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Learning to blog again -- and why
Tuesday, January 4th, 2022 12:23 pmI spent some time this morning reading over my blog entries from 2006, when this was a Live Journal blog. Got reminded of why blogging is so useful for an aspiring memoirist.
Not just that it answers questions like 'when was it that I did that Vision Quest'? But also, the dailiness of the narrative, with its mix of big-picture ideas and the minutiae of some random day, makes it easier for me to bring forward the differences between that time and this.
... which might be vital for writing about history, especially if I want to avoid anachronisms.
Writing yesterday about my childhood home, I was appalled to discover how much I had forgotten, and how little of it came forward to be corrected minutes or hours later. For example: I distinctly recall painting my bedroom by myself. I distinctly recall my mother making a set of bedroom curtains out of bedsheets, with pleat-pockets and hooks we slid into them by hand. I'm pretty sure the curtains were yellow, and solid color. Which helped me decide that I 'recalled' the bedroom being yellow when we moved in, and blue later when I repainted. But it could have been green, and I probably asked for lavender but I bet my mom said no. I remember moving the location of bed and desk at least twice during the 11 years I lived there, but beyond that? Nothing.
This may not bother my reader, of course, who both 'doesn't know what the facts were' and doesn't care. But it bothers me, snagging my attention in some obscure and pointless way.
Each entry brings me back to a specific time and place, often with specific other people even though I haven't named them. So that's useful.
Makes me realize, though, that my current entries aren't really doing that at all.
Is that just because I'm trying to start a memoir process instead of a diary? Is it the passage of time and the narrowing of my memory? Is it because many of my days have so little in them?
I feel like this entry isn't finished, but I've nothing more to say.
--
Hours later, after reading a story by Tom Hanks, and washing my hair, and spending time on Zoom ...
This body is very stiff lately -- is it the weather? my age? the fact that I'm spending so very much time sitting in a chair? D, all of the above.
Today the outdoor temperature was 24F when I got up, and only 29 when I left for Pilates. By the time I visited the supply van to pick up PPE (personal protective equipment) for work, it was all of 31F. My down coat was enough, as long as I wasn't walking into the wind. Today I only needed masks, but the van carries lots of other things -- gloves and gowns, booties and hairnets, hand sanitizer and bleach wipes for our equipment, probably other things that only nurses need. The van exists, in the first place, because we are no longer converging on the office for weekly in-person meetings, so the office supply room is far out of the way for most of us, serving the five-county area in our different sections.
Today I'm experimenting with fasting ... or at least, limiting my intake. During the first year of Covid I gained a few pounds, and during the last few months I've gained a few more. I don't want to get on the diet rollercoaster, and I'm also not comfortable at this weight and girth. So I'm experimenting with eating less and getting more exercise.
I'm mostly impressed with how much my recent eating has been looking like an addiction process. I'm aware of feeling frustrated with Covid and the changes it has made in my work life. I'm aware of having lots of feelings about the country's current political b.s. index. I miss being able to visit the people I love, especially the ones who live far away. So lately it's been good to ask, "Am I hungry? or just annoyed / frustrated / irritated /angry /sad /physically uncomfortable /anxious ... ?" Quite often it isn't hunger that I've been trying to feed.
I'm noticing that it's time to re-start a few of the daily practices that have been useful at various times in my life. Meditation, for one. Divination and music for two more. Just today I realized, reading over the entries from 15 years ago, that somehow the constant background music has disappeared from my life. My hearing has deteriorated, but that doesn't mean I can't listen to music. I wonder why I don't?
Amanda Gorman's poetry continues to grab me in a lot of places -- emotionally, and just the sound of it, the amazing rhymes and associations, her rhythms. I'm suspecting that her lifetime body of work will be just stunning, and I wish I could be around in 50 years to read it all.
--
I said I wanted this to start being memoir. I'm tired tonight, but here's a start.
When I was seven or eight, my mother started insisting that I had to make hand-made gifts for various people in our extended family. She taught me how to do Crewel embroidery, with its amazing array of different stitches that produced different visual textures. I liked it, but I was never very good at it, and her judgment of my lack of fine stitches was a lot to bear.
She taught me to do a craft called Hardanger, in which individual threads are pulled out of a piece of fabric to make a pattern of solids and holes, sometimes with a replacement thread that caught and twisted the threads it passed.
I remember feeling imposed upon by the coercion and annoyed that I was spending all this time making gifts for people I didn't much like, using techniques that I felt I could never master. By the time I was in junior high I had given the whole thing up.
I only mention this to say that in the past 25 years or so I've done a lot of embroidery, needlepoint, and even a little Hardanger, and enjoyed it all. I finally realize that it was learning a little bit as a child that made me think I could learn to do it, when I arrived at the stage of life where I wanted to do it -- you know, after the child-rearing, after the career-striving, after the big-muscle athleticism of skiing and sailing. Or, now that I sometimes need handwork to be doing so the person who doesn't have the strength to converse won't feel that they're imposing on my by needing my company, won't fear that I'm 'being bored' by them.
Mom taught me to sew on buttons, though I can't quite coordinate my hands to do it well now. She taught me how to sew a hem with invisible stitches, ditto (though I've certainly hemmed, shortened and lengthened plenty of clothing over the decades). She didn't teach me to make clothing, but arranged for me to have enough lessons so I can do it if I have to (but I never learned to like it.)
That's enough for tonight, my heart isn't in it.
Not just that it answers questions like 'when was it that I did that Vision Quest'? But also, the dailiness of the narrative, with its mix of big-picture ideas and the minutiae of some random day, makes it easier for me to bring forward the differences between that time and this.
... which might be vital for writing about history, especially if I want to avoid anachronisms.
Writing yesterday about my childhood home, I was appalled to discover how much I had forgotten, and how little of it came forward to be corrected minutes or hours later. For example: I distinctly recall painting my bedroom by myself. I distinctly recall my mother making a set of bedroom curtains out of bedsheets, with pleat-pockets and hooks we slid into them by hand. I'm pretty sure the curtains were yellow, and solid color. Which helped me decide that I 'recalled' the bedroom being yellow when we moved in, and blue later when I repainted. But it could have been green, and I probably asked for lavender but I bet my mom said no. I remember moving the location of bed and desk at least twice during the 11 years I lived there, but beyond that? Nothing.
This may not bother my reader, of course, who both 'doesn't know what the facts were' and doesn't care. But it bothers me, snagging my attention in some obscure and pointless way.
Each entry brings me back to a specific time and place, often with specific other people even though I haven't named them. So that's useful.
Makes me realize, though, that my current entries aren't really doing that at all.
Is that just because I'm trying to start a memoir process instead of a diary? Is it the passage of time and the narrowing of my memory? Is it because many of my days have so little in them?
I feel like this entry isn't finished, but I've nothing more to say.
--
Hours later, after reading a story by Tom Hanks, and washing my hair, and spending time on Zoom ...
This body is very stiff lately -- is it the weather? my age? the fact that I'm spending so very much time sitting in a chair? D, all of the above.
Today the outdoor temperature was 24F when I got up, and only 29 when I left for Pilates. By the time I visited the supply van to pick up PPE (personal protective equipment) for work, it was all of 31F. My down coat was enough, as long as I wasn't walking into the wind. Today I only needed masks, but the van carries lots of other things -- gloves and gowns, booties and hairnets, hand sanitizer and bleach wipes for our equipment, probably other things that only nurses need. The van exists, in the first place, because we are no longer converging on the office for weekly in-person meetings, so the office supply room is far out of the way for most of us, serving the five-county area in our different sections.
Today I'm experimenting with fasting ... or at least, limiting my intake. During the first year of Covid I gained a few pounds, and during the last few months I've gained a few more. I don't want to get on the diet rollercoaster, and I'm also not comfortable at this weight and girth. So I'm experimenting with eating less and getting more exercise.
I'm mostly impressed with how much my recent eating has been looking like an addiction process. I'm aware of feeling frustrated with Covid and the changes it has made in my work life. I'm aware of having lots of feelings about the country's current political b.s. index. I miss being able to visit the people I love, especially the ones who live far away. So lately it's been good to ask, "Am I hungry? or just annoyed / frustrated / irritated /angry /sad /physically uncomfortable /anxious ... ?" Quite often it isn't hunger that I've been trying to feed.
I'm noticing that it's time to re-start a few of the daily practices that have been useful at various times in my life. Meditation, for one. Divination and music for two more. Just today I realized, reading over the entries from 15 years ago, that somehow the constant background music has disappeared from my life. My hearing has deteriorated, but that doesn't mean I can't listen to music. I wonder why I don't?
Amanda Gorman's poetry continues to grab me in a lot of places -- emotionally, and just the sound of it, the amazing rhymes and associations, her rhythms. I'm suspecting that her lifetime body of work will be just stunning, and I wish I could be around in 50 years to read it all.
--
I said I wanted this to start being memoir. I'm tired tonight, but here's a start.
When I was seven or eight, my mother started insisting that I had to make hand-made gifts for various people in our extended family. She taught me how to do Crewel embroidery, with its amazing array of different stitches that produced different visual textures. I liked it, but I was never very good at it, and her judgment of my lack of fine stitches was a lot to bear.
She taught me to do a craft called Hardanger, in which individual threads are pulled out of a piece of fabric to make a pattern of solids and holes, sometimes with a replacement thread that caught and twisted the threads it passed.
I remember feeling imposed upon by the coercion and annoyed that I was spending all this time making gifts for people I didn't much like, using techniques that I felt I could never master. By the time I was in junior high I had given the whole thing up.
I only mention this to say that in the past 25 years or so I've done a lot of embroidery, needlepoint, and even a little Hardanger, and enjoyed it all. I finally realize that it was learning a little bit as a child that made me think I could learn to do it, when I arrived at the stage of life where I wanted to do it -- you know, after the child-rearing, after the career-striving, after the big-muscle athleticism of skiing and sailing. Or, now that I sometimes need handwork to be doing so the person who doesn't have the strength to converse won't feel that they're imposing on my by needing my company, won't fear that I'm 'being bored' by them.
Mom taught me to sew on buttons, though I can't quite coordinate my hands to do it well now. She taught me how to sew a hem with invisible stitches, ditto (though I've certainly hemmed, shortened and lengthened plenty of clothing over the decades). She didn't teach me to make clothing, but arranged for me to have enough lessons so I can do it if I have to (but I never learned to like it.)
That's enough for tonight, my heart isn't in it.