Now, I get that there’s no one right way to blog and people can write whatever they want to. In practice it seems like this ends up meaning that people mostly write about themselves, with varying amounts of other stuff they’re interested in. One could argue that the extent to which the author assumes their life will be interesting to others is a measure of self-centeredness; I don’t think it’s an absolute measure but a correlation seems likely. This would explain why most teenagers blog.

However, even aside from the issue of self-centeredness, how do people decide which things about them are important enough to blog? Scanning my own blog quickly for something to go off of, I see a bit of religion, a gas price that doesn’t look that bad any more, my car going crazy, more political commentary than I’d like but it is that year (%@#*&), some overdue housecleaning and how much better it would be with a helicopter, a lolcat, something that looks like a D&D session, an obnoxious test, my rant on taxes and the economy, some blathering about the meaning of life or something, a triscuit, and a series of posts involving my stolen cell phone. That’s not an exhaustive list; it’s more like the low-hanging fruit. So basically, I notice a lot of stuff to rant about, and a lot of quirky stuff. Other people would probably say that noticing funny stuff and going off on annoying stuff are reasonably typical of me. So, within certain limits, the stuff I think and talk about becomes the stuff I blog about.

Here’s where the anthill comes in.

My sister got married about a week ago. I can’t point you at it in her blog because she hasn’t posted anything about it. Her haircut, however, got two posts. Maybe this is just my crazy idea, but I’m pretty sure that getting married should be at least as important as a haircut. I hereby present this as evidence that society’s values are fracked.

(Full disclosure: Yes, I did once blog a haircut. Once. And I haven’t gone and gotten married.)

So yeah…it’s like we’re related or something.

Well, it seems like Julie did, possibly something to do with having three kids (she’s only a year older than I am…yikes…). Rianna’s on the edge. And Teresa and I…it’s not easy, but we’re fighting back, and trying to “rescue” the other two by dragging them along with us. Most notably we’re working on WARP again; see Teresa’s post for more details on that.

Is it a little bit silly? Well…yeah…no sillier than the idea of paying someone to talk to you for an hour about how crazy you are though. The thing is, all this responsible adult crap pretty much sucks…I like teaching, I’d do it for free if I didn’t have bills, but having to be anywhere and do anything on someone else’s schedule, well, let’s face it, no one feels like it every day. So, I figure, I can either have a full-on “is this really the dream I signed up to chase OMG get me a freaking refund immediately with sprinkles” quarterlife crisis, or I can trade my Responsible Adult character sheet in for an elvish mage or something now and then.

I’m thankful that some of my students are really nice kids.

I’m thankful that I work with such nice people that I had two Thanksgiving invitations to juggle as well as enough leftovers sent home with me that I haven’t had to cook all day.

I’m thankful that if I had to cook today, I’ve got stuff on the shelves and money in the bank so that I can get whatever I need.

I’m thankful that I have a job that I don’t hate, that pays the bills and gives me a way to help people.

I’m thankful that I live in a country where I, as a woman, am free to have that job, to own what I earn from it, to vote, to write this blog, to live on my own, to drive a car, and to be a friend to a few of the people in line to keep it that way.  I’m especially thankful for those friends.

I’m thankful that my brain cells and wacky hobbies let me make myself useful, for example to another friend just a little while ago, even if it takes a while for stuff to work.

I’m thankful that I’m healthy, my cats are healthy, insurance is about to make my teeth healthy (over time, of course, because these things take time), and life is generally OK.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

“Dress professionally.” What the heck does that mean, aside from the list of things it’s not, and how am I supposed to do that without dropping another $200 that I don’t have on clothes? Find a saleslady who knows what’s on sale and stuff, they say, but the thought of going up to someone and talking about what I need…I can’t even stand to think about clothes stuff unless I absolutely have to. It’s hard to explain…

For some reason, my sister’s wardrobe was important when we were kids, and mine wasn’t. She could change clothes at random because she felt like it during the day; I had to go to school in clothes that were too tight because I’d outgrown them. She got clothes whenever she asked; I had to literally run out of pants, by extremely outgrowing or wearing holes in bad places, in order to get a trip to Value Village for a few new pairs of pants, and then got yelled at because of what I could find with a half-off tag–they sort of fit because they were stretchy material, but only went down about to the middle of my calves. No doubt Mom resented losing a few days’ cigarette money too.

And then there was the time when Mom said to have whatever we might want to take with us packed up because she didn’t know when but she could be getting us out of our rooms some night to take us away from Dad, so I gathered up all my clothes into a backpack…and…waited…I don’t remember how long I kept re-wearing what I was wearing that day, in order to keep everything packed, but I know that I kept doing that for a long time. It was the only way I could think of to protect myself from ending up with nothing.

Some things just don’t leave a person. Somehow, I turned out almost normal, I’m only screwed up about a few things, it’s just that those are doozies.

So out of all the things to be “improvements for me to make,” it had to be clothes.