Meta-blogging
« Previous EntriesA necessary evil: some admin
Thursday, August 16th, 2007For some reason updates to this new site appear in bloglines and via email for my old site. Which means many of you may not have been bothered to change over and subscribe to this blog’s feed. And why would you when it still comes to you anyway? If DHL brought me a weekly delivery of chocolate cake and Brad Pitt I wouldn’t care if they changed to UPS. Not unless they started bringing me auto parts.
But - my old site will be disappearing before long so I urge you to subscribe to this blog’s feed now. I can promise you chaotic posts of a chaotic life. And if you haven’t subscribed before, why not try it now? You can always unsubscribe if it turns out my life is just a little too chaotic. (I frequently wish I could unsubscribe from my life but apparently it’s not possible.)
You can also subscribe via email if you prefer - just enter your email address in the box in the sidebar on the right. It’s all done via Feedburner and your address will not be used for spamming, I am heartily assured by the folks there.
Also, in preparation for the next Google sweep I would be eternally grateful if those of you who have linked to me in the past could be kind enough to update your blogrolls. Here is the title of this blog because that line in the middle of the two words is kind of tricky:
most | least
(On my keyboard the line looks like two vertical lines one on top of the other and is above the \ key, so I type Shift \ to get it.)
And on a related note, my blogroll will be returning as soon as I am out of the Google sandbox. Although sometimes it feels nice to be in here, just burying my head a little and, you know, not having to deal with three small children.
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Changes
Monday, July 16th, 2007Welcome to my new blog. So what’s different here?
Well, I have finally decided to embrace Web 2.0. I know, it really hurt to do so because I am a technology-reject but I’m told that’s what everyone is doing nowadays so I have mastered plugins and other web 2.0 sundries. So there’s social bookmarking tags and links back to the top commenters and other lovely things that make reading blogs a social occasion and give you that warm and fuzzy feeling.
I have also adopted You Comment, I Follow: if you comment you will get a link back from my site. The nofollow attribute was originally put in place in most blogging platforms to prevent spam but I have a great spam catcher and I see no reason not to remove the nofollow attribute. So go ahead, comment!
Hopefully everything is working okay although a few old links may be broken. If you are seeing something that doesn’t display properly in your browser, please leave a comment and I will try to fix it.
Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to this blog’s feed. Or blogroll/bookmark it if that’s what you do.
Oh, and I’ll be attempting to post more frequently. So another post shortly!
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Does blogging empower women? A very short essay.
Thursday, June 14th, 2007My youngest son is now a glorious seventeen months old. It’s a good age, seventeen months: old enough to make your feelings known, young enough to elicit a hug simply by looking up, eyes brimming with unshed tears, old enough to bait your brothers, young enough to have a mother’s unquestioning protection from them.
The last seventeen months have been a slog but I have - in some sort of masochistic way - enjoyed them. In the last month or two life has become easier, taken on a slower, less stressful pace. The baby (no longer a baby but always my baby) sleeps, eats, guided by days which have a gentle routine. I know his every expression and can anticipate almost every emotion that any one particular action will precipitate in his little body. I feel like a competent mother. And I am happy - sometimes startlingly so.
It wasn’t always like that. When my middle son, William, was seventeen months old I started this blog. For the first seventeen months of his life and for several months after that I was severely, desperately, unknowingly depressed. When I stumbled across the blogging world my world was absolutely, unutterably transformed. After a while I wrote:
writing this blog has helped me overcome some really dreadful times, given me a sense of purpose, given me a view beyond my little baby-driven world, allowed me to find other like-minded people and given me hours of fun reading some of the truly witty, poignant and clever blogs. ….. Part of the reason I suffered from postpartum depression is that I felt like I didn’t measure up to the stereotypes put forward in the media, I didn’t measure up to the parenting manuals, I didn’t measure up to how I thought every other mum was coping (nobody talks about depression, not really), I didn’t feel I had anything other to focus on than babies and I didn’t have anything other to focus on than my babies and how I wasn’t coping with them. Reading other people’s real experiences - not some biased media account, nor some parenting manual scenario - and hearing from other people in similar circumstances has helped me beyond measure.
Blogging is extraordinary: it has created networks of people with shared experiences, it allows us to make connections with others, it gives us an outlet where we can express ourselves without fear of judgement. Women, and mothers in particular, are a critical part of the blogging world, proof that the medium of blogging works so well in creating networks to share information and experiences and to support and empower each other, and in creating virtual villages in which we raise our children.
The blogging world, like life, is full of niches: politics, religion, opinions, everyday events, hobbies, hacks. No one area is any ‘better’ or any more important than another and to dismiss ‘mommyblogging’ as trivial is inaccurate. Mothers need each other and blogging is not only a logical extension of that desire to connect and to support one another, but a way of deconstructing the myths of motherhood and, in doing so, empowering all of us who take part in it.
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MommyblogsToronto is asking for your views on the subject ‘(How) does blogging empower women?’. You’ve got until tomorrow to write your post, so hurry.
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Dull Blogs of the World, Unite! Again!
Monday, January 31st, 2005God, journalists piss me off sometimes. Yet another article about the self-absorbed nature of bloggers. Not only that, but the author has seen fit to pick on the self-absorbed nature of mommy bloggers.
For heaven’s sake! At least be fair and pick on all types of bloggers. Don’t we, as parents, get enough grief without journalists weighing in with their two pennies worth as well?
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have had to defend blogging before when this blog was featured in an article which implied that bloggers and their blogs are dull. I was not arguing that this blog was anything other than dull (Heaven forbid!). I was arguing, however, that blogs serve a purpose for those that read them and more importantly those that write them. In my case, without sounding too melodramatic, writing this blog has helped me overcome some really dreadful times, given me a sense of purpose, given me a view beyond my little baby-driven world, allowed me to find other like-minded people and given me hours of fun reading some of the truly witty, poignant and clever blogs. Not all blogs are great, but all of the good mommy ones I read ARE. I read one or more posts a day which make me laugh out loud (and that’s before I’ve hit the gin). Part of the reason I suffered from postpartum depression is that I felt like I didn’t measure up to the stereotypes put forward in the media, I didn’t measure up to the parenting manuals, I didn’t measure up to how I thought every other mum was coping (nobody talks about depression, not really), I didn’t feel I had anything other to focus on than babies and I didn’t have anything other to focus on than my babies and how I wasn’t coping with them. Reading other people’s real experiences - not some biased media account, nor some parenting manual scenario - and hearing from other people in similar circumstances has helped me beyond measure.
I (and most mommy-bloggers, I suspect) don’t blog in the hope of getting a book deal. It’s never going to happen. And it’s not why I do it. I don’t blog to invade my children’s privacy. I write about the crap aspects of parenting; I don’t write about the crap aspects of my children. As for previous generations, they couldn’t blog because it didn’t exist, but I bet they might have if they could have done. Blogging is a technological development, one which has brought about a sort of online social development, not a psychological ‘it’s all about me, me, me’ development. Previous generations also often had family around them to help them parent. Even so, they probably suffered from the trials of parenting in the same ways we do now, but time is a great healer. I can’t even remember some details about my first baby and that was only two years ago. And blogging certainly doesn’t answer the question “why on earth am I parenting?” I only have to look at my children to answer that, to know that I love them and I want to do the best for them. Blogging is simply an outlet for what I am experiencing and feeling. And I like reading about what others are experiencing and feeling. No more, no less. It doesn’t need some psychological analysis and certainly not some ill-informed comment from a journalist who sits at a desk, far removed from what many parents experience day-to-day.
If journalists have a problem with mommy blogging, they either haven’t looked hard enough for the good blogs (not true in the case of the New York Times articles as many of the mommy uber-bloggers were featured), or they don’t ‘get’ blogging - and the idea of an uncensored, immediate, world-wide community - generally, or more likely they fear that blogging and blogging communities, and the internet generally, might be a threat to their journalistic skills, readership and the future of print media.
The old adage ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ might serve these critical mainstream commentators well because, as we all know, you can’t keep a good blog down.
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Fired for Blogging
Saturday, January 15th, 2005If you haven’t already got the message: it’s not a good idea to blog about work. An employee of Waterstone’s book chain has been one of the first UK employees (and certainly the most widely-reported) to be fired for blogging about work.
Joe Gordon has been writing the Woolamaloo Gazette newsletter for several years and in it he discusses, among other things, the book store where he works. He was fired after a disciplinary hearing when the chain said that Gordon’s blog had brought it into disrepute. He had worked for the store for 11 years. 11 years? Christ, after 11 years you should have tenure and be able to say anything you bloody well like about your company.
He is one of a number of bloggers to have been sacked from their jobs as a result of their blogs: Dooce was the first person to be fired for writing about her workplace in her blog and the term dooced has now come to mean losing your job for something you wrote in your blog. Ellen Simonetti , formerly an air cabin crew member for Delta Airlines, was fired after she posted pictures of herself in her uniform. Jessica Cutler was also sacked from her job in a Senator’s office for the content of her blog. And there are more companies who have done the same: Boing Boing has compiled a list of some of them. But we all know all this already, don’t we?
Although he used the terms ‘Bastardstone’s’ and ‘Evil Boss’ - and really, I can think of terms so much worse to call my previous employers and boss - Gordon did not mention his specific branch or specific people by name (although it doesn’t take much to deduce from his blog that he worked for Waterstone’s and was an Edinburgh resident) and as such, this is rather like being fired for saying things about your company in your free time. The crucial difference though is that 1) the comments are written down and 2) they are available to the public at large. It’s a bit like photocopying pages from a private diary and leaving them lying around for anyone to read. And if people you know, for example work colleagues or acquaintances, are aware of your blog it’s a bit like photocopying pages from your diary and leaving them lying around your home city for anyone to read.
Waterstone’s heavy-handed approach is likely to have created more adverse publicity than anything Gordon has written on his blog. And of course there is the whole argument surrounding freedom of speech. Arguing that companies must have a defined blogging policy before firing people for blogging is perfectly legitimate but blogging is still in its infancy and companies are unlikely to have adopted blogging policies on a widespread basis. Until then, for bloggers, the precautionary principle must operate. Blog about work at your peril.
But what do I care: I haven’t had a proper job for years.
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