Why I'm not "Just Sayin..".

I'm in a soapbox mood today, so indulge me.  

I am a big lover of so many things, as you probably know by now.   There isn't a day that I wake up to weather I don't love, there isn't a time of day that is less beautiful than any other to me.   I try to take everyone at face value, to appreciate the wholeness of a person, even the rougher spots that we all have, and sometimes show.

What really gets under my skin is people trying to "get under my skin."  I have, at certain times of my life, been a magnet for critics, would-be Henry Higgins, evangelists of all denominations.  Maybe I wear my heart on my sleeve so obviously that I look malleable, dewy-eyed and innocent, just waiting for the "right" idea to make me real.

Once, about a year ago, I was in the local mall with the girls when I was approached by a very aggressive salesman.  He waltzed over to me from his kiosk, gave me a sympathetic cluck and a tilt of the head, and said something to the effect of "poor mama, you look so old and tired."  Somehow, by putting me in this sad little category, he got me to slow down enough where he could step in front of me, and block my way.  The moment he got me to stop, he gave me the hard sell on hand cream.  $40 dollars later, I walked away with some lotion, a green vinyl bag, and a bruised ego.   The cream, by the way, was crap.  Which matched the way I felt.  I took a small comfort in knowing that at least he failed with his attempt to sell me eyecream "all those wrinkles, ma'am!" 

In each day, each of us is bound to cross paths with people going through trials, sometimes acting out aggressions or envy or need or disappointment.   It is taking me years to see it, but these actions don't really have much to do with me, other than the fact that when do I encounter them, I often take them too much to heart.   Could you guess that for days after that fleecing at the mall, I would stand in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to gauge the extent of my wrinkling?   Ugh. 

As I said, I have worked for years to accept the wholeness of people, the good and the bad, to look past faults and transgressions, sometimes to the detriment of myself.   I think I've done this in part because I long for that universal acceptance myself.    It's an unrealistic thing to expect from everyone you meet, but still.  It's a fantasy I'm working to let go of.  I remind myself that there will be no unicorn appearing in my backyard this afternoon, either.

The world is full of the need to project the mean, the critic, the unaccepting.   The worst is when these are couched in the guise of "friendship" or "help" (like the lotion salesman).   

Rhetorically, these attacks seek to throw the equilibrium of the listener.   Kindly delivered, they are like poisoned apples.  Seemingly harmless, but meant for injury.  Sometimes these friendly attacks come as "No offense, but...," which of course is just a warning of impending offense.  That "but" seeks to absolve the messenger of responsibility.   It's a gentle delivery, as the messenger hopes to injure but still remain in the "friend" category.   Nowadays we call those kinds of friends "frenemies."

The latest type of rhetorical poisoned apple is "I'm just sayin.."  Instead of prefacing an attack, it comes at the end, as a way of softening the blow.  Again, this sort of expression seeks to remove the messenger from responsibility for his or her own hurtful words.  In person, it might be accompanied with a sheepish shrug, or a little kick at the ground and an "aw shucks." It's an I-just-can't-help-what-I-feel sort of expression.   

To these expressions I say this:  Bullshit.  I think we should be responsible for our words, for the nastiness we throw out into the world. 

If a person has the chutzpah to let the words out of  her mouth, then she needs to own them, good or bad.  If you want to sell me some hand cream, don't make me feel ugly to do it.  Own it.  Sell the product, not a poor image of me to myself.  If you want to attack me, just do it.  Don't preface it with a request that I forget you said it.   Don't end it with the lie that you can't help your feelings.  That you're "just" saying.  Because, friend, if you're "just sayin," your words are poisoned.  And you put the poison there.

I'm asking too much to remove these time-honored means of attack and persuasion from language.  I'm probably asking too much of myself to disregard them entirely.  But I am promising that I won't ever use them.   And I'm promising that when I am sent these poison apples, I won't bite.   You shouldn't either.

On the blog, part 1

It's the week of my "Blog-o-versary," and I've got blogging on my mind. Okay, I've frequently got blogging on my mind anyway. Just ask my family. Ada routinely points out when something would be "good on the blog." And now I have people actually asking when I'm going to post, which I find oddly thrilling--as though someone has ordered a subscription to my "magazine."

Except this isn't a magazine. Or a diary. Or a gallery. Or a conventional conversation. Or an essay. I would like it to be all of those things, and it has shadows of each playing behind it.

What is this blog, anyway, and why am I so heady for writing it?

The first thing I can say for sure about it is that I am writing almost every day now, and that is the biggest boon of this blog. There were many periods of my life in which I wrote on a daily basis: As an undergraduate, I majored in English (quelle surprise!) and wrote papers constantly. For various other jobs I've had: I wrote ad copy for a publishing copy, and promotional materials and procedure for a university, and a human resources manual for a private company. In graduate school, I wrote countless papers on rhetoric, composition, education, and all sorts of topics related to these. And I started writing poetry. In earnest.
In between these times, I've written overly long letters to friends and intimidated them unintentionally by the length of my notes--a few people been apologetic that they can't write back at such length.
Even when I was teaching English, I wrote the assignments with my students--that is to say, I assigned myself the task of writing the same topics the students did--a very worthwhile exercise for determining if an assignment "worked" or "flopped." In the same vein, I wrote daily "feedback" for myself to recap the day's discussions, and to figure out if I was taking the class in the right direction. I also wrote massive letters of feedback for each student, and my assignments were written with the detail of a novella (quelle surprise, you say).

During that time, we also started the process for adoption Ada, and as part of it, I was asked to write a brief history of myself. You can imagine how shocked the social worker was to receive my 26-page, single-spaced piece. Brief it was not, but important for me to write, yes. And important that Ada have it one day for herself, to see me at that moment, on the brink of parenthood. The real audience for that history, as I pointed out to the social worker, was me. And future Ada.

I am verbose.

But for a few years, I was silent, at least in writing. My letters dwindled to postcards, my poems dried up. My essays and pontifications in writings....gone.


Some of my energy went to making art--sewing, painting, etc--but much of it went to folding clothes, cleaning bathrooms, morning sickness, and just life. I wasn't able to blend the writing and the doing.

Enter the blog.


As you know from this post alone, I continue to pour my heart out. From a rhetorical perspective, the blog is a perfect space for this type of writing. My friend La Belette Rouge wrote an amazing post today on writing her way through something without knowing her destination, and that is what my blog posts are so much of the time: writing through and creating a space.

Having a blog has allowed me to literally create a space (with images, spacing, color, photos, etc) in which I can pour my heart out and find out where I am in the world. In that regard, it's like a diary. But because of the audience of you, dear reader who has made it through this meandering, this writing has more of a shape. It is shaped like the space between me and you.


I am a generous and more selfless in real life. But on paper, I am a selfish writer, going on and on. I have never meant to intimidate with the length of the letters or the posts I write. I write and write to capture the play of words that run through my mind all the time, like insects beating against the night window. Like a lepidopterist, I pin the thoughts to the wall of the blog and examine them to see if they are light and lovely like butterflies or dark and insidious like moths. They are, invariably, both. And some fly away. And as with all collectors, it is really only me who is most pleased by my collection of words... I look back at what I've captured and I see myself.


If you have made it this far through this post, I thank you for sharing this odd and sometimes disturbing or tiresome collection. ...

Really, get real Monday—why do I blog?

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of questions from my non-blogging friends. “I don’t really get blogs in general, but yours is cute,” a friend will say. Or, “What’s it for?” Or,“What’s the point, why not just send pictures, or keep a diary?” Good questions.

I guess I wondered these things myself before I started blogging. Isn’t it a bit, well, self indulgent to keep a blog? It is sort of like a diary, but with pictures, and more importantly, an audience who is reading that diary. Which makes it sort of narcissistic, too, a bit of “look at me! Look at me!” Yikes. I don’t really mean it to be that way, but there it is…

And it’s not totally honest, either. It’s not like I’m posting the countless bad photos we take, or the disorder that seems to follow us in the course of the day. Having two little kids is messy, and exhausting, and sometimes disheartening, that’s all there is to it. That stuff doesn’t usually make it to the blog posts. At first impressions we are all sweetness and light. Hence the need for a “get real” Monday (thanks Randi, at I Have to Say).

Now I’ve concluded that keeping a blog reveals some of my more base qualities--my self-indulgent or narcissistic tendencies—talk about dirty laundry! (Look at our messy, messy studio these days!)
But honestly, doing the blog serves a bigger purpose for me, and for most bloggers, I suspect. Connection.

We are so busy, all of us! Connection is the casualty of all that “busy-ness”. How often do we see our closest friends and family? For someone like me, far removed from family, it’s not often. Of course, we are on the phone all the time, but that’s something else again.

And while we may have lots of activities with friends and colleagues, I think I’m so busy running from thing to thing, getting countless tasks “accomplished” each day, I don’t get the chance to spend time with friends the way I once did, before grown-up life happened. No lazy days at a beach swapping secrets and jokes, or late nights in the dorm, waxing philosophical and dreaming of the future. Grown-up life eats up almost all the extra energy and time, and for me, most of my mental energy gets tied up in the practical, day-to-day management of our home and family. And that’s how it should be. Our focus is our family.

With the little bit of leftover energy I have, I like to make things—crafts, food, words. I like fabric, and paper, and hand-written notes. I like to cook for my family and with my family. I like to take pictures. I like to read. I like to design little projects. I like to plan, and play.

This blog gives me a little outlet for all of these things—it helps me make new connections to other people who like to make stuff. It’s a way to update our friends and family on what we’re up to, what we’ve been thinking about. Blogging about my plans for making things makes my plans public, and that tends to make me more accountable to myself. Thinking about a blog from a rhetorical perspective, it is like a diary, a day-planner, a Christmas letter, a sewing circle, a letter, a photo album, and an email all rolled up into one.

Of course, our life is blessed in that I do get to make daily connections with my daughters, and my parents, and my best friend—my husband. Keeping a blog shortens the distance between me and the rest of the great people in my life. So that’s why I do it…for real.