The Beginning

OK, look, here’s the deal. I have nothing to say. There are new visitors coming – perhaps linking from comments I try mightily to make interesting, compassionate and compelling – and I’m not pleased with the quality of work here lately. So I’m nearly panicked, sitting here, moving music off CDs onto my laptop for their eventual transfer to my iPod. It’s all very thrilling. (That was sarcastic, but actually, it totally is – I joined Audible and eagerly anticipate my commute tomorrow to start listing to several selections!!)

So I’m sitting here, thinking about a list I read, but can’t link to. The Bouncer has removed his archives while he writes his book, so I can’t even quote him with any reliability. That being said, he published some sort of list not so far in the past. I think readers would ask him how to create a successful website – one where people would not only come, but return, day after day, incorporating your words into their daily routines.

I didn’t have a blog when I read the list, but I thought it was brilliant. If I ever start writing, I quickly decided, this is the guide I’ll use. I think he said things like you should write because you want to – sometimes you have something to say, sometimes you just write to write. You should update regularly because when people try to become regular readers and can’t find any new posts, they’ll find someone who’s putting more time in their project. You should try to edit – spell correctly, make some attempt at using proper punctuation, create some sort of flow so that your point is made in a reasonable manner. When you’re ready to start attracting some traffic, make comments on blogs that are interesting – that somehow inspire someone to take a moment and read more of what you’ve written. And when the traffic arrives (as it might be doing here), keep improving. Do what you do, and keep getting better.*

* Again, this could all be wrong. I don’t even remember when he posted it, and while I thought it was good when I read it, it didn’t apply to me at the time. I also assumed I would be able to reference it later (bad assumption), so I just nodded to myself, thought good advice! and moved on. So any errors are mine, and if you happened to read it, feel free to offer corrections.

I think I mentioned before that I wrote in high school. I felt pretty disconnected socially – having a few friends, none of them close, and being much more comfortable reading alone in my room than dealing with other people. I needed somewhere to put my thoughts – things that delighted or troubled me – and I happened upon an opportunity to write for the local paper and did so throughout my high school career. I made $15/article, making that experience much more financially lucrative than this one.

Other than that experience, I have no training in writing. My undergrad at a mid-sized private institution focused on communication skills on many levels, but graduate study sucked much of that ability away. Far more accustomed to talking with people who do what I do – a very specific niche in medical research – I use jargon and abbreviations with the best of them. Throw around some buzz words when I don’t know what’s going on and hope nobody calls me on it.

So there’s nothing that qualifies me to do this – I don’t think of myself as much of a writer, and to be honest, I stumbled into science as well. I’m decent, but I got my PhD by showing up every day, checking things off the list of requirements, and jumping through the hoops that were placed before me. Respect for my education is great, but it's certainly not necessary to me personally. I don't think I did anything particularly special - just made a series of choices, then made some attempt at following through, often terrified that I'd have to tell people I failed.

Despite my lack of qualifications, I feel that now is not the time to falter in my online endeavor. At least by writing something, I show that I’m placing some effort into this, right? And maybe I’ll trick a few of you into returning tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking about high school lately. I’m only publishing about 1/3 of what I write, so none of that has made its way here yet. The half-written posts sit in a folder on my desktop, waiting for some sort of completion. But I’m finding the same feelings of isolation that defined my writing then are occurring now. I don’t feel like I fit, but battle to give the impression of cool competence. I don’t socialize because I don’t want to. It doesn’t bother me, so don’t let it bother you. I find people to chat with before seminars, exchange pleasantries before I present a paper at group meetings, take off my headphones to answer the woman in my office when she speaks to me.

So when writing a post about why I created this blog, I could say something like my disconnect from people of substance in my life forced me to seek an outlet to share thoughts and feelings with someone. I also feel strongly that the online environment, while sometimes snarky and vicious, can offer valuable insight and support as people identify with stories and situations then offer encouragement, advice, or criticism.

That would make me sound reasonably thoughtful, right? Perhaps a bit pretentious, but I fear that’s coming across anyway. But it’s also false – a complete lie that has absolutely nothing to do with why I started this.

When I changed majors in undergrad, I picked one that my favorite hockey player had. Seriously. It wasn’t that it was a bad major – it clicked and it’s worked out fine for me. And I’ve never told anyone that reason, though it’s truer than my patented answer. But I liked this guy – incredibly built, dark hair, pale blue eyes – a solid stay-at-home defensemen who had definite career plans after minor league hockey. Because I had a crush on him, I knew his interests and decided one of them made sense for me as well. I still remember him – name and face – because he inadvertently played kind of a pivotal role in my life.

Likewise, I started this blog because I developed a nice little crush on The Bouncer. I think he’s a beautiful writer – talented, insightful, mixing some profound ideas with some funny, incredibly real-sounding stories. I have equally high regard for the Waiter (I've read all of his archives and would recommend it to anyone), but my infatuation grew at Clublife. I read something every morning he posted, looked forward to it, thought about it, applied some ideas and insights to situations more familiar to me, smiled at certain phrases, taking time to read some cryptic posts multiple times, trying to hear what he was saying to the extent that I was able. So I read him, first in the list of people I checked daily, sometimes many times, looking for something new.

The difference came when I decided to send him email. I composed 4 lines, I think. Writing, editing, deleting all of it to start over. Writing again, and sending. I had a comment on his post – it wasn’t important. And I wanted him to know how much I enjoyed his work. How this often-angry, frequently self-deprecating man who took responsibility for his decisions, worked hard, and took time to analyze the sometimes absurd situations in which he found himself, had been important to me at a time when I felt very alone and unsettled. For some reason, I wanted him to know I was reading - I'm still not sure why.

I closed my laptop after I wrote it. Walked away to clean my kitchen, nervous beyond all explanation that this writer who had gained a great deal of my respect might read something, even 4 lines, of what I’d written. I had never participated in this online world before. Never leaving comments, even on blogs I’d read for years. Never sending email or asking anything of people who wrote. I treated this as I treat books – I read them, then put them on shelves – seeing no need to send fan mail or criticisms – the extent of my participation limited to whether or not I would read something of his again.

I returned to my computer 2 hours later to find that he had responded almost immediately. I could quote you the email – I saved it – but he was kind. The idea that he not only read it, but wrote something in return was, for lack of a better description, thrilling. So, we exchanged a couple more emails. Each required great care on my part, and his replies – standard, short and no different than what I’m sure he writes to other people every day – left me breathless at seeing his name in my inbox.

Impressed and infatuated – with someone I don’t know much of anything about, someone I’ll never meet and with whom I’ll probably have no future contact – I decided I had to be part of something so powerful. Writing online was a bit lame, perhaps, especially in the extremely tell-all style I seem to have adapted.

But having people read it? That’s amazing. Finding welcome in a group of women (who I consider to be far more qualified and competent than I) has been incredible. The possibility of finding my site listed on blogrolls is heady – I now look for it eagerly, loving the chance that someone might have read my posts and want to read them again. I have a list of return visitors that I keep – carefully remembering who’s been here before, incredibly flattered each time they return.

I don’t aspire to book deals, would not welcome exposure that might threaten a career I have spent my life training for, and have not sent email to anyone asking that they read or link to this. I leave comments, hoping that readers might stop by and have enough time to make their way through one of these incredibly lengthy posts. But I love having this – love coming here, enjoy the fact that though I still enjoy other writers greatly, much of my admiring attention has been refocused on creating something of my own.

And at some point, my hopes for them – those people I link over there on the right and many more that I read – have become my hopes for me. That we figure something out. Let anger, frustration, grief - negative crap that builds regardless of where you are and what you do - spill on a page that sometimes makes it easier to cope. Record joys and accomplishments so we might read over them and remember how good life can be. Make progress on some personal or professional level due to the effort that goes into examining life in writing. Connect with someone who might relate – helping, in some small way, a person that you’ll never meet.

And maybe someday, I’ll get really good at this. He told me his first 100 posts kind of sucked, and while I don’t buy it completely, I’m only on #53. So if you’re visiting, remember me – this could get good.