the thing is

i get emails from people who literally either love me or hate me. it's never really in-between. and it's funny because i'm just writing thoughts through my eyes. so it's not anything conjured up for a reaction (although i usually get some kind of reaction).

what's really curious is that before i started this blog, i had one of those social/mommy/hodgepodge blogs where i'd try to come up with some interesting topic all the time. i guess my goal was to get as many readers as i could. it worked for a while, until i just burned out. i started to think it was too contrived. i thought i was just writing for myself, but wondered why was i putting so much effort into something that no one read. so then i'd try all these things like, having a cool layout. or linking other blogs. or catchy titles or gadgets or widgets or pictures just to get people to read it. until i realized that it was taking way too much energy. and it wasn't really positive energy. it felt like work and it was stressful if i thought that not enough people were reading it. and it just consumed my brain all the time. everything i did was an effort to get inspired for cool blog post that would attract readers.

so i bagged that blog. and decided that i did have things i wanted to say, but it didn't really fit into the type of social blogging that i was doing. i decided that i had all these thoughts about this or that, things you can't just say to people -and i could put it into a blog. and honest-to-god didn't care who would read it, i just wanted to get my raw thought out there.

so how ironic it is to me, that without even trying, i get more readers and dialoguing on this blog than i ever did when i was trying so hard on the old blog to get people to read what i was talking about. which is why i don't even fuss with some really cool layout, or anything catchy. if people were going to read it, i just wanted them to read the stripped-down version of what i was saying without the distractions.

and no, i'm not going to link to anyone from my site. i'm not trying to promote anyone or anything----why would i when i'm not even promoting myself? i even feel kind of______(for lack of a better word) when people link to me on their blogs. my first thought is, okay that's great, but what's going to happen when one day i write about my rawest (is that a word?) thought and they don't like it? then will they unlink me? it's almost like pressure to perform or something. like they're telling their readers that they recommend this "great" blog. and i'm just writing about nothing, really. and i'm afraid that i'll go back to writing just to impress people (which i really, really, really don't want to do again).

okay i guess i really digressed.

some of my emails tell me that i must 'hate' myself, i 'need help' et cetera, et cetera. i don't agree at all. why? because i'm functioning. if i couldn't function in different social situations or if any of my insecure thoughts inhibited me from living life somehow, or made me some sick demented person, well then i could see getting help. just what exactly would 'help' do for me that i am not already doing? and what kind of help is that, exactly? since when is it not okay to have *thoughts* (besides dangerous, suicidal, or immoral)? i'm living life to the fullest of my ability. and i know for a fact that my thoughts are not any worse than MANY people. i've never struggled with depression or any type of mental illness which is a lot more than i can say for many people. i actually feel kind of proud of that fact. seems kind of rare these days for someone to not be on ANY meds at all. but yeah, that's me. i feel lucky that way.

i'm just saying what people think about all the time. this will sound cliche, but nobody is perfect. so no matter how politically correct you think you are, or how progressive you feel, if you blogged about the first thought that popped into your head, it would likely sound like the things i say.

akin

so, i have this female co-worker/kinda friend, who's involved in a live-in relationship with a he/she. that is, a guy who used to be a girl. both my co-worker and the he/she person have ISSUES from their past. like, they both grew up with screwed up parents in dysfunctional homes with abuse and abandonment, drugs use, and everything in between.

aside from all that, my (white) co-worker has a young child with a black man, who is a total deadbeat, pot-smoking, duii-convicted, loser. he's just barely in the picture, and when he is, it's a headache. anyhow, i got to thinking about the young daughter my co-worker has, and how this bi-racial (maybe i should just say black) girl is being raised in such a chaotic lifestyle.

my first thought, and i have to be honest here, was: that poor little black girl. yah, it's sad for any child to grow up in some weird kind of lifestyle with parents that have issues. but to me, if the child were white, i might stop for a minute and say 'so sad for that child...' and then keep going. but to me, it's sadder that that child is a little black girl, raised by two white people (who can't truly relate to her black side -the side which she'll need the most relating-no matter how hard they try) who are in a very non-traditional lifestyle/relationship. and i can't really put a finger on why exactly i feel so strongly that the part about her being black is so distressing to me.

maybe it's because i remember what it was like to be confused and feel out of place because i didn't quite fit in with the "real" black people or many of the white people (well, i seemed to fit in with the white people a little more for a while, but that's a different post. plus, even though i fit in more with my white friends, i still didn't trakinuly relate to them as much). and i'm not biracial and didn't come from a wacky home environment.

or maybe i just think that there are enough issues with black children without having one in the mix of that environment. but even those reasons doesn't really explain why i feel the way i do.