Over 15,000 people have watched a video I posted on Youtube a couple years ago. I also posted here, back then, but I think I may have taken it down, as it embarrassed Madeleine. It's a video of her singing a made-up song in her swimsuit. So last night I checked my Youtube account and found that it had become moderately popular. I had disabled comments and ratings, yet its viewership keeps climbing. Fifteen thousand people? Huh. Who woulda thought?
This is what I imagined for my blog, when I started almost 4 years ago. People would just show up. After two days (yes two days), I had received a couple spam comments, and knew it was time to revisit my business model. Hey look! No advertising budget! So I hit the airwaves, commenting here, there, saying clever things, being brash, clever. All the things that people love in one-line, self-absorbed comments. And then I waited some more. Still no customers at Chez My. I wrote some more. I thought some more about content. Less openingyourmind, more randomfunnytidbitsandlinks. Maybe a comment. Then I just said Fuck It. I gotta go door to door.
And I did. I went to a couple sites and made a couple sincere comments, and then ta-da. They came. Those two. But it was good. I made friends. At that point is wasn't about being all bloggity bloggity famous, it was about making some connections, because I had a teeny tiny baby and a 3-year-old, and I just needed some dialogue. It was great. Perfect. Jim totally didn't get it, the world chuckled at us bloggers and our "friendships" but I was sane and writing. And we appreciated each other, laughed and frowned together. Met each other in real life and hugged and laughed and frowned some more.
Flash forward three years, and I'm still blogging, but less so about the friendships and staying-sane-ships, more about writing, but it's okay. It's evolved. Except my real-life, real-world has hit a funky pot-hole. The kind of pot-hole wherein you actually have to stop the car and get out to make sure all the random pipes and black thingies under your car seems to be in the same intact random order. Looking under my car, I realized my real-life relationships had turned into the "revisiting the advertising budget" period in my blog life. I was being flip, brash and self-absorbed with my friends. I wasn't giving them and their problems the respect they deserved. I was going for the easy laugh, expecting them to not take things to personally, knowing my rapier-sharp wit was winning friends and influencing people.
Only it wasn't. I've been a jackass for the last 6 months. Maybe a year? I don't know what the hell I've been thinking these past several months, but whatever it was, it was clouded by shit, because I've had my head straight up my ass. I'm sorry to my friends and my family. I'm sorry to my husband and kids. I'm sorry to myself. But if we're not recognizing we're making mistakes, we're not getting better, so I've been thinking about that a little bit. Not dwelling on the mistake, so much, but the fix.
I think all this was prompted by a Prop 8 discussion board. Some religious loony couldn't let go of his Christian stranglehold on "truth" and "justice," as defined by his interpretation of the bible. I realized I'm just the type of atheist he was railing against. An individual with no defined and active sense of right and justice. Sure, I know what's right and wrong, but I want to be a woman with a moral compass that is inarguably precise.
If you're not a Christian, Buddhist, Wiccan, or whatever, you better at least live your life like you know what you're doing, or else the Atheist Police will come and peel your Darwin Fish right off the back of your Subaru. I don't have the Fish with Legs, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let them kick me out of the club. I know what's right and wrong, and I don't want to be wrong any more.