July 5, 2010
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I have to say, I don’t mind that nobody reads me.
There’s a certain comfort in the anonymity that comes from people not paying my blog much attention. There are times when I’m actually glad there isn’t a lot of traffic here, sort of like living on a quiet country road. This is one of those times.
Another friendship pruned from my life. I’m almost there, God. Almost. Soon you won’t have to do this any more. Soon I will get the message and there won’t be any more pseudo-friends to prune. Soon there won’t be anyone close enough to warrant pruning. And I think I’m finally going to be okay with that. Honestly, the terms “friendship” and “women” don’t go together in my heart any more. At least not to much of a depth. I have to think it’s safer this way; it just hurts way too much when the Turning comes, and each time it takes another piece of my heart away. If I hope to have any of the danged thing left, I’d better start doing a much better job of guarding it, like the cover of my journal beseeches in embossed gold script.
A couple of weeks ago I joined the writers at Examiner.com as the Tampa Homeschool Examiner. I haven’t been able to focus very much on my articles over the past several days for reasons mentioned above, but it’ll get better. Soon I’ll be putting out an article a day-ish. Suggested topics, as always, are welcome.
I’ve been making homemade bread every day. I love my Hitachi bread machine. It sure is a workhorse. I’ve actually been cooking a lot from scratch lately. I’ve always loved cooking from scratch, but a couple of months ago we started going through some tight financial times and that necessitated doing some bulk buying and trimming any “convenience” foods off the grocery list. I got in the habit of the home-cooked everything, and now I’m kind of liking it. So is my family.
Well, if I’m going to be doing very much writing I should probably try to at least outline a few articles.
Comments (2)
There are a lot of sayings that speak of life being a matter of getting up more times than your knocked down. True – but it’s never easy.
Re: pruning of friends, I’ve been through that a few times myself. Probably too many.
I share your comfort in anonymity. It’s the main reason I don’t do Facebook.
Dear Lisa,
I don’t subscribe to Xanga blogs anymore. Just replying to comments left on my blog, which is pretty much how I correspond on Xanga (you know, like letter exchanges) keeps me busy. I am always getting more and more subscribers and “friends” when I’m active. I “just got back” from a longer hiatus than usual about a month and a half ago. Before the hiatus, I told my readers that even though I wouldn’t “close down the blog” which houses some of my best writing, that I might not be “back” in a long while. The response I received was overwhelming. I tell you, I shed tears of joy at the positive feedback, and the pleas for me to keep posting.
The past few years have been full of many changes. I lost my friend Joel to cancer in 2008, and the next roommate couldn’t pay his half the rent. I bought a small double wide mobile home in a 450 home park early in 2009. I had an operation to repair my broken 16 year old hip replacement in May of 2009. Early this year, I had to have the cataract growing in my right eye removed.
I feel as if I’m healthier than ever. I recently began to write again. I’m getting even more “popular” on Xanga, and I’ve “kept” a lot of readers for the last six years, plus I’m getting to know younger “kids” on the service.
I restarted the Internet Island. (I’ll never restart Electric Poetry Group, however, the pains I endured at the end left some almost visible scars.) I still write the occasional poem.
Well, that’s what I’ve been up to. Now I’ll read this post. You’re the person who introduced me to Xanga, so it’s disheartening to see you seem to have ‘left’ and even more disheartening that you feel nobody read you. Like I say, I only could make the time to read the people who comment on my blog, and I certainly hope I always returned to comment when you visited me. Sometimes, like now, I just remember certain people from my “cyberpast” and attempt to connect again.
If memory serves, you have “liked” or perhaps commented on one or two of the facebook “copies” of my Xanga entries. Those are automatically sent to facebook for the benefit of some internet friends who don’t blog on Xanga anymore but have a facebook account. The posting is done by RSS and I rarely “visit” like I do on Xanga.
I have now read your entry and do not really have much to say. I think perhaps by “pruning” you mean removing internet friends from a list. I wish I had the wherewithal to do that. Last time I looked there were over 470 “friends” on my Xanga friends page. I even wrote an entry about it once, “who ARE all these friends?” I concluded that we don’t need “lists” to know who our friends are. I keep losing the “real” ones to God. Just a few weeks ago, my best friend from high school passed away. I wish I’d kept in touch more often now of course.
Congrats on your post on a newspaper. I studied journalism in high school and college, and perhaps for a while wanted to write for pay, but I’m satisfied with my small group of ‘readers’. When I was in HS by the way, I used to pass around my ‘volumes’ (3 ring binders) full of handwritten poetry to a select group of “readers”. With my Xanga, I’m essentially doing the same thing.
Good luck. Perhaps you might return for a moment and leave me a comment or two, or perhaps not. I hope this slow living on the country road is healthy and happy for you. I’m at the point in my life (57 now) that I feel I’ve conquered the internet. (You “knew” me when I was just starting out.) I’m getting to be a lot more social in the “real world” thanks to the park pool and community center, but one of the drawbacks, of course, to living in a senior park is that you lose the friends you make, when God sees fit to remove them from this reality.
God bless you, Lisa. I have always treasured our sporadic friendship, and of course always loved to read your poems.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
(I might not be able to afford my decade old website, http://www.allthingsmike.com, and might have to take it offline (it will still exist on my home computer for when I can afford to put it online again.) I’m a lifetime Xangan, so my 6 year old blog stays no matter what happens, even if for some reason God decides to call me away. I’m ready, too. I’ve had a wonderful life. Now I just live to enjoy each day as it happens, and hope that those days go on forever, but of course I know they won’t.)