“My colleage was full of joy when reading one paragraph on your post “… a little tour of the past 6 years with that boy. With some really priceless pictures. We met at a camp. …” it makes me to look more intelligent after understanding it.” You’re right, Reverse Telephone Lookup, you actually do look more intelligent after understanding that fragment of a blogpost about my anniversary.

“Your title Utah is Hard, Yo sums up your content well.” Huh, that one may not actually be spam. It’s actually kind of…observant. And literate.

Smokeless cigarettes wrote, “One crucial point I really enjoy about web site posts is the fact that they spark an notion in my brain. Immediately after that comes about, I experience as I need to comment while using hope it is beneficial to many people.” If only the notion sparked in their brain had some semblance of syntax or grammar.

“This can be one of the most important article I ever read today, I’m talking about this piece of your article “…, but once we began doing some pricing, we realized that without all the cards full of money we got for our wedding,…” this is it, you just smashed it down buddy.” Thanks, How to Get Over my Ex (hint: not by leaving non-sensical spam comments). You really smashed something down too. Namely the English language.

“Thanks for the “work” you put into your blog says my aunt” Um, Live prrno cam, I’m not really sure I appreciate your quotation mark implications. Okay fine. Your aunt and her condescending quotation marks may be right, but she can still bite me.

“Considerably, the blog post is actually the greatest on this worthy topic. I concur with your decisions and will thirstily look forward to see your approaching updates. Saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the phenomenal lucidity in your writing. Please maintain it up!” It’s like the Thesaurus sponsored a spam comment.

Oh, and did I mention that Sarah Palin reads my blog? And she think’s I’m awesome. Seriously, she left me a comment with her name on it and everything! “Such a well written post.. Thnkx for sharing this post!” At least they got the spelling and punctuation sort of close to how I expect she would actually write a comment.

I feel like I have so much to live up to now. I mean, I need to spark notions and smash things. And most importantly, I have to go maintain it up. My life is hard (yo).

And it never fails that at the end of that post it will say “this post was sponsored by (the company I just said glittery wonderful things about)” and it’s all I can do to not walk away from my computer right then.

Maybe that’s harsh, but I feel like my twitter stream, my blog list is suddenly filled with promotions, with paid reviews. With things that are not writing. Yes, there are words and sentences, but it’s not real writing.

I understand that many people make a living off their blogs and that to do that, they have to write reviews. And that’s fine and well, but don’t be surprised if people click away. Or I guess person. I’m not looking for profundity, I’m not looking for earth-shattering thoughts and prose (and judging by the fact that you’re reading this, neither do you), I just want to read something real. I want to read about your family’s silly anecdote. I want to hear about that thing that happened last week, that news story that pissed you off or warmed your heart. I want to hear your good and bad news.

I want to read real things.

I don’t want to read about how you got a free car. I don’t want to read about that great! glass! cleaner! I don’t want to read about how you got a free trip to Narnia by blogging about how great Narnia is. I just don’t. Because it’s disingenuous. Because it’s not your real voice. It a voice I can’t trust. It’s a voice I know has ulterior motives, a voice that has been paid to speak, to write.

I tweeted about this yesterday and was surprised at how many people agree. How many people besides me miss the writing, the real stuff, the stories, the jokes, the rants. I’m not the only one. We miss hearing your voice, the real one, not the one that got paid to write that blog post.

If this blog post hurt your feelings, I’m sorry. I do understand that writing reviews is a source of income and hey, I run ads on my blog. I get that. But if you have to write reviews, disperse them. Put them on a second blog that we can choose to go read. Don’t try to hide it within your real content, we see through that. Don’t try to pretend like it’s real writing, it’s not. And I feel like I’m being duped.

Just bring back the writing. Bring back your voice. Be genuine again. Because that, not the number of pageviews, not the number of fans on facebook or followers on twitter, is what makes you a good writer, a good blogger. If you don’t have the content, then none of the rest of it matters anyway.

Bring back the real stuff. Please.

I’m a big mix of totally honored and shocked to pieces. And of course, totally amazed to be listed with so many amazing writers and designers. Can’t wait to see the gala and be a part of something to benefit the gulf coast, just great stuff all around!

But, that’s not really what I’m going to write about.

One month from today, thousands of bloggers from all over the country and even, perhaps, the world, will be convening in New York for 2ish days of complete madness, alcohol, swag and no sleep. And since about half the internet has posted their BlogHer must do/see lists, and I love me a good bandwagon, I’m hopping on it. If you’re not going to BlogHer, I promise to make it entertaining anyways.

1. There is no swag in the world worth hitting a baby for. And while I have no idea who did that last year, let’s just make this a life rule- DON’T HIT BABIES. Period. Ever. Especially not for a vibrator. I mean really, I can’t believe this has to be said.

1a. Did you know that swag stands for stuff/shit we all get? I had no idea. File that under things I learned at BlogHer last year.

2. Bring business cards. If you don’t have them, make some or order some. I highly HIGHLY recommend moo cards. They’re easy to create and not too pricey. If you can’t manage the cost (because dude, BlogHer is crazy expensive) print your own or even hand write some. You’re going to come across hundreds of people and most of them will want to know more about you and having business cards with your blog, email and twitter stuff on them is a great way to do it.

2a. Be creative with your cards, but don’t be all TMI. I’m just going to leave it there.

3. Leave yourself room in your suitcase for the way home. You’re going to get swag, don’t hesitate to weed through it before you leave, but you’ll need space for it. Last year I packed my small suitcase inside my larger one and on the way home I checked both. Granted, it didn’t cost me anything to check luggage because my airline wasn’t trying to rob me of every last dime I have like the one this year, but, yea. If you’re unwilling or unable to check 2 bags, just leave yourself room to pack goodies.

4. If they hand out chocolate in the swag it will probably be gross. So you can just give it to me. I’ll take that nasty chocolate off your hands.

5. Do not skip meals. There will be alcohol, there will be some smallish rooms and if you’re not paying attention, you’re gonna give yourself a good case of the omg I’m so famished I might pass out and die in this tiny room. Especially if you’ve already given me all of your chocolate. Then you’d be a real predicament.

6. RSVP for everything. You may not make it to everything, but you won’t get into anything if you don’t RSVP.

7. Be outgoing, but don’t be crazy. And if someone tells you that they’re not MckMama, they’re not. Don’t keep asking them. I really wanted to meet a certain blogger last year, but I chickened out and I regretted it for a while. I’ve since met her and she’s entirely lovely. Just FYI.

7a. Not everyone is as lovely and fluffy and wonderful as you want them to be or as nice they sound on their blog. They’re all humans like you and many of them profoundly lack social skills or like me, are SUPER awkward in new situations. But if they’re treating you crappily, walk away. There’s no reason to keep trying and there are just WAY too many people there who are lovely and fluffy and wonderful (I’m not sure what I mean by fluffy, but whatever) to spend your time trying to convert the assholes.

8. Bring a variety of clothes and shoes. I wore skirts and t-shirts to the panels during the day and dresses and jeans/tank tops to the parties at night. But be yourself. If you hate dresses, don’t bring a dress. You’re going to be miserable in it and then you’re one of the previously mentioned non-fluffy assholes. Don’t be one of those. Also pack layers because some of the rooms last year were so cold they nearly froze my fingers off and others were so stuffy I nearly had to step out.

9. Do not, I repeat, do not miss the community keynote on Friday night. It is one of my very favorite things about BlogHer. It’s where you’ll get to hear (and apparently this year, see) some of the best and funniest writing you’ve had the privilege of hearing in a while. Frankly, you can pretty safely miss the other keynotes (I did last year), but don’t miss the community keynote. And bring tissue. Ohdeargod bring tissue.

10. Please, please, please introduce yourself to me. If you’re reading this and you’re going to BlogHer, please find me. I am really friendly, really really awkward, but really friendly and I want to meet people, that’s a HUGE part of why I’m going.

10a. My name is Katie, but I’ve decided I’ll respond to Overflowing Bra too. I’m a big fan of irony like that.

11. Have a freaking good time. If you’re going, it means you paid for tickets, for airfare, for hotels and for other crap too. And that’s entirely too much money to not have a good time. Get away for a little while, take naps if you need to, but make this experience the best it can be for you. Don’t worry about what other people are doing or saying or thinking, don’t be a shit starter (no one likes those people), and just have some fun.

I think we’re all naturally attracted to drama because it has that train wreck quality. You can watch it happening and predict the end long before it happens. You know a crash is coming and all you have to do is stand aside and wait. You know that people will divulge facts that shouldn’t be divulged, others will betray friends, and that mud will be slung from all sides. You know it won’t end without casualties. It never does.

The drama that I (in retrospect, willingly) entered into has taken prisoners. It has hurt people, it has hurt friendships, it has hurt feelings, all of which is wildly ironic since the entire reason for the drama was because I was hurt by someone else. The whole point was to stop the hurt, not redirect it.

I can tell you with great sincerity that the intentions of this drama were good. I realize that what it has become doesn’t necessarily possess the same purity, and for that, I am incredibly sorry. If I could’ve foreseen this I would’ve stopped in my tracks, I would’ve thrown a break and the whole disaster might have been prevented. I can only tell you this now, with hindsight, which is startlingly clear and painful.

All that I really want is to move on, to write a fluffy ridiculous blog post about my cat, but I feel like there are people expecting me to say more, to do more, to stand up somewhere and declare right from wrong.

I’m not going to do that.

I don’t think that anyone involved in this is without sin. No one is walking away without making a mistake somewhere along the line, and while some are more egregious than others, the bottom line is that there’s no place for me to cast stones, to shine praise down on anyone or to proclaim a winner or a loser. I am not the judge or jury, I’m an accomplice turned spectator who’s been trying to run out of the room and can’t seem to get away.

(This post has so many metaphors and cliches, it’s outright absurd.)

I can tell you that I’m done with this. I have no interest in further involvement, I’m walking away, in hopes that things will go back to a rough approximation of normal. I have been tiptoeing around the internet this week because I feel like I’ve created such a monster that I don’t know where I belong anymore. I have hurt friends, I have hurt people I barely even know.

I feel like I’ve alienated many people, which is unfortunate and I feel like I have ignited others, which will likely also end up being a bad thing.

If you’ll have me, I just want to get back to my normal affairs. I want to walk away from the drama that I didn’t see coming, that I didn’t ever want, and tell you about how two of my classmates have accidentally touched my ass this week, or how my husband got stuck working on the night shift again for a pregnant co-worker. I want to leave this in the past, with my apology as my final product of this mess. I can’t speak for anyone else and I won’t try to. I am washing my hands of this for good.

And all I have left to say is that I am genuinely sorry for my part in this mess and for the hurt it caused. I never imagined this would happen and I’m sorry it did.

I was asked by BlogHer if a post I had written here last month could be featured on the homepage of their site. I’ve never had my writing featured anywhere but here (or at some really need patient blogging panels), and so needless to say, I was thrilled. And then I saw the post they asked me to contribute, and if possible I was even more excited.

Frankly, I am more proud of what’s in those paragraphs than most of the others I’ve written.

And truly, I’m more grateful to know and love the incredible woman in that post than anything else today.

So hop over to BlogHer, for me, and to see what this excitement is all about. (So, you may need to scroll down, or even go to older posts, or look under the tab of mothers and family. It’s moved down throughout the day. But still go look! Please!)

While I’m not really blogging here, I am having my blog posts aired other places all week. Right now one of my favorites is up at the Chronic Babe edition of Patients for a Moment. It’s a pretty cool thing for health bloggers to display some of their writing and this time is about funny experiences, so it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time (and also? if you have a chronic disease and aren’t on Chronic Babe? You’re crazy. Just sayin’).

And on Friday I’ll be back with another super exciting announcement regarding my blog appearing everywhere except, you know, here.

Heh.

Hope you’re all having a good week.

There was a bit of a skirmish last week on twitter, one I was not a part of, nor one that I firmly grasp all the various angles of. But there are people on both sides, who are irritated. And one of the more interesting things that I’ve seen come out of it are the blog posts that seem to indicate that disagreeing with someone from your internet community is wrong.

Uh, what?

Disagreement, in it’s true form, is benign, in fact, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that it’s primarily a good thing. Discussion, discourse and disagreements all force us to consider our perspectives and ideals. They allow us to consider things from someone else’s point of view. And how all of that is not a good thing, I don’t know.

But there is a difference between disagreement and being a “troll.” (For the record, I am not, in any way, shape or form saying that people involved in this twitter issue are trolls. Not even a little, I know so little about what initially happened that I cannot even begin to offer a bit of opinion on that.) And that’s really what I want to talk about.

When I started this blog, I always said I would publish all non-spam comments unless they were attacking other readers here. I put myself out there to be judged and criticized, and while it hasn’t always been easy, I made that choice and I’ve stood by it for nearly 3 years now.

I know that some of you don’t believe me, but honestly, I have no problem with someone thinking I’m doing something wrong. I have no problem with people who have different opinions than I do. In fact, I expect both of those. And disagreement isn’t a bad thing.

But that’s just not the same as people who live to cut others down. People who don’t leave their name but leave a nasty comment. Chances are, if you’re not willing to put your name on it, you shouldn’t be saying it. You can tell me that you think I’m making the wrong decision without calling me stupid. And every time you resort to name calling instead of being civil, your point is completely lost. I tune out everything you say as soon as the tone has turned ugly. Every. single. time.

And that’s where things are changing. I’m not publishing comments from hateful people anymore. They add nothing to this blog, they make me a version of myself I don’t like. And I’m just over it. I will happily post any comments that disagree with me or others respectfully, but the moment that respect is gone, so is your comment. Period. And if you continue to leave nasty comments after I’ve deleted others, I’ll just block you from this site entirely.

I’m not entirely sure what to do about twitter. I don’t think I’m perfect, but having someone who I’ve blocked from my stream continue to read through my tweets and talk about me (and really, not just talk about me, but rather call me things like “idiot asshole” for a typo, or tell me that I’m an asshole for switching religions, or accuse me of asking him anonymous questions on formspring (uh, hi, I have better things to do with my time, don’t flatter yourself)), is just not okay. It’s such a second grade act that I don’t even know how to address it as an adult.

So the only logical conclusion I’ve come to is to not address it. I’m not reading his twitter stream anymore. If a google alert pops up from him again, I’ll ignore it. I’m not going to feed this person anymore of my time and angst. He’s not worth it. I tried reasoning and I tried politely asking him to stop, it’s clear that he’s neither reasonable or polite and so I’m done trying. I’m done caring.

And more than that, I’m going to go back to blogging the way I used to, the way I always intended to- for me. Completely ignorant of statistics, page views, feed subscribers and all that crap. I’ve noticed lately that as soon as people start blogging for a reason other than the pure desire to write, the writing suffers, and it really doesn’t matter how many people come to your site if there’s nothing worth reading on it.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m going back to writing for me. I’m going back to what I always intended this blog to be. I spend so much time worried about what people will think, how people will judge me for what I write. I worry that I whine too much or don’t spend enough time making people laugh. But this is my blog, these are my words, my stories. And I’m writing them because I want to.

It’s time for blogging to stop being about other people, or about money or attention. It’s time for bloggers to stop cutting each other down and act like adults. And more than anything else, it’s time for blogging to be about the writing and the support and the stories.

The way it used to be.

My husband mocked me mercilessly for going, but as usual, I ignored him and got ready. I also bought him a book while there. Heh.

She started with a reading of her new book and then opened the floor for questions. In case you didn’t know, the lady is hilarious. And down to earth and sarcastic. I’m pretty confident that if she just let me hang out with her that we’d be best friends.

The highlight of the night was when someone asked her about the book My Sister’s Keeper and the movie version that came out last year. The woman that she loved the book, but wondered why the movie was so different (and crappy). And Jodi (yea, that’s right, I’m calling her by her first name) answered that she agreed and was glad to finally be able to talk about it. She said that giving up a book to a movie producer is like giving up a child for adoption. You can’t call every day and see they the child is doing, and some kids get raised by lovely intelligent families, go on to college and become great things, and others? Are raised by crack whores.

I almost died laughing.

It was an evening that felt like I was chatting with a friend, not having a professional writer talk to me. She inspired me to want to write. She writes everyday from 7:30 to 3:20, no matter what. She writes when she doesn’t feel like it, she writes when she has no idea where her story is going. She sits down, reads the chapter she’s on or the chapter she just finished and then writes.

And she said something that hit home with me. She said that you can always go back and edit crappy writing later, but you can’t edit a blank page.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down here, typed up an entire post, decided it wasn’t important enough, or funny enough or some version of enough and deleted it on the spot. My writing has felt stagnant lately and maybe it’s because I’m not giving myself a chance to grow. Instead of trying to improve a crappy first draft, I’m walking away. I know that I don’t have time to write every day (a group of people just let out a big grateful sigh about that), but the more I write the more I remember why I started doing it in the first place.

I read a blog the other day where a woman said that she writes for page views and money, plain and simple and that anyone who doesn’t, isn’t blogging, they’re journalling. I didn’t comment on it, but I totally took offense. And then I thought, why? Why do I care? If I’m doing things the way I want and I’m happy, then who cares that someone else is doing the same thing for a different reason? You can call this a journal, you can call it a blog, but really, it’s semantics. And frankly, I don’t give a crap. It’s writing.

I have google analytics and I check it a couple times a week, but I don’t and never will, write for blog traffic. I have BlogHer ads because I support the BlogHer company, I like what they stand for, and it has allowed me to connect with women who write about similar things and has shown my blog to others who have found support here. If I never saw another dime from blogging, I would keep doing it exactly the way I am, because it’s not about the money.

I write because I want to get things out of my head. I write because I want to share an experience. I write because I get support and belong to a community of men and women who write some of the best stuff I’ve read to date. I write because it enriches my life, because it makes me feel like me. I write because I like to.

And I’ll probably never stand up in front of an audience of people and read from a best selling book, or give advice to a group of (almost all) women on writing. But I will continue to write for me. To grow as a writer, a “journalist” and a story teller.

I will continue to write for the love of writing and for all that love has given me in return.

You see, a year ago today, my internet friend Maggie created Violence Unsilenced. She created a website that was devoted to giving victims of violence of all kinds, a voice. She gave us a place to come together, to tell our stories, to get support.

Prior to Violence Unsilenced, I had never told my story to anyone. I had not told my mother. I had not told my husband. I had not told my closest friends.

I had no voice. I had the fears. I had the memories.

But I had no voice.

To say thank you to Maggie seems so insufficient. It seems so tiny compared to what she has given me. Maggie and the supporters and commenters at Violence Unsilenced gave me a safe space to share my secret. They gave me advice, they gave me a little bit of myself back.

101 of us have told our stories, have spoken out, have unsilenced ourselves to the violence we experienced. 101 of us have been given a chance to raise awareness to the sad reality that many men and women face.

And while the words thank you are no where near as profound as I wish they were, they’re really all I have. Thank you Maggie, for creating this place for us. Thank you to the other 100 people who have participated and to the thousands of comments that have supported us in this journey, in this moment of triumph.

I spoke out. Have you?