For a long time, when my children were small I didn’t have a voice. Sure I was loud and opinionated and I talked a lot but nobody actually heard what I was saying.
And that was because nobody cared about my words, or the thoughts behind my words.
I was anonymous.
Voiceless.
Blogging has changed that.
You have changed that.
I remember once I was on a pub crawl with a group of friends and we had landed in a country pub. After an hour the girls were ready to leave but they couldn’t find me. I had slipped into the saloon bar and I was talking with an old couple who were telling me what it had been like to harvest trees using bullocks and horses and describing to me the closeness of a community that was so isolated that a trip to the city was only an annual or even biennial event.
I related very strongly to the old woman’s tales of isolation and resilience and I could have happily sat there with them all afternoon listening to their stories. As my exasperated friend found me she said, “I should have known that you would be with the oldest people in the bar Kimmy, sitting and picking their brains.”
This is what blogging does for me, it is a sharing of stories, a collective picking of your brains.
I enjoy the glimpses into other peoples lives, the sharing of stories. It relieves my frustrations and takes away the loneliness.
The Spouse, is my best friend and he adores me, which is as it should be. He is my enabler, I ask him for things and he makes them for me. He holds my hand when I am feeling wobbly and he puts a hot water bottle in my bed on the nights I am out late.
Things are very black and white for The Spouse, where as I operate within a zillion shades of grey, we are living very separate lives at the same time that we live our life together.
I have three very separate lives, my blogging life, my artistic life and my homelife.
Are your lives like this? Do you live separate but together lives?
Compartmentalised lives?
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Oh decidedly compartmentalised. Something I think is quite common for women. I have my life in the blogosphere, my homelife (which is overwhelming at the moment), my own inner life, life as a volunteer … And it goes on. And I suspect I am not whole in any of those places. Compartmentalised and fractured. Sigh.
Yes. I had forgotten about my inner life but then I suppose my artistic life is my inner life, displayed externally. I don’t feel fractured. I am happy to operate in those boxes but I still feel a longing for something. I wonder if it is because I am 45 and if all women “of a certain age” start to feel a yearning for for their youth? For the time when we were made to feel beautiful?
I love that The Spouse is your best friend and adores you…can you have any inkling how lucky you are?
“My mind to me a kingdom is.”
I have a fair idea Mary 🙂 xo
I appreciate blogging for some of the reasons you’ve outlined. PLUS, how likely would it be that folks like you and I would “meet” each other without the internet? 🙂
I know. I would never have met you and I would be poorer for that.
Oh yes, so get this. I’m yet to read Shae’s post today (busy, busy day) but I have a feeling that is going to resonate too.
I feel so comfortable with the people online, but they are like the people who occupy my headspace, and it is sometimes hard to adjust to that when we meet IRL. I probably say stuff with them that I wouldn’t say to the people I see IRL. Most of my RL is spent just being a mum, and that feels so isolating sometimes, more so as an isolation from myself as my own person.
And as for the husband. His work and studies has meant that he has been so busy for so long , but we support each other in what we do. If we didn’t I wouldn’t be moving to self-hosting and going to my second conference for the year 🙂
All Mums feel isolated when their kids are little, it does get better. 🙂 I am looking forward to catching up in Melb it will be fun.
I have separate lives too.
Blog life, work life and home life.
Each is different, but each is similar, because I’m still me in each of them.
Oh yes River, so am I. We present a series of images of ourselves to the world and they are all facets of the one diamond.
I can imagine you sitting in that bar 🙂
I do not ever want my work/home life to collide with my blog life. Blogging is separate for me – I have some very supportive friends who immediately rush in to “help” me if I say I’m feeling a bit down. I love that they are there for me a year and 4 months down the track, but at the same time, I can never explain the need to feel sad at times because I NEED to. … so that’s where my blog comes in … I can say what I think without worrying that I’ll have 3 casseroles sitting on my doorstep when I get home from work.
I have one very very good friend who is like that. She cooked me Osso buco in the early days after Mums death and gave me a hamper of little goodies that she had made for me, apricot chutneys and the like. I love her dearly.
But the blog was really where I grieved openly, where I spewed out all the sadness in the morning and then once I had pressed publish I felt strong enough to get dressed and face the day.
xx
I’m such a chameleon of society – trying to adapt to the people and situation I find myself in, as to what side of my personality shines through. Blogging has helped me discover more of the authentic me – something I never knew existed prior to blogging – and given me confidence in ways I have never known before.
I understand completely. In the early days of the blog in 2007 I was just starting to call myself an artist and it felt strange to say those words, like I was just pretending. The blog has given me the confidence to really own those words and to say out loud, hey I am a visual artist, and actually believe that I am.
That is priceless.
Well, I don’t have the living separate but together lives thing going on, but I do know what you mean.
These days, I have my blogging life, my art and photography life, and my family and friends life.
Each part gives me something different, and they help to make me whole.
The love, wisdom, and acceptance from each part helps me to figure out where I want to be, and how to get there.
That’s something I definitely couldn’t do by myself.
*hugs* Kimmie. xxx
I haven’t read the comments unusual for me but my neck hurts….
Together but separate yes.
I don’t like to leave him really even for a night it makes me anxious but when I do I love it.
Right now, honestly, right now, I feel alone. My grown up children who as you know still live at home, well they think they are grown up, nearly 19 and a couple of days from 21. Appear it seems to hate me. Apparently this evening, I am deraganged, mad, revolting. Apparently I just threw my daughter down the stairs er I think not, I did get very very cross which I do rarely, but I am not prepared anymore to be a servant. Its all a load of crap really but I wonder why their father doesn’t get this shit. Right now I would like to run away a very long way away, I am tired of it all. Thats all very simplistic, its a bit more complicated than that, but I do find it odd that this daughter of mine has taken to bullying me frankly and hurting my feelings more than any other human being has ever done, and that is saying something, not exagerration just fact. I can’t do it anymore. I love her but I will not be treated this way, no one should really. It sounds nothing when I write it down but its not nothing, its awful and I actually don’t know what to do. All this happened when he was asleep a lot of it was very loud. He doesn’t wake, because of his medication and a tad of lager mixed in. For the first time her brother joined in. He is much bigger than I much bigger and I felt intimidated. Tomorrow both will lie about the ‘mad’ mother and I don’t doubt there will be more unrest. I actually can’t keep quiet about it anymore, I fear she has mental health problems, no one will listen to me on that. I suppose like Sherry over at her ms blog wordsaladandthedemylyinationof me, her daughter passed away and no one would listen to her, that she was worried this would happen due to alchohol abuse. Its not as bad as that, but the not listening bit, is the same, so my blog is silent what do I write, in case she reads it. I bet you wish you hadn’t asked now. Other days are happy but are lot for me are very very unhappy of late.
I feel like coming over there and giving them a stern talking to. LOVE to you my friend. You are the Mother, stamp your foot (gently of course, don’t want to dislocate your ankle) and tell them to lift their game.
Very separate lives. My DH and I, until recently, had been living like flatmates. We’re working on it. My online and creative me kinda blend in as that is where I get a lot of my inspiration, and in turn write about what I’ve created. Then there’s the me that runs the house and cares for the teen. I often don’t do very well in this department as creative me always wants to take over. And then there’s the other me that works in an office. I hate that me as it goes against everything I believe in. It would be so much easier if I could just be creative me all the time, although nothing else would ever get done and I’d probably starve 🙂
Are you coming to blogopolis? We can have a good chat then 🙂
I have to say yes and no to that. I have my online life with all of my bloggy friends, I have my real-life friends (I hate that distinction because I feel like many online people are very real friends) who may know about my blog but don’t read, I have the school mums who know me in a quite superficial way and then my family life. I share some stories and things about bloggy people with my husband. He knows the names of some people who I read and who I care about – and sometimes worry about. All of my “lives” are slightly interwoven and represent slightly different facets of who I am. Blogging is a really important facet for me as it gives me a chance to express myself and develop friendships in a way that I sometimes can’t in “real life”. It’s so strange how people you’ve never even met can play such a meaningful role in your life. Weird but cool.
you know me.
So… duh.
x
I have lots of different lives. Compartmentised but all somehow interlinked.
Sometimes it’s comforting, sometimes I find it frustrating that I can’t complain about one area of my life to another area of my life without the risk of upsetting the first area who I don’t want to upset – just have a bit of a moan about (does that make any sense to you?). That’s probably a good thing though as it makes me think about what I say before I say it, which is never a bad thing.
You know, I’ve never really thought of it that way, but yes, I suppose I do. I have a home life with the GOFA that is really almost another job much of the time. Actually, that one blurs the line between the non-paying job and my on-line life. I also have my professional life, that patters along around everything else and makes many things possible. then, there’s my family and friends life. I prefer things to blend, but that’s not always a good thing; I like leaving my paid work behind when I finish for the day!
I live so many lives I should have my own national passport. Heck, I even have two blogs. But you knew that.
The life of the family that raised me uber religious, with a Mormon bishop for a father. The life of an atheist husband raised in the southern United States with its racial undertones. The life of a mother with children so blessedly unique in their mental health they have no defining lines. Me, a woman who has to be modern enough to play at being a chef, but yet so wild in my Native American roots that half the time I feel I’m still a child of the forest, all colors, and utterly unschooled.
If I wasn’t born here and now, with the ability to interact with people such as yourself, I think I would implode. The common stories, the trials, and the colors of our lives; somehow they are all familiar, and in this world today, with all its insanity and chaos, they are beacons of support. My online life makes all those other lives less noisy, pulling common threads together and weaving my life into something manageable by showing me I’m not alone.
Yep. I think that’s why I do it. Pretty sure of it.
I feel like my life is made up of just two areas, work and home. I can really only be myself at home as I have to put on the 9-5 face for work. I sometimes wish I had more things going on so I would have to compartmentalize. After reading so many good comments about blogging, I wanna try it!
Oh yes Kim. My work life, where quality no longer means much and shareholders rule the roost. My fantasy life which has made it hurt too much to visit here for a while, because I so want to be in Tasmania. My everyday life, which sees my beautiful 100-year-old gum tree having to be chopped down, my mother growing weary, and a beloved 1930s Depression building being demolished in my local area to make way for el crappo the diddly retail development. Aargh! And then there is my family life. And that involves love, even if tinged with concern, and new life, so that’s okay. Forgive the self-indulgence, but you struck a chord.