No matter how honest and revealing a person is, either face-to-face or in a blog, there are certain things that are unsayable, secret, too personal.
There have been a couple of incidents at the nursing lodge lately where Anthony has behaved in a way that is disturbingly out-of-character.
The ungentling of my gentle husband’s brain is causing him to do and say things that are horrible. Taboo.
I have been trying so hard lately to be positive, but tonight, a nurse rang me asking me to try and convince Ants to take his pills. Eventually my voice on his phone worked and the nurse was able to give him his pills.
Ants was distressed and confused and aggro: this scared me.
What a wonderful nurse to ring me like that. I am so relieved to know that Ants is okay in this nursing lodge, but I am constantly anxious for him now that the dementia is happening.
Ants is coming home for the afternoon tomorrow so I’ve invited a few friends. Oh I so hope it all works out!
[Note to blogfriends: I can’t keep up with reading blogs at the moment, but will catch up soon.]
Now don’t get too excited. I haven’t jumped onto the bike yet but I am dressed in my bike riding clothes (an old tracksuit I found which seems strangely snug but it will do.)
Okay, so the plan was to get up at 4.30am and follow Ming to the dairy (around 3kms away) but two things prevented this. Firstly, I didn’t wake up and, secondly, even if I had woken up, it was too dark.
I forgave myself and decided to ride around the block (around 7kms) later in the morning but Ming reminded me that I still didn’t have a helmet. And then I got a terrible attack of hayfever and I didn’t want to contaminate my new bike with nose drippings.
So now that it’s nearly noon, I will probably leave the ride until later when the wind dies down (yes, we are experiencing those awful easterlies that make cycling so difficult.)
In the meantime, here is a picture of Gutsy9 first thing in the morning, just before I get him out of his cot/cage and take him outside to play.
Tomorrow, I will go into town and buy a helmet and a basket to put Gutsy9 in on the bike. This afternoon I will do a few laps of the driveway again. I promise!
I have often wondered this because, almost by definition, a blog is a public thing, isn’t it? When I first began blogging, a bit over a year ago, it didn’t take me long to realize just how public this kind of writing is. Comments from friends and family were encouraging and, like many, I discovered I had a ready-made audience. When people I didn’t know (other bloggers) commented, I was initially astounded but gradually I began to explore their blogs and became accustomed to the reciprocal dynamics.
A week ago, I re-started my romance novel blog. Originally this had contained posts about my life with husband, Anthony, then I decided to incorporate these into this blog and the romance novel blog lay dormant for awhile. Then, suddenly realizing I had an already written draft of a novel for Harlequin Mills and Boon that needed editing, I decided to re-motivate myself to do this editing by blogging it, bit by bit by bit. So far I am halfway through and up to Chapter 6.
BUT, when I got to Chapter 5, I was rather shocked to find that it contained some rather explicit erotic material. It wasn’t pornographic but it was odd to read something that seemed to have been written by somebody else. I was in a quandary, so (not having that many followers on that blog) I asked them what to do and it was suggested that I put an “Adult content” warning on any posts that were risque, so I did, and I posted one of these and hoped for the best. Before doing so, I asked my mother to unsubscribe but I forgot that many people who were already subscribed to the romance novel from way back (when it was autobiographical and PG!) might still be reading it.
My dad, nanna and grandparents are all in Heaven, and have been for some time, but what if Heaven has the internet now? And what if my sisters-in-law see the erotic post and show my brothers for a laugh. What if my previous workmates from the university see it? What if – OH NO! – what if Ming sees it?
Hence I am about to make the romance novel private for a couple of days until I figure out who is still on the reader list. Yes, I am going to do this right now!
I am, once again, subscribing to too many blogs but I don’t want to unsubscribe (like I had to do once before when it all got too much and there was a software glitch) because I really enjoy those blogs and I’ve even found a few new ones.
This presents a dilemma that will be familiar to most bloggers: How do I keep up with all the reading, liking and commenting as well as write my own daily post(s)?
Well you can’t, can you, so don’t even try. Read, ‘like’ and/or comment on the blogposts that interest you on any given day and leave it at that. You don’t have to read everything! Check out the title of the post and if it appeals to you, read it; if not, it’s no big deal. It isn’t a crime to not read everybody’s blog posts (especially those daily people like me!) Take the day off and delete all of your email notifications because there will be more tomorrow. – that is guaranteed!
I lost a few ‘followers’ when my bird blog evolved into something more personal and that is fine. As a novice blogger I was initially a bit sad not to hear from a couple of people anymore but, as a more seasoned blogger, I completely understand. After all, why would someone interested in birds also be interested in Parkinson’s disease?
Blogging is a strange and beautifully unpredictable world. You make friends, find commonalities, offer support, receive support and you are allowed to say anything you want to say. I find this exhilarating, but, yes, risky and even a bit frightening. When I tiptoed into this blogging world a little over a year ago I had no way of anticipating that I would become so emotionally gripped by various bloggers/people. I had no idea that I would discover friendships that would alter my own little status quo and give perspective to my little life.
Who cares about the stupid statistics? That is the one thing I have begun to loathe about blogging – this constant, daily reminder of how many ‘hits’ you’ve received. Why does that matter to us so much – are we that desperate for acknowledgement that we exist? Why are we competing?
Give me a hug, virtual or otherwise, any day!
PS. If I have lost touch with your blog it has not been intentional….
I don’t know how to tweet, or text, or play tag but I just got tagged by Susan at http://susandanielseden.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/i-am-actually-taking-a-tag-because-this-one-is-cool/
Now, she knows I have an aversion to awards but she still tagged me! Her punishment is the Hot Potato Award which, if you read her above post, is something she has been craving for some time.
For those of you who don’t know, the HPA is an award I created some time ago as my way of avoiding award nominations, not because I am ungrateful or ungracious, just because I was too lazy and inept to understand all the rules! The HPA is an award that comes with no rules – you just get it (if I give it to you – hahahaha!)
Susan’s blog is brilliant – check it out!
Okay, back to my texting lesson.
I have read enough posts lately to know that I am not alone in my award anxiety/aversion. Despite the gratitude I feel towards other bloggers who have nominated me for various awards, most of the awards themselves, though well-intentioned by their inventors, entail hard work, resemble chain letter pressure and I keep losing the plot with what award? who nominated me? what do I have to do?
Today I decided to trace back to those culprits who nominated me so that I can punish them with the Hot Potato Award that I invented ages ago as a kind of award-shield.
Here is a list of the beautiful culprits. Their blogs are worth following because of the honest heartiness in each person’s words.
http://writingmusings.wordpress.com/
http://terry1954.wordpress.com/
http://perfectingmotherhood.wordpress.com/
http://magnoliabeginnings.org/
To each of these people I want to say three things:
1. Copy/paste the Hot Potato award to your blogsite. There are no rules – the award is yours.
2. If you nominate me again I will send you a cold potato!
3. I love your blog!
Now, here is a little story to explain my apparent ungraciousness and my award anxiety/aversion:
A few years ago, the university decided to introduce a teaching award. If you were nominated you had to give a 5-minute speech about why you loved teaching. So I was nominated and gave a flustered speech. I was competing with a few other lecturers, but I won the vote and was given the award. The nominations and votes were anonymous of course. I was congratulated and I felt quite chuffed to be recognized.
A few weeks later I was having a coffee with a colleague who also happened to be a student in one of my classes (this often happens on small campuses) and she mentioned the award.
“Yes,” I said, “It was a bit of a surprise because I am the least professional of all the lecturers here but that seemed to go down well – my down-to-earthness or something!”
She looked at me strangely and said, grinning, “I nominated you.”
I was shocked. “Why?”
“Just for a laugh,” she said, cackling.
That’s why I don’t like awards.
I know, I know – I have been terribly remiss in responding to blog award nominations and explaining why I don’t want awards and now I am frantically trying to trace back to those beautiful commenters on my blog who nominated me and for whom I had already created the Hot Potato Award (some people have received this previously).
I guess I will just have to admit that I have lost the award trail/plot and cannot remember who to thank – very sorry! I will get to it eventually.
It reminds me of my first job in a nursing home as a young girl. I collected all of the false teeth from every patient in the ward where I was working because I had been told by the very stern matron to wash them all thoroughly. I was so intent on making a good impression that I filled a sink with soapy water and then tipped all of the false teeth into the sink.
That was a mistake. It took a week for everyone to get their own teeth back – argh!
Every now and then I blog about blogging. I do this when I am blanxious – that’s a word that means ‘anxious about blogging’.
I know for sure that I am not the only blanxious person in the world and that, if I were, I would contact the Guiness Book of Records and make a lot of money.
Instead, I have decided to contact the English Dictionary people to tell them I have invented a new word to describe blog-blipping bona fides (‘bona fide’ comes from the Latin and, roughly translated, means ‘in good faith’.)
Blanxiety is a condition that may (or may not) include the following symptoms:
This blanxiety condition has several more symptoms but it is beyond the scope of this post to outline all of them so ….
I guess this is my way of apologizing for … I’m not sure what!
Note to non-bloggers: keep your innocence!
Well, it took a wordpress glitch to shake some sense into me. The notifications of blogs I’d subscribed to (even though I did that whole unsubscribe thing awhile back) weren’t coming through to my email account, so I got a bit worried and, yes, felt a little lonely not to get those emails.
Various comments suggested that other bloggers were experiencing glitches like this and several said they simply use the Reader to check up on their blogfriends. To cut a long story short, I went in and unsubscribed from every single blog in order to resubscribe when my particular glitch was solved.
But halfway through the unsubscribing process, I realized that blogging has become my way of avoiding things, avoiding some of my responsibilities, avoiding Anthony and the pain of what he is going through in this final phase of Parkinson’s disease.
So, from now on, and I’m sure none of you will be hurt by this because I have totally unsubscribed from everyone – I am simply going to write a daily blog, respond to comments and that’s it. I have to do this for awhile so that I can focus on Anthony and Ming, so for those bloggers who I am close to, with whom I have exchanged support, humour etc., please forgive me. I will catch up with your blogs as soon as I can and I am available by email anyway.
I have decided to stop using blogging as an avoidance strategy.
Hopefully this makes sense!
jmgoyder 