So, I've been tagged by DarkDaughta for a meme.
Rules: Post eight random facts about yourself. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag eight people and list their names. Leave the people you tagged a comment on their blog, letting them know that they've been tagged.
1. I want to be a writer, want to write great stories, but have a rather crippling writer's block. It's all about being caught up in my ego, thinking I have to write something fantastic and that it has to be right the first time. I've won NaNoWriMo once and failed it twice. Maybe this year I'll break through.* I've never been able to find a writing voice that sounds like me. I wrote journals a long time ago, but they sounded funny. I hate my story-writing voice. My academic voice is pretty distant and impersonal. I constantly feel extremely self-conscious when I write.
2. I hate my job buckets, though my bosses haven't caught on. I bow and scrape and do all the work cheerfully, then go home and snap at my partner. I want to just break free but I'm the one supporting us, so I have to suck it up. Then I think about all the people who have no hope of breaking free ever, and wish I could re-order all of goddamn society.
3. I feel both invisible, and the desire to be invisible in everyday life. I like being nice to the people I interact with and being a "good" customer, and I am so crippled by the need to not get in anyone's way that my regular body position is crouched, hunched over, trying to get smaller. A lot of times people don't seem to notice me, so it seems to be working.
4. I have issues with food. I've never dieted, but I have severe sensory issues associated with food, so I'm a very picky eater and feel very self-conscious about it. I hate for others to see me eat or know that I eat at all. I feel morally virtuous when I eat a vegetable, and morally wrong when I eat something junky. I hate that mentality, but I also hate that I eat junk food at all. I wish I could go to stores and be invisible as I buy things (see above). I imagine judging eyes on me at all times, even though I know it's probably just me.
5. I get along very well with my mom, and I'm trying to nurse her along to a more radical point of view. I've come pretty far with feminism, but whenever I try to talk to her about race, she changes the subject.
6. When I look in the mirror, I don't see me. The me in the mirror, that others see, is not how I look on the inside. I'm ok with this, and tend to dress and act in ways that suit me internally, not the mirror.
7. I don't have a blogroll. It seems too fraught with cliquishness, even though I know it facilitates communication and makes connections. I'd rather just keep reading the blogs I read and comment on the ones I want to, rather than slapping up a link and feeling secure that I've fulfilled my "quota" of "correct" bloggers that I endorse. I'm such a loner anyway, that I'm not that interested in joining any sort of "community" on the web. I'm happy to mostly read and observe and occasionally engage. I'm also not tagging anyone for this meme. I've not really been that friendly yet.
8. I finally read "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and it was fabulous. I love the idea of myth and archetype (why I read tarot) even though I'm not at all spiritual. The human brain is capable of amazing things.
*I'm hoping, this year, to write a story that actually deals with oppression and race. I'm not thinking that this will be a legitimate portrayal, but hopefully it will help me examine some of my ideas, preconceptions, and questions, and help me figure out some of the areas I need to learn more about.
1 comment:
Thanks for writing back. I wasn't enthused about being tagged. I see that folks usually use these as an oportunity to continue with the blogland banality project not to push anything.
In terms of cliquishness, what I've always found fascinating is that as someone who writes about the cliquishness that was here in blogland when I came, who saw the various big girl feminist clubs who reference each other on the regular and who tip toe around actually challenging each other, it's been frustrating that for someone like me to get the word out about my blog so that I can make deep connections hopefully with two or three people, it becomes increasingly difficult as people who do keep my link are put under subtle pressure to choose between making connections with the clique-sters or being openly connected to my blog. Mark one up for the cliquesisters whose blogs get attention no matter who links to them because of economies of scale which means they're already well known enough that they will continue to become larger and more well known as feminists in the blogosphere. Strike one off for me, the person who dared to question them and their cliques.
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