On My Tenth Blogoversary: Thoughts Two

Today is the day, I think!  Ten whole years wasted.  Down the drain.  Never to come back.   Aggro, unpleasant learning.   But also fun, purest joy, happy learning, making new invisible friends.  So good.

Things I have learned about blogging:

1.  Facts, things, evidence, theories:  Those remain and continue to matter.  Specific people in the public eye:  Not so much.   But we can't toss the people out of the stories, because they are like the way a good meal scents the air or the nice secret spice in the cake:  They draw the readers in.

It's not enough to talk about the people alone, however.  That way we end up no better than those who say all feminists are like Valerie Solanas and  that because she existed there is no basis to the idea that gender equality is a good goal.  Reversed, this means that I shouldn't have written so much about Rush Limbaugh and his misogynies (though there is something useful to learn from him and his ditto-heads.)

2.  I was prepared for being hated by many across various political aisles.  What I didn't expect, ten years ago, were the circular firing squads inside movements I thought were on my side.  Older and wiser I am, now.  I even get the reasons for most of the fights.  And some chasms cannot be skipped over, though we can sometimes hold hands across the chasm.  That means pragmatic unions with people who partially believe in the same things may be the best we can achieve, at the present stage of political and societal evolution.  ---  And indeed, Virginia, there ARE topics you don't want to write about unless you want a flame war.  Doesn't even matter what you say about those topics (especially if you let readers comment.)

3.  Something you may not know about me (and wish you knew, heh!):  I write a lot.  I write a lot for myself, on topics quite different from feminism, and I care about many, many types of unfairness and other large problems in the current societies.  I just don't write about them here because this blog is for a very specific type of set of readers and mostly covers stuff I think is not covered enough elsewhere or stuff I believe I can elucidate, based on what I happen to know.

This means that if I don't write about something it doesn't mean anything.  It doesn't mean I regard the topic unimportant or important and it doesn't express my views on the omitted topic.  Although it could mean that the topic is something I don't know well.

Most environmental issues fall under that category, however much I care about them (and I do).   I'm also sometimes so late on some current event (waiting for the information to be gathered and for all the facts to be known) that by the time I'm ready to write about it the world has moved on.  Picking a topic early guarantees that one rides the wave but introduces the danger that one falls off the surf board with bad facts.  Giving bad "facts" is Not Good. 

4.  Speaking of timing, it is possible to "write too early" on other types of topics in the news than those where the facts are not yet in.   That has happened to me a lot.  It's of no importance to anyone but me, but it makes a goddess grumpy.

5.  Fun posts.  I should have had more of those.  More chocolaty posts, more leaping through the air for just the joy of moving posts.  More music posts, given that I know nothing about music.  More posts about the inner and outer beauty of humans, including the surface beauty of men. I was probably trained (by the background hum in the society) to regard commenting on the latter as inappropriate.  But that training seems to be gendered and it could be interesting to reverse the way these things usually go.  And yes, the border control to the land of sexist objectification is very close there.

6.  I haven't made money out of this blog, though my wonderful readers have just about covered its costs (excluding the opportunity costs of my labor).

7.  I go too deep into whatever problem I see As An Onion.  I should just strip the top layer and leave the next layer for another post.  But then perhaps I don't go deep enough, after all?  No way of knowing how those I converse with think about this.

8.  Love, love, love the learning my readers offer me, for nothing!  I've learned so much on this blog, and not only how to make a perfect omelet, though that, too.  So my humble thanks to you all.  And the green gored skirt a wonderful reader bought me many years ago!  Still my very favorite to look at.

9.  Blogging and struggling with a book project don't go together terribly well.  If writing is like opening a vein over the computer (from here), then writing on two or three different projects simultaneously causes permanent anemia, fatigue and a carpal tunnel syndrome.

10.  What next?  I haven't decided on anything because now it is party time (you can send presents).  I need to see if my voice still provides something of value that is not already otherwise available.  But I do love writing.  So thanks to you all who have had patience with me and this blog and of course, Echidne, who has chosen to use me as her flawed vessel.