It's been seven years since I began my first blog in March 2005 in a moment of frustrated desperation. We'd moved to suburban NJ from Brooklyn two months prior and I was desperate for connection. I loved our new home but I felt captive in a suburban oasis: no friends, more than an hour away from everything I loved, (read: NYC), and unable to practice, (sound familiar?), because NJ like CA, has its own credentialing for licensing acupuncturists.
There I was, studying for my licensing exam, trying to maintain my NYC practice working only Saturday's and the rest of my time was spent mothering a sweet, precocious toddler, who loved her new preschool, leaving me alone for long periods of time each day.
So I started a blog. I wanted to record moments in miss A's life; the funny things she'd say and how we spent our days. And I wanted connection. I wanted friends that were in the same boat I was: navigating the waters of being a working, stay at home mama.
I received everything I wanted and so much more.
For the first couple of years, I focused on mommy/satirical writing blogs. That's where i commented the most and it's how I ended up going to BlogHer. But I always had a thing for the creative bloggers. A handful of reallly inspiring women, these were my kindreds, the ones that were wearing new hats as they walked from their more traditional working roles and into their creativity. At the time, I was ensconced in Chinese Medicine and years before, I'd forsaken my creative life when I walked away from commercial design to become an acupuncturist. The only way I could transition from the art world into science, was closing the door completely on all that I'd known, (much like the position I find myself in now...ahem.)
Eventually, I found my way back to my creativity through an online group working their way through The Artist Way. Of course I wasn't working through the book because I was a frustrated artist, (oh no, not me...hi, bullshit talk that I wanted to believe), I was working through the book for the fun of it all, or that's what I told myself. Because I walked back into my creative zone without any pressure to make a living, or be the best, really, it was just so I could complete my artist dates, I found where my heart had been hiding.
I've also found true friendship in the connections I've made online these past seven years, friends that lift and support me in ways that I could have only imagined. And I've also watched my share of friendships, (my own included), crumble and fall apart. The truth is, I've been dumped more times than when I was single and dating.
No one really talks much about it because it's the unsavory side of it all. And it directly points towards every slight and hurt that was ever experienced on the playground, in high school, even in mommy groups, which I'm here to tell you can be just as brutal.
I blame myself for all of the undoings that have occurred in my online years, which is really so self-absorbed. Kate's postreally shed some light on my feelings. I'm not alone in feeling this way, and most of the time, (as I suspected but couldn't let myself off the hook for), the truth is that it really isn't always about me.
And even when it is about me, if the other person isn't able to, doesn't want to, talk about it, than maybe the bond wasn't so strong to begin with. I've been on both sides, and being the one that doesn't want to, or isn't able to talk about it sucks just as much as it does when you're the one left questioning what happened.
I've been thinking about all of that and I'm thinking that there's an ending to every story, and maybe the friendships that have petered out, or faltered before they ever began, do so because that was its duration. That the good and bad qualities that made up the connection hold lessons in its ending. Instead of ruminating, (and beating myself up about my shortcomings), I'm trying very hard to embrace what is positive from every relationship.
I think it realy is that simple, even though I've been trying to make it anything but. Every day is a remindiner to myself to remain open, that I can't assume anything because I know nothing other than my own truth.
