This piece is from a kind of music called

8 bit or chiptune

The musician limits him/herself to the technology that was available…oh, 30 years ago. I like the retro feel.

of THIS song anyway.

It’s a demanding form

I have had this blog, in one form or another, for more than ten years.

One of the forms the blog has taken is the email mailing list, called

The Wonder Weekly

Many of my readers were part of this. I liked that format, but I found it intimidating to have a blog that I sent out to people rather than one that I just posted up on the open space of the internet.

But I did like it. I was just scared of it. I would like to have the WonderWeekly be in concert with the wonderblog.

So, I will give that a try. I’ll try to pick my favorite blogpost and send it out to my email list. It’s sort of a way to sneak up on myself and trick me into picking something to send to my fans.

So mobile is the new web.  I have a mobile device but it is not the web to me.

Maybe as a content producer i cant love it. I suppose for consuming it is sufficient.

Barely

most of the time when I tell people that I’m from alaska they say “Oh, why did you ever leave?!”

One man asked me “How come it took you so long to leave?”

“I couldn’t imagine a way to get out for a long time”

And that’s the way of it. If you can’t imagine, if you cannot concieve of what the next step is, you don’t take steps.

I know someone who wants to be a “public speaker.” I will be honest, I think of that as almost impossible. A public speaker? what? How does someone set out to *DO* that?

Reading over my blog, I see again and again how I am wrestling with how to be an artist. I am sure, so very very sure, that I will never make any money as an artist. So my current plan has been to find a way to fit art into my life in between making money.

Or maybe becoming independently wealthy.

On the other hand, I might be going about it the wrong way. As much as I hated my life in Alaska, I couldn’t imagine anything else at the time. I think back now and wonder how come I didn’t climb out the window and hit the road. I suppose it was a long walk to Anchorage.

But if I knew then what I know NOW, I would have found a way. It was not impossible.

So back to what I know now NOW, what could I do? How is it I really want to live my life? What am I doing, here? Could I imagine another way of doing and being?

What if I COULD be a public speaker? What if I COULD sell my art and make money?

…i wouldn’t need a lot…

One of the things I have learned to do to protect myself, a defense mechanism from a long time ago, is to arrange my art so that it didn’t take anyone else’s help. If I had to rely on someone else to get this stuff DONE, it wasn’t going to happen.

And just producing something, just producing a sentence or a melody, that was enough.

But I’m confident now that I can do sentences. I have ten years of sentences in my past. And that’s just since I started tracking it.

Now, I want more. I want an audience. I want a bigger audience. I want more than the people who happen to walk by. To be self-referential, I think Miriam needs to get her lute playing off a deserted alley and sell out stadiums.

I’ve been re-reading the wonderblog, and remembering what I was thinking back then.

I have spent a lot of time writing on this blog about writing. I have spent a lot of time wishing and whining that I want to be an artist and creative and write and do beautiful things and think beautiful thoughts.

I have railed against the necessity of having a job.

However, I haven’t gotten to the part of the blog where I have a kid yet.

I love having a job because I am not a good stay-at-home mom. I am NOT a stay at home mom, and the days when it is required that I stay at home and take care of Veronica all day are excruciating.

It’s better than it was, but it’s still exhausting.

I wonder what I’ll have written come the birth?

Because right now, I am jealous of me in January 2004. I am also remembering my struggles with my job then. I have a greater patience with my job now, sort of. It fills more than my personal need to feel useful and be fed. I have to keep my child fed too. And have a reason to brush my hair every day.

Then, I thought there was a trick to it. Now, I know better.

Ten years ago, I was trying to lose this same twenty pounds. And ten years ago I was agonizing over expressing my art. I’ve lost and gained those 20 pounds again and again over these years.

And I’ve wrestled and written and thought and written and avoided and procrastinated and started again with my writing.

But with both, it’s the same. There is no trick to it. You just have to do the work.

I’ve lost weight with fads, and I’ve lost weight on Weight Watchers. I’ve lost weight on my own and I’ve lost weight joining other people.

I’ve read writing books, and I’ve joined writing groups. I’ve NEVER written for hours on end. I’ve just kept at it. I’m still breathing and I’m still writing. Because that’s what it takes. Not giving up, not quitting.

When Miriam the Camel Driver was published, my first book in my hands, I was so thrilled. I was so happy, I actually kept thinking, “I’d better be careful how I drive, because now I could die. THis is the thing I had to do before I died, and I’m still young!”

I didn’t die. I kept, as a matter of fact, writing.

And I kept developing as an author. The work of being on a diet is similar to being an artist, but the results are not. I am not still writing the same 20 pages.

I have writen more, and gotten better. These last ten years, the ongoing lifetime of my blog, have been well spent.

So I re-read the first year.

I like a lot of what I read! But it strikes me that my apocalypse-adjacent experience made me a lot more frightened of free speech.

My first year of blogging was so confident and free. I was pretty sure that I could say anything I wanted and it would be fine, that I had opinions worth exploring and it was

OKAY

It was fine! It was me, building the internet, BEING the internet. My blog in the beginning was something not a lot of people were doing.

Now posting things is a lot my stylized. 140 characters, anyone?

Yeah, I tweet. But..

I BLOG dammit

I blog.

or, I used to

I still kinda do

I used to write up all the books I read and the music I listened to and the news I thought about. my life, other people’s lives, movies, music, friends, encounters

Blogfodder

I had things to say

I have things to say now, too, I have thoughts I am thinking. Back then, i was thrilled to have 10 visitors in a day. I got about that many. I remember I got about 20 odd visitors every day.

Now, I am the only one visiting my blog. Because there are other bloggers out there. Better websites. For mundanity, facebook has filled the need.

I am not exactly mundane. But I am not specialized either. I specialize in being me. I suppose that I am most fascinating to myself. And maybe to those who know me and love me.

Facebook keeps me in touch with friends. But I would rather those friends get to know me by reading my blog. My blog is a lot more of me, or at least the parts of me that are interesting.

From time to time I would write a lengthy email, and repost it as a blog entry. I suppose I could do the same for Facebook.

Or I could go both ways, post a blog on FB.

This internet has morphed. I like it, but I’m not such a superstar anymore.

There is that other thing, too. Right now, I am a

MOM

and that takes up all the space.

mom mother motherhood mom mom mom mom mommy mom mom

all the space, no margins left. Thoughts are difficult to pursue. And I am not so good at thinking and expressing without enough sleep

I’m in a different mental space that my first year of blog

well, it’s ALMOST a year I’ve read now

pg 86 on postings reference.