Monday, November 13, 2006

Mama Always Told Me Not to Look Into the Eye's of the Sun

November 14th is my one year blogging anniversary. In honor of that, I put pictures of plumey fan-like plants I found by ground zero at the sorority house on Saturday. Aren't they festive?

You started blogging a year ago. Your initial reasons for getting started were to help you write as close to every day as possible and to suck you out of the vacuum where you had been writing and get some feedback. The free therapy sure hasn't hurt either. Sure, you've met a few creeps - ones that sent you cryptic and not so cryptic e-mails written all in caps and when you let your friend G. read them, he said, "Why does he keep yelling at me?" You also went through a little (or big) paranoid phase that drove you into the witness protection program where you changed your name and your blog and lost many, many readers. Mostly, you've met some really amazing people. You can still get all sappy and teary-eyed when you think of the support you received from people you had never met after the tornado.

Though sometimes, you think it would feel so freeing to just scrap the blog altogether and get some real writing done, you don't feel like you are quite there yet. The blog has helped you write better on your feet. Many nights, you've had less than an hour to dream up, write and sometimes even proofread a post before you publish. And while it has been painful for your readers, it's been a great way to clean your shit up as you write.

Okay, I'm over the second person bullshit and now I'm all first person and memoir style and stuff. With the very helpful suggestion from Long division, I'm slowly but surely saving all the posts on my old blog as drafts because it would be damn shame to lose all those pearls I dispensed at my other house of crap. So, please help yourself to some imaginary cake and have fun viewing the next plumage photo which was taken directly into the sun for that retina burning effect.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! Happy almost anniversary!

Churlita said...

Thanks. It's kind of weird to celebrate it when I'm on a different blog now. I'm sure I'll find a way after I have a piece of imaginary cake.

Anonymous said...

It just means you can have another 1st anniversary next year for the new blog and pop open a bottle Veuve Clicquot Rosé. Mine is also coming up. (for Blogger as I did have an experimental thing via msn for a bit).

Margaret said...

HAPPY ANIVERSARY! BEAUTIFUL PLUMES!

booda baby said...

Happy etc.

1. The plumes are magnificent. Do you mess with your photos? Turn them into black and whites?

2. I guess it's not so fun, losing the readers part but I think the writing part is a big fat success.

The blogging medium is obviously reallllllly forgiving and that's great for writers who're into it, but there's just way too much evidence that the craft suffers for it. I mean, half the craft is in perception, blah blah blah, and glib - while entertaining - is ... glib. And easy.

The gentle, sincere care you take with your anecdotes is ... well, they're as entertaining as any of the blogs with 9 billion readers, but they're also lovely and returnable-to and other cool stuff.

Churlita said...

Dex,

That's right. I'll serve more cake and bad wine next year too.

margaret,

Thanks and thanks.

Bood Baby,

Sometimes. I thought about seeing what these would like in black and white. Maybe over the weekend when I have more time.

Oh yeah, it's a totally different kind of writing. I haven't tried to really write in a while. I may find that I'm hurting more than helping myself by using this medium. We'll see.

And thanks. That's really nice to hear.

rel said...

Churlita,
Happy anniversary!
Thanks for stopping by.
rel

TJ said...

This absolutely qualifies as an anniversary. Happy one.

The irony of course is that first anniversaries are paper. Not sure what that translates to blog-wise.

Churlita said...

Remiman,

No. Thank YOU.

Trevor,

I thought about that too. Paper is ironic for a blog. Aren't there usually two things for each year? What's the other one for first year anniversary?