At the first thousand or so glances, I didn’t get the unintentional visual pun. Yes, it’s odd to have several signs hawking online dating sites in the broken window of a long-abandoned paint and wallpaper store, but where’s the punchline? It wasn’t until last week that I got it: it’s all about fix-ups! Online dating is about getting fixed up, and paint and wallpaper stores are about fixing up, too. And judging from the broken windows, this place itself is in need of a good fixing-up. How about you? What in your life needs fixing-up these days?
Regular readers here may have noticed that I’ve been posting far less regularly than usual over the past few months. On one level, I haven’t been blogging much for purely practical reasons: between teaching full-time at Keene State, teaching part-time for SNHU Online, moonlighting as a dissertation and creativity coach, and generally trying to have some semblance of a life, there often aren’t enough hours in the day for blogging. Yes, in the past I’ve juggled the same commitments and still managed to post here nearly everyday, but right now that juggling act seems beyond me. At any given moment, if there’s not even time to do everything, you make a choice (conscious or not) about which ball to drop. Recently, blogging has been that ball: it doesn’t pay my rent, and I don’t feel the same sort of ethical responsibility to my readers as I do to my students.
On another level, I find myself being more protective of my off-line life, which these days means actually trying to have a life away from my computer and not necessarily blogging every moment and detail of said life. As a teacher who sometimes teaches online, I already spend too much time virtually, holed in my office or curled with my laptop in bed communicating with students I’ll never meet. As a writer who blogs, I’m always exploring the question of what to put here in cyberspace and what to put between the private pages of my offline notebook. What is wholly mine, and what stuff am I willing to share? In the past, I’ve perhaps erred on the side of too much self-disclosure, and these days I find myself gently and almost subconsciously pulling back, putting less of myself “out there” on the blog and saving more things as “only mine.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to say my relationship with blogging was “broken” and in need of a fix-up, but it has changed over time, and recently I’ve become more conscious of that evolution. Sometimes fix-ups aren’t sudden, intentional things; sometimes you simply move away from something that wasn’t working and gradually settle into something that does. I don’t know if my current approach to blogging is here to stay: I suspect that blogging might be a seasonal thing, something that’s easier to do during summers when I’m under-employed versus winters when I’m over-committed. Whatever the summer might bring on the blogging front, I trust that will take care of itself when the time comes; for now, I continue to carry a camera with me wherever I go, and I trust that spontaneous, unbidden shots like the glance of an alien-eye on the side of an overnight delivery truck will appear without me even trying, no fix-up necessary.
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Mar 15, 2007 at 6:00 pm
I suspect that many of us may be experiencing the kind of pulling back that you are. Over several years, my own blogging life has gone from a high level of self-disclosure to almost none. These days I do little more than post quotes I find relevant or inspiring. I suppose the devoted reader could divine some clues, but then, wouldn’t they be better off coming here and enjoying some of your wonderful photos?
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Mar 16, 2007 at 6:54 am
Ah, Lorianne, your writing can and will pay the rent. Your blog is one of the few I would be willing to pay to read. Your writing is thoughtful, entertaining, natural, and enlightened, as it often displays the humorous and the profound side-by-side.
Everything changes and moves along the current, however your gift of putting ordinaries into a blog, book, or journal that readers want to hoard, save, and re-read will remain-for I imagine
the muse is yours wherever you roam!
Thanks for your generosity of self and bows to however that evolves for you and with you.
Snowy.
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Mar 16, 2007 at 8:41 am
We completely understand, but know that we’ve enjoyed getting to “know” you over time. I suppose blogging is like being a public figure–after a while you find that it’s necessary for self-presevation to protect yourself from overexposure. (Yeah, but you bared your belly for us recently! : ) ) We’ll enjoy reading you whenever you share.
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Mar 18, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Your readers will love what you have to give, Lorianne, and support your protecting having something to give in whatever ways you need to.
I missed the “keep out?” post when you originally put it up, but what an interesting line of conversation it started – I agree with this commenter’s point of view:
“If your aim was self-exposure, not self-expression; if you wrote in a throw-away, chattering on tone (as many bloggers do) about what you did last night with whom… well, I wouldn’t be interested, I wouldn’t be touched, and so I wouldn’t have anything to be uncomfortable about.”
I’m a believer that place is personal, and that it is through the personal lens in art of any kind that we can fully encounter a transformative level of detail.
Your photographs do this for me in precisely the same way your prose does – this is your very personal lens which challenges me to see something in a new way. To be transformed by both your vision and my extension of myself into a vision other than my own.
To me, this isn’t ‘confessional’work (a dismissive word hurled primarily at women artists using a personal lens – every writer and artist uses a personal lens, some are just more up front about it than others).
This is an invitation to experience something outside of the self, and to enlarge the self as a result of having opened to it.
My two cents – and thanks for the beauty and enlargement you offer here.
Good luck with the workload – sounds like a whole lot –
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Mar 18, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Oh, and I meant to say that the ‘in need of a fix-up’ image is hilarious –
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Mar 20, 2007 at 12:42 pm
As one who has almost no urge to disclose, I’m with you in your feelings on that topic. The photo and your text are amusing, thanks. Single can mean broken but it doesn’t always. I like to say and say too often that there are far worse things than being single. This International Woman of Mystery has learned to make the most of it. I often wonder if life as a single person would be easier in another town…this one is very much for the married or the student and the single adult has a hard time. (a psychological hard time…seems every conversation with a man or a woman is peppered with references to the spouse, not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I’ve often wondered if this idea is all in my head but recently a single friend was asked by her therapist, “Have you ever thought that it might not be you, that it might be the culture in this town? This is a rough town for single woman.” I wonder what it’s like in your town.
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