Reflections on the Meaning of Blogging

Malpeques on the half shell with garlic, bread crumbs and bacon.

It's the last day of 2008 and I'm in a bad mood. In fact, it's the third day of my bad mood. Part of it is hormones. Oh yes, the pull of the moon. Part of it is that I feel I haven't been accomplishing as much as I wanted to this holiday. I do some of my best work on "holidays." This time I feel I've just been skimming the surface. This year I want to go deep.

Blogging has been fun for me. I've done it on occasion for several years, but this is the first time I've had a blog of my own. I'm actually a very private person and sensitive to other people's need for privacy, so I've had to negotiate what I do and don't want to reveal. Well, we do that every day anyway, don't we? Being a performer means I love to have a public persona, albeit one that is carefully created, sometimes scripted and always protected.

What I love about blogs is the way that they reveal the domestic space as a site of creativity that was once invisible except when it was being co-opted and commercialized by people like Sartha Mewart. Women (and some men) have once again claimed back the domestic space as their own sweet DIY domain. Also, the line between the personal and the profession gets blurred sometimes, which intrigues me. I like that messy, liminal space.

But back to me and my big fat bad mood. It's a beautiful, sunny day out there and I have misanthropic daydreams. The world seems cruel, pinched, and full of impossibilities. A therapist would proabably tell me today is not a good day to make value judgements, that I should work my way into neutral territory. Well, fuck it. Today is my day to tear my garments, howl at the moon, and blog about it.