paths
there are some blogs written by people i don’t know i’ve been reading for so long it seems a little….strange. one i’ve (and thousands of other people) been reading for like…..7 years? is dooce.com, and while i’ll let you discover for yourself whether it interests you or not, i have often wondered why *I* have been reading (and, admittedly, laughing and crying) along with someone’s life i don’t know for so long, especially after she became, more or less, a mommyblogger. yes, she’s hilarious and a good writer, but so are many, and since her topics have wandered into lands i don’t generally keep up with (babies, housewares, what it’s like being a famous blogger), it’s interesting that i keep reading. she recently linked to her about page, and i think i discovered a little piece of why i might be so drawn.
1. she graduated high school valedictorian 1993 in a conservative place (utah). i graduated high school valedictorian 1994 in conservative place (northern michigan). (i LOVE her note on being valedictorian.) (plus, this means she is only a year older than me? woah.)
2. she went to college from 1993-1997, majored in english. i went to college 1994-1998, majored in english.
3. she was raised Mormon, and “grew up believing that the Mormon Church was true.”
i was raised Free Methodist, and grew up mostly believing my church was true as well. and then she says: “the one skill I learned in college that serves me well now is not how to solve differential equations or how to write a paper deconstructing The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, it’s how to distrust organized religion.” i’ve written somewhere in here before about how comparatively studying religious texts in college pretty much destroyed any faith i might ever have in organized religion.
3. she started her blog in 2001. i started my blog in 2001.
i think that’s where the comparisons end, as i do not have 2 kids and 2 dogs and a husband and a house and make enough money off my blog to both a) not work and b) buy all sorts of things for my house and blog about them.
but still, i think those three things alone give us a lot in common, if you extrapolate a bit. high school in a rural/conservative place the 90s, liberal arts college in the 90s, study of writing and literature, growing up religious and then disconnecting from religious roots, finally ending in braindumping all about these and everything else all over the internet.
my point here is not some sort of weird attempt to make my blog more cool by mentioning my commonalities with the 26th most influential woman in media, cuz like i said, i make nothing off this, and i’m over earning cool points. it was just that clicking through and reading that, first of all, i found those 3 similarities sort of EERIE, especially that they are basically at the same time (are there other bloggers out there with those three things in common, within those years? speak up!), and secondly, it then occurred to me that the reasons i stay, shall we say, “attached” to some blogs are maybe not because of what they write or how they write it, but because i have something more in common with who is writing them.
end random deconstruction.
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