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Thanksgiving
I was expecting to get back from Texas with a hundred posts to catch up on, lots of news and such. Not so much, though. I expect this is because you spent your time on holiday in much the same way I did: the time I wasn't spending traveling, and there was a lot of that, I was in a self-induced food coma. But it was a good food coma, and if the travel was a little more than I'd generally like to commit to in a 72-hour period, well, it's over now, and I had a full day to recover (a day which I spent buying all but three Christmas presents so that now I am almost finished O_o), and here I am this morning, rested and calm and wishing I'd kidnapped some of the excellent turkey because I'd really like a leftover-turkey sandwich right now.
:::
One of the things I did while traveling, besides sit next to a woman who complained for an hour straight before falling asleep, was to catch up on a little reading. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell is about a woman who as a gesture of stamping out her rising sense of failure decides to cook the whole of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1, methodically and in order, over the course of one year. And despite the unlikelihood of this actually working, and despite the fact that food of this sort is out of fashion and works against everything we've learned about maintaining a healthy human body in the last forty years, it does work. At the end of the experiment, she has 524 recipes, lots of arcane new cooking equipment, and a bunch of tasty stories (and a few absolutely revolting ones too) under her belt, and she feels much better.
Well, don't get me wrong: this is a pretty astonishing accomplishment for anyone. I mean, as far as I know, besides Julie Powell, only Julia Child has managed to complete all the recipes in that book. But. The book is about cooking, of course, but it's also about blogging, the blog she keeps up over the year; and I have a sneaking suspicion that though she never comes right out and says so, the blog is just as important to her as the cooking is. She talks casually about running to post after a hard day, about how much the support of her readers (she calls them bleaders, which hahahahaha) means to her; and sometimes it seems to be the only thing that keeps her experiment running, the need to post.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leestone spoke recently of the good old days, which whatever bad shit we got involved in really were our blogging golden age, when whatever we did or said didn't have any real importance unless we filtered it through our friendslists first.
I remember that time. I remember getting home and logging on first thing, and staying there until it was time to go to bed. I remember spending eight hours a day messaging various people. I remember the fabulous, elaborate private jokes and the public ones as well. And now we're scattered all over the place and some of us are gone and some of us left and came back, some burned out and some faded away, some are still here and never really left (and thank goodness for them), and I can generally do a thing in real life now without planning a post in my head--that comes later, now--but I'm with Amy; I miss those days. I recognize that things are much healthier this way. But we did have some really good times. We did make some lasting friendships. Didn't we?
My various blogs have created some serious trauma in my life over the past four years. But they've also been a tremendous boon, and sometimes a necessity. I tend to discount the role that my blogs have played in the state of my good and bad mental health over the years, but you know. There's something to be said for having a place to go to talk. A real comfort in a community of friendly faces, even if you can't actually see them. Something life-saving in the idea that if you have something to say, there's a place you can go where people will not only listen but care.
I don't know where I'd be right now if I weren't blogging, but I suspect it'd be someplace entirely different from here, and I'm glad to be here, right now. And I've taken the long way getting here, but, you know, thanks, guys. It's good to see you, it's good to be back, it's good to know my ragtag crew of friends is out there listening. And I want you to know that I'm listening, too, if that's something that's important to you.
:::
ETA: LJ has stopped emailing my comments to me! Is anyone else having this problem?
:::
One of the things I did while traveling, besides sit next to a woman who complained for an hour straight before falling asleep, was to catch up on a little reading. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell is about a woman who as a gesture of stamping out her rising sense of failure decides to cook the whole of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1, methodically and in order, over the course of one year. And despite the unlikelihood of this actually working, and despite the fact that food of this sort is out of fashion and works against everything we've learned about maintaining a healthy human body in the last forty years, it does work. At the end of the experiment, she has 524 recipes, lots of arcane new cooking equipment, and a bunch of tasty stories (and a few absolutely revolting ones too) under her belt, and she feels much better.
Well, don't get me wrong: this is a pretty astonishing accomplishment for anyone. I mean, as far as I know, besides Julie Powell, only Julia Child has managed to complete all the recipes in that book. But. The book is about cooking, of course, but it's also about blogging, the blog she keeps up over the year; and I have a sneaking suspicion that though she never comes right out and says so, the blog is just as important to her as the cooking is. She talks casually about running to post after a hard day, about how much the support of her readers (she calls them bleaders, which hahahahaha) means to her; and sometimes it seems to be the only thing that keeps her experiment running, the need to post.
leestone spoke recently of the good old days, which whatever bad shit we got involved in really were our blogging golden age, when whatever we did or said didn't have any real importance unless we filtered it through our friendslists first.I remember that time. I remember getting home and logging on first thing, and staying there until it was time to go to bed. I remember spending eight hours a day messaging various people. I remember the fabulous, elaborate private jokes and the public ones as well. And now we're scattered all over the place and some of us are gone and some of us left and came back, some burned out and some faded away, some are still here and never really left (and thank goodness for them), and I can generally do a thing in real life now without planning a post in my head--that comes later, now--but I'm with Amy; I miss those days. I recognize that things are much healthier this way. But we did have some really good times. We did make some lasting friendships. Didn't we?
My various blogs have created some serious trauma in my life over the past four years. But they've also been a tremendous boon, and sometimes a necessity. I tend to discount the role that my blogs have played in the state of my good and bad mental health over the years, but you know. There's something to be said for having a place to go to talk. A real comfort in a community of friendly faces, even if you can't actually see them. Something life-saving in the idea that if you have something to say, there's a place you can go where people will not only listen but care.
I don't know where I'd be right now if I weren't blogging, but I suspect it'd be someplace entirely different from here, and I'm glad to be here, right now. And I've taken the long way getting here, but, you know, thanks, guys. It's good to see you, it's good to be back, it's good to know my ragtag crew of friends is out there listening. And I want you to know that I'm listening, too, if that's something that's important to you.
:::
ETA: LJ has stopped emailing my comments to me! Is anyone else having this problem?
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