Blogging

The following are my words: the words you see. But read them and assume they were destined for more than the lifeless screen. They were birthed with electric drumming in mind, so imagine a beat, and imagine me—
cool, hip, scantly cad if you must, speaking these words with emphasis to a beat mimicking the tapping of wind against housing, the hum of traffic in the city, pulse of blood pushing through veins.

Yet we aren’t in a warmly lit room, listening to the white noise of other conversations and speaking in rhyming, silly tones. My voice in type transmitted over the World Wide Web—that’s intimidating. The whole, wide world is a potential audience. Let us be real for a minute, you and me, unlike the fake we usually don. Maybe five people will read this blog posting in the next year, and after that I will lose in interesting in caring about this blog post and who reads it.

So with my audience of five, what’s so scary?

Actually having an audience I can count on one hand is sad. But let’s not dwell.
I go to all the trouble of typing out, reading over once before finally publishing my most random of thoughts for an audience consisting of five readers. Okay, I’m dwelling.

As I type in tempo to the beat in my head, I realize perhaps my five readers aren’t actually the same people I expect them to be. Go ahead, feel special undisclosed people—you know who you are.

What if my audience of five aren’t the well-meaning, overtired, too-busy-for-their-own good fellow English majors? What if they are a cohort-ish, click of judgemental, know-it-alls who found this blog post because I happened to random hid frequently used search engine keywords (sex, gay porn, hot Asians) in the white space?

One of my friends on Myspace recently posted a blog about how cumbersome she finds blogging because according to her a blog post should read like a five-paragraph essay. After all who has the time to write five paragraphs, besides me apparently? (Okay I confess. We aren’t friends in the classic sense; rather we know like to play Mafia Wars, and we both needed new mafia members.)

All in all, her post was very insightful. First of all, I haven’t used the five-paragraph essay format since my junior year of high school, so after a moment of high school retrospection, I realized the truth of my original point: Blogging has no requirements.

So to my audience of five, I say: Go forth. Be free. Post whatever you want without any restriction. Let the blogosphere be a forgiving hearth to hold our collective ramblings.

Weaving a whimsical spell, writing down my new year’s resolutions always rallies my will, on paper at least. Like praying, writing down my hopes for the impending year makes them definable, describable and ultimately obtainable goals.

Moving through my agenda for 2009 feels like moving through a wish list for Christmas.
Typing my annual roster of to-dos—I am a child of the 21st century and writing is so 1890—I realized the list is an odd assortment of wishes over which I have little real control. Sure I will most likely accomplish item number five: learn to ice skate. I’m not as certain I will manifest item number one: pursuing publication of one short story. Perhaps simply drafting the list is therapeutic, and where each item ranks in priority is rather telling.

Of course, each item is shaded with the allusion of control. I may not have included the desire for a million dollars land in my lap. However pursuing the publication of one of my stories feels like resolving to always sit straight in my chair with my knees braced just in case a suitcase stuff with hundred-dollar bills lands in my lap.

Breaking Ground

Oh the sweet smell of 2009, and the romantic, idealistic list of resolutions, I have already written. Please see the other recent blog post for more information.

While I haven't managed publish my first novel or be accepted into graduate school by January 2, 2009, I have finished one project lurking around my hard drive. Just to be clear, a BIG item on my 2009 list of resolutions is to finish the 2008 projects, which ironically were also 2008 resolutions.

After nine months of tinkering, thinking, and trying, I took Yoda's advice and did. Here is the product, my very first website: http://rmobley.checkoutmypage.com/
Like the Michelangelo, I created my site with my own two hands, and Dreamweaver. Of course my comparison obviously leads to the classic debate, "what if Michelangelo had used Photoshop?"Unlike the Sistine Chapel, my website is a work in progress. With that said, please feel free to offer advice on how I could improve my little sub domain.

A What's so Happy Birthday

I looked at the calendar today, and I realized yet another birthday is coming up. In mere days, I will turn 23 years old. While 18 is legally the age of adulthood, it felt more like a grace period. It is as if I am trying out the notion of being an adult, without committing to the concept that from this moment on...this is the rest of my life. By 21, a person is offered alcohol with the full support of the state. For me, the four years between my 18th birthday and the very end of my 21st year are a blur of self doubt gripped with budding ego. So here I am as my 22nd year of existence ebbs to a close, and I am left with a restless sense of my grace period coming to a close. With that door shutting, the future seems to be an endless fantasy waiting to be explored.

My hat collection

The older I get, the more hats I own.... The thing I love the most about hats is the quick transformation they offer. One moment, I feel frumpy--a bit boring, then I put on a shag wide brim top hat and my appearance becomes a little funky. Stepping away from the literal notion of wearing a hat, I have recently discovered the other metaphoric hats I own.
At home, I don the bonnet of domestication. I change diapers and do laundry with a settle pride, immersed in the idea of building a home. As I fold towels and sort whites, I have an idealist notion that I am walking in the shoes of a woman circa 1950. I own my role of wife and mother, a concept that I wouldn’t have allowed myself in the past, I realize it is a matter of hats and boxes. By wearing a hat to denote a role, and I inhabit a mental box to regulate my behavior.
My life as become a metaphor of being divided into boxes and in each box is a hat.
As a college student, my hat collection is subdivided between my role as student and student leader. In the classroom I wear a sombrero of education, a light hat with wide brim to catch my teacher’s intellectual droppings. Assuming this role, per class period, I inhabit a box of open-ended acceptance. In this space no assumption can be made without teacher consent and the box’s gospel is covered in six chapters. My opinions are limited to text on hand and every word spoken is phrased as a question awaiting approval.
When I step from the class room, I morph through the use of another hat. The fedora of leadership is a rather outlandish piece of appeal that reflects my cries for attention. In a box of confidence, I can be a problem solver, a confidant, a big sister and Batman to some else’s Robin.
Moving through the motions of my week, I touch on small less pronounced hats. I wear a baseball cap denoting sisterhood. With a brim shading my eyes, in my box, I’m not blind to my brothers’ white lies and half truths that only teenage boys tell. Silly stories of nearly avoided fights and grand plans fill my box.
A counterpart to sisterhood is my cowboy hat of daughter-hood. A costume accessory reflecting an immaturity I will always have standing in my parents’ presence. In the box that is created when I wear this hat, I’m still the idealistic 12 year old. All my experience as an adult washes away to reveal the girl my mother raised.
To some the idea of wearing hats and moving from one emotional/psychological box to another may seem inconceivable. Perhaps this denial is accompanied by a blindness which is a box all its own.