What is it about parenthood and blogging (or knitting and blogging or politics and blogging…)?
Actually, I think I just answered my own questions. It’s not about parenthood and blogging per se, so it must be much more basic than that. We’ve all got something to say and in Blogland, no one interrupts, no one wanders away accidentally half-way through your rant, no one raises an eyebrow in such a vaguely amused way that you completely lose your train of thought. I certainly have no shortage of opinions.
But I wonder if this blogging phenomenon is yet another response to the collapse of real community? Are we essentially feeling unheard, or if not unheard exactly, since I expect that many of us are also unloading our opinions on family and friends and innocent passers-by, then unregarded. As an American living in the United States who believes in oh, for example: free birth control, socialized medicine, fair state pensions, a living wage, education for all, legal abortions, the clear and distinct separation of church and state, closing the gender gap in all sorts of ways, slow food, the choice to stay at home with your children if you want to for more than 42 days without losing your job, getting out of Iraq, paying our dues to the UN, funding AIDS research, public television and the national parks, meeting emissions standards and protecting a free press who occasionally use a beautiful and useful word I have to use a dictionary to understand — I often feel like I’m shouting into the abyss. Or into my pillow. So maybe me and the rest of the million bloggers there are out there blogging up the works are trailing our voices through the abyss like fishing lines, hoping to catch an ear.
Very nice. My first visit and I’ve enjoyed scrolling through your previous posts and reading the linked post by yellowwallpaper. Unfortunately, I think you probably are shouting into an abyss. Today I started to stroll through a bookstore but turned away after seeing too many books on the “new arrivals” table with titles that varied little from the “Why I hate the guy standing next to me and why you should too: Hint, he’s stupid because he believes in things I don’t” theme. The world would indeed be a nicer place if these self-righteous warriors could be confined to their pillows.