Something strange happened back in January 2006. I spent my “un-wedding day” in a foggy haze at a car dealership, where my best friend basically bought my car for me because I was so out of it. I don’t think I even cared what year the car was. I remember signing paperwork and that’s about it. I was waking up from what I was now realize was an abusive relationship.
I had also just started a new job. While I was dating my ex, I had distanced myself a little from my friends because they didn’t like him (and they’d also want me to tell you that they were freaked out about who I became while I was with him). But, with the breakup now made official by a football field’s worth of required distance at all times, I felt I could breathe again. Friends had been inviting me to join MySpace for months and on January 31, 2006, I finally did. (I might have avoided it a few months more had I not found the profile of my one of my best friends from high school. We lost touch in college, and I tried sending her a message but I couldn’t unless I signed up. Bean, for all that follows, I owe ya.)
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When I first signed up for this monster, I really only intended to use it to get back in touch with people I had lost, like Bean, and to stay in contact with my closest friends. I kept my friends list on lock the first couple of months, only adding people I knew in real life (with the exception of three people: Nina, Jerry and Sully, who have all become great friends). I think I topped out around 35 friends, and intended to stay there. I thought those people with hundreds of friends were either truly famous or just really needed attention.
One day in March, I was poking around, clicking on the different MySpace functions. I stumbled onto the “Top Blog” rankings, which is how I found Nina. Nina was so fucking funny that I immediately crafted a message to send along with my friend request – the first I had sent to someone I didn’t know. The message started off: “Bitch, I want to be your friend!” The rest, as they say, is A FUCKING INSANE STORY OF HOW MYSPACE SORT OF (TOTALLY) CHANGED MY FUCKING LIFE . . .
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The numbers, Jan. 31, 2007:
MySpace Friends: 419
Profile views: 23,609
Profile comments: 759
Blog Subscribers: 184
Blog posts: 85 (including this one)
Blog views: 25,539
Blog comments: 1,513
Total Blog Kudos: 919
I have always been a writer. I think a lot of people who find writing later in life have a hard time feeling that they “deserve” to call themselves writers, but I feel like I was born with the affliction. Being a friend, daughter or lover came second. That said, I never took blogging seriously. I mean, look at that word. It’s ugly. Who wants to be a “blogger?” Before I read Nina’s MySpace blog (which carried the tagline, “Blog it Out, Bitch!”), they were pointless emoticon-riddled ramblings someone once sent me a link to on LiveJournal.
No, thank you. If I wanted strangers to read my journals, I’d invite them over. I might be a writer, but I don’t like randoms probing my innermost thoughts. But damn, it was so fun to read about Nina’s most embarrassing moments. Her willingness to overshare reminded me of other internet-based writers I had enjoyed in the past, except she updated 5 or 6 times every single day. She was giving me a play-by-play analysis of what it meant to be a mother to an interracial child, a black woman married to a white man and a writer trying to find her way as a determined student. Maybe there was something to this vulnerability thing.
Then I wrote my first blog. It wasn’t anything but a little list of things that made me happy. I think I got 3 kudos and maybe five of my friends (including Nina) showed up to read it. I was playing at it . . . not really sharing anything deep or important. Then I realized that these other writers, the writers Nina first reminded me of . . . well, they had (or would soon have) MySpace profiles, too. I looked them up, added them and started corresponding with them.
Some of those people have became real life friends or mentors. It’s because of MySpace that I’ve met or talked to TheBunny, PhilaLawyer, Tucker Max, Neil Strauss and Robert Greene. It can be daunting to reach out to an author – or anyone you admire for that matter – but MySpace makes artists of all kinds so much more accessible. These people, in particular, have shown me what it means to really open up and let people see inside my life.
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By June, I was finally ready to be honest in my writing. It wasn’t like writing poetry, which I did all through high school, or like writing articles, which I had been paid to do since college. I was writing just for the love of it. I was saying whatever I wanted to say and letting go of it. “Heat and Porcelain,” was my first exercise in letting go. It was just like writing in my journal, but 1,000 times more intense because I knew that others would be reading it. Interpreting, misinterpreting, imagining. It was so kinky and inviting, this vulnerability.
From July until October, I wrote one story a month about my childhood. I was unprepared for the response and for how open people would be with me because they could relate. Honesty breeds readership.
In November, I overhauled my profile (with much help in the coding department) to shift more focus to my blog, and I began to hint at all the major changes I had planned for the upcoming year. Then I went on hiatus until the day I packed up the moving truck and drove myself into the madness that is New York.
It’s funny that this blogging thing is what helped me remember why I love writing so much. It’s great to write in my journal, and it’s gratifying to get paid to write for a circulation that’s equivalent to half the population of an entire (albeit small) state. But what I love most is making that connection with people by allowing them to latch onto my ugly bits and my demons.
I’ve used my blog to do several things:
Avoid therapy.
Identify goals and put together strategies to achieve them.
Share my passion for photography.
Pick your brains for book, movie and music recommendations.
And last, but certainly not least, blogging has allowed me to share my love of food and cooking.
It’s kinda funny. I know my stats aren’t anything to be impressed with, especially with bloggers like Nina who get upwards of 2,000 blog hits a day (or is it per post, Nina?). Hell, one of my best friends (actually, several of my closest friends) don’t even read my blog. It’s been a fun dalliance when I’ve had time . . . and when I’ve had focus, it’s been even more than that.
That you (and I’m including all readers here, not just subscribers) have found something to connect with, despite the fact that I post so infrequently, is something very significant to me. You’ve given me your time and your comments, and time and attention are really the most precious things we have to share.
I didn’t ever expect to be here a year later with over 400 friends (half of whom I’ve never met) and a bunch of people hanging out waiting for my next post. It’s really neat, and I thank you for that experience.
Rest assured that my writing life hasn’t fallen by the wayside. If anything, it’s intensified since I’ve gotten to NYC. I hope to share all of that good stuff with you in the coming months. In the meantime, browse around and see what I was babbling on about in those 85 blogs (all organized by category on my profile page). The earliest ones may not be good writing, but they are good for a laugh.
February will bring more rants and raves about life in New York, as well as a new Saucy Report, this time coming to you live from Brooklyn.
Had you told me a year ago that this silly little “social networking” idea would have brought so many amazing people into my life, or predicted that I would all of a sudden abandon everything in pursuit of a balls-out, penny-to-penny writing life, I never would have believed you. Thanks for a great year on MySpace.
