Today
(Warning: This is a long, self-involved post.)
It's a big day for me: the first birthday of this blog.
That's right, it all started, right here, exactly a year ago. November 15, 2004, I read the internet (for hours), aimlessly. November 16th, I had a purpose. I was a blogger.
Rereading my first post makes me laugh. I went on, at length, about my "book topic du jour." Ah, I remember those days. When I thought I was going to write a book. I really did have a new idea every three or four days. Not so much anymore. Apparently blogging has sucked that out of me. Or, probably more likely, has helped me run through my interest in all those fleeting ideas a lot more efficiently.
As I've mentioned before, I'm prone to self-analysis, especially around birthdays and anniversaries (which, for those of you who have celebrated a birthday with me, is why I cry.) This week has been pretty much par for the course in that arena: no tears, but a lot of self-absorption.
One of the reasons why I started this blog was to get a better understanding of what interests me, and how I think about things. And apparently the answer to that is twofold: Laguna Beach and red wine. Kidding. Sort of.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about, well, me. What I like to write, what I do write, what I want to write. I often think about a conversation I had a few years ago, with a high school friend of my brother’s. He’s a writer (the kind who gets paid) and there’s little I enjoy more than talking about writing with people who write. In the course of a long, involved discussion of the writer’s life, I crossed over into the land of extreme egotism, explaining that I just knew, deep down, that I had to write something major. It was my destiny. In the same breath, I told him that my biggest fear was waking up one day with a Volvo, country club membership, and no book. This was four and a half years ago.
Last week, the conversation came back to me, all in a flash. A flash that occurred while I was sitting in my Volvo station wagon, outside the gym, reaching into the back to grab my yoga mat at 9:30 on a Monday morning: I have become my nightmare.
Later that day, reading my afternoon blogs, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be that hard to write a blog that evolved into a book. I read Clublife, Opinionistas, Mimi in NY. They each have a unique voice and perspective, but they also each follow the book deal formula: position yourself as an outsider, expose your surroundings. Think like an anthropologist. Exoticize. I could totally do the same, but with the quiet suburban life I lead. Chick-lit agents would come calling.
Except that I don’t want to. And in recognizing that, I also realized that I haven’t fallen into my nightmare situation, as described in early 2001. I’ve walked into it, consciously, by choice. And it’s not really so bad.
Plus, I might not have a book deal, and I might not be profiled in the New York Times, but that wasn’t why I started this blog in the first place. So I’ll continue to write about Laguna Beach, and the Poconos, and whatever I come across on the internet. And I’ll be happy with that.
Plus, going to the gym in the middle of the day is pretty sweet. And Volvos are nice, too.
It's a big day for me: the first birthday of this blog.
That's right, it all started, right here, exactly a year ago. November 15, 2004, I read the internet (for hours), aimlessly. November 16th, I had a purpose. I was a blogger.
Rereading my first post makes me laugh. I went on, at length, about my "book topic du jour." Ah, I remember those days. When I thought I was going to write a book. I really did have a new idea every three or four days. Not so much anymore. Apparently blogging has sucked that out of me. Or, probably more likely, has helped me run through my interest in all those fleeting ideas a lot more efficiently.
As I've mentioned before, I'm prone to self-analysis, especially around birthdays and anniversaries (which, for those of you who have celebrated a birthday with me, is why I cry.) This week has been pretty much par for the course in that arena: no tears, but a lot of self-absorption.
One of the reasons why I started this blog was to get a better understanding of what interests me, and how I think about things. And apparently the answer to that is twofold: Laguna Beach and red wine. Kidding. Sort of.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about, well, me. What I like to write, what I do write, what I want to write. I often think about a conversation I had a few years ago, with a high school friend of my brother’s. He’s a writer (the kind who gets paid) and there’s little I enjoy more than talking about writing with people who write. In the course of a long, involved discussion of the writer’s life, I crossed over into the land of extreme egotism, explaining that I just knew, deep down, that I had to write something major. It was my destiny. In the same breath, I told him that my biggest fear was waking up one day with a Volvo, country club membership, and no book. This was four and a half years ago.
Last week, the conversation came back to me, all in a flash. A flash that occurred while I was sitting in my Volvo station wagon, outside the gym, reaching into the back to grab my yoga mat at 9:30 on a Monday morning: I have become my nightmare.
Later that day, reading my afternoon blogs, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be that hard to write a blog that evolved into a book. I read Clublife, Opinionistas, Mimi in NY. They each have a unique voice and perspective, but they also each follow the book deal formula: position yourself as an outsider, expose your surroundings. Think like an anthropologist. Exoticize. I could totally do the same, but with the quiet suburban life I lead. Chick-lit agents would come calling.
Except that I don’t want to. And in recognizing that, I also realized that I haven’t fallen into my nightmare situation, as described in early 2001. I’ve walked into it, consciously, by choice. And it’s not really so bad.
Plus, I might not have a book deal, and I might not be profiled in the New York Times, but that wasn’t why I started this blog in the first place. So I’ll continue to write about Laguna Beach, and the Poconos, and whatever I come across on the internet. And I’ll be happy with that.
Plus, going to the gym in the middle of the day is pretty sweet. And Volvos are nice, too.
posted by Kit Pollard at
9:38 AM
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