise or do laundry or dishes. Twice a day I drive up the road to drop Zeke off at school and pick him up, and occasionally I'll detour to the drug store or grocery store for provisions. But I spend alot of time by myself in my office, so to an alien observing me from Planet Xorcam, my existence is kind of boring.

But I don't feel that way, thank God -- at least not most of the time.

Because I've got my phone, so I can talk to my family or my friends and keep up with what they're doing.

And I've got my imagination, so I can perseverate on why I had the most amazingly complex dream last night involving riding on the space shuttle with The Connells, a band I have not listened to or thought about since I was at UVa., while they played me a belated birthday serenade. And yes, I second your "WTF??"

And most of all, I've got the internet, so I can read the news and stay current on my blogger friends and feel like I'm out in the world, rather than on a tiny island in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean. Even sitting alone in my little office, I feel like I have a little community I'm a part of, that keeps up with me and checks up on me when I'm down, and that engages me in something other than my own humdrum life.


Bless you all. You keep me sane. Sort of.

Chabon on Obama

This is not a political blog. Though I am extremely interested in politics and obviously have opinions about what's going on in the election, there are so many others that write about it far, far more adroitly than I could possibly hope to, that I just leave it to them.

But on this Super Tuesday Eve, I feel compelled to provide this link to an essay about Barack Obama, written by Michael Chabon, my favorite author and a man whose brilliance with the written word is humbling and awe-inspiring.

Let's fix this mess we're in. Get out and vote tomorrow.

Who are you?

Dear Internets,

I've been writing this blog for over a year and a half. At first it was just a way to stay in touch with friends, so I got, like, 5 hits a day, but over time my readership has (slightly) expanded and when I check my stats lately (and I do, I'll admit) I'm noticing some regulars whose IP addresses I don't recognize. And I find it fascinating that there are people out there who know all of this stuff about me and check up on my daily comings and goings, but I have no idea who they are.

So I was wondering if y'all could do me a favor. If you're reading this, could you leave a comment and say hello and let me know something about you. I don't need names and serial numbers, if you don't want to leave them. Just a note so I can have a little glimpse of who's out there.

Can't wait to hear from you,
Love, Wendy