confessions of a blog-lurker

Hi everyone!

I hope you're having a great day.

So I know it's a bit late for this, 26 days late to be exact, but I have a New Year's resolution regarding blogging.

I am going to do the unthinkable (to me): leave more comments.

I read a huge number of blogs.  At the moment, my Google Reader has...let's see... 970 unread posts.  Nine hundred and seventy.  If you have a blog and you've commented here before, I'm probably subscribed to you.  But I almost never comment!  It's not that I'm not interested, or that I don't want to participate in the blogging community.  I'm just a shy, lurking blog-reader.  It's kind of ridiculous.  (Fun fact, though-- there is a Wikipedia entry for 'lurker' about people who do this!)  There are blogs I've been reading for years, and that I'm emotionally invested in, like The Little Things We Do, home of the cutest baby on the planet, Fern.  I think I've commented maaaaaybe three times?  That's just silly.  But I worry that I don't have anything worthwhile to add to the conversation, or that I'll be repeating what someone else already said, and I psych myself out and don't comment.  

Note to self:  it is a blog comment.

It doesn't need to be a work of literary greatness.

And anyway, I love reading comments on my blog!  I enjoy each one-- I never think, "Hrmmm, this comment ends with a preposition!  It lacks a witty-yet-relevant pun!"  Chances are that nobody else things those things either.  

So anyway.  I'm going to try to comment on at least three posts every day.  And I'm keeping myself accountable by posting it here. 

Baby steps.

Baby steps to commenting more.

(that last bit is a reference to the movie What About Bob? and if you haven't seen it you really should.)

Have a fantastic weekend!

♥

sick. but not in a way that is slang for cool.

well, this is happening.

if you haven't been reading this blog for a while, let me fill you in--

bedraggled me + face in a pillow= I am sick.

So frustrating!  I was so close to making it to the end of the semester without it happening.

But now I have a lovely laryngitis/cold/fever thing.

Gosh darn it.

My mom was coincidentally visiting me this weekend, though, so she took care of me.  She's the best.

And as often happens when sick, I did some perusing of the interwebz.

And I found the HIGH-larious  Catfoodbreath, the blog of a 17-pound Siamese cat.

(I know it's written by a human.  I'm ignoring that fact.)

Oh, and I'm listening to this song pretty much constantly.  It's by The National, but it was written for the video game Portal 2, so I'd never heard it before it came up on Spotify.  Apparently it plays on a radio in the game.  It's really pretty.

Oh, and these necklaces are great.

I think this one is appropriate for this post.

Alright, back to snoozing, homework I can do in bed, and wishing the kids outside my building would quiet down or get off my proverbial lawn.

(sometimes when I'm sick I get just the tiiiiiniest bit cranky.)

hope you're all having a lovely start to the week!

♥

some things are awesome, other things really test my nerves.

I recently ran across the brilliant tumblr Incorrect Sylvia Plath Quotes.  Basically, quotes from various pop culture references are incorrectly attributed to Sylvia Plath.  Simple, but genius.

On a completely unrelated note, I'm not sure when sensitivity to the feelings of others became a liability, but I would guess it was around the time that reality television became a thing and suddenly people could pretend that they were the star of their own program.  It really, really bothers me when I hear someone bragging about how rude they were or how little they cared about someone else's feelings.  Individuality and courage of conviction are to be commended, but so is decency.

Speaking of things that bother me, there are a few things making their way around the interwebz that just tick me right off.  Here's one of them.

I'm sorry, stupid cancer?  Stupid.  Cancer.  As someone who has lost both my father and my grandmother to cancer within the last 7 months, the idea of sending something around that starts with stupid cancer is horribly trivializing about a disease that had a huge and tremendously painful impact on my life.  Stupid snow?  Sure.  Stupid traffic?  Mmhm.  Stupid cancer?  Nuh-uh.  Not okay.  It's not often that something manages to be both trivializing and sanctimonious, but this little charmer does.  '97% of my friends won't re-post this, but 3% will.  Let's see who does.'  How dare someone imply that if I don't re-post this, it means I either don't care about or wasn't deeply effected by cancer.  If I'm going to do something in honor of the people I've lost to cancer, it's damn well going to be something more meaningful and impactful than a purposely guilt-inducing Facebook post.  (This isn't meant to offend anyone who has posted this, anyone who wants to post this, anyone who created this, yadda yadda yadda.  It's not meant to offend anyone, but it's opinion of one girl who finds it highly offensive.)

ugh.  now I have to look at some cat photos to get my blood pressure back to normal.

there.  that's better.

Now I'm going to get back to my homework.  Thanks for making it to the end of this ramble-y, ticked-off post.

♥

mem-what?

Alright guys.  So I'm in a class this semester that's all about memoirs-- reading and writing.  I love reading memoirs, possibly because I'm the nosiest person ever, but writing one?  Not so much.  Which seems weird because I clearly have no problem writing about myself (as I write this on a blog...about myself... *awkward collar tug*), but like I mentioned in my last post, there are still things I don't discuss here or anywhere else.  There are things that are just too personal for public consumption.  But isn't that the whole point of a memoir?  Is there any reason to read or write a memoir that isn't super-personal?  It's a conundrum.  I'm not ready to open up about losing my dad and everything that led up to it, but it's by far my strongest memory and the one that impacted me more than any other.  And there are other aspects of my life and memories that I don't plan on ever sharing, both because they're just too private and because sharing them would make them feel less special and close to my heart.  So basically I would have the world's most boring memoir.  I don't have any middle ground between my wonderfully idyllic childhood and everything hitting the metaphoric fan over the past year, which knocked me pretty directly from childhood to adulthood, skipping any sort of grace period.  

On a completely unrelated-ish note, I've been listening to this song a lot since a friend introduced me to it a few weeks ago.  It became frustratingly relevant recently.  But it's a really fantastic song, and the lyrics are honest and uncomplicated.  

I like the vocals in the live version better, but I'm posting the actual music video too because I just think it was so well done.  It's subtle and creative and their interaction is so-- hmm.  So appropriate?  It really captures the feeling of breaking apart from someone you used to care about-- especially how he sort of flinches and looks away when she's singing.  The rest of his work is definitely worth a listen, too.  Look him up on Spotify or Pandora or Youtube or iTunes whatever you're all using these days.

Okay.  I better go try to come up with some non-overly-personal/non-traumatizing experience to write about.  Thanks for making it through this ramble-y post.

etsy giveaway.  yadda yadda.  you know how it goes.

♥