Mama Bean lurves her rhetoric metre

rhetoric noun: 1. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. 2. language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience. [more in-depth at the wiki]

How sensitive is your rhetoric meter?

Rhetoric isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but propaganda seems excessive. (Almost) None of the information we 'download' these days is pure fact, free of opinion, or some underlying agenda. Well, that seems harsh, too. It all has a message, anyway, it seems. I feel. There, this is all just my rhetoric, too.

This is the problem with calling this the information age. It's not really just information. And as a parent, I'm faced with how to teach my children to navigate an informational playing field vastly larger than the one I learned on, which was already larger than that of my parents. I suppose I could rely on the old chestnut 'don't believe everything you read' but it's harder than ever to control what enters our family environment to be read. I think I lean towards less enforcement/freer access, but this will mean more discussion, more tough questions with no answers, and more time. And I must keep in mind the time-line - that the skills of literacy, comprehension, critical analysis, they build on each other, much more slowly than I liked (going through it) or will like (trying to help my children through it.) And then too also, it's even more critical for kids to understand this, to be actively critically analyzing their environment, at a younger age than me or you, because the consequences (seem to) get more dire with each generation (is that in my imagination?) 

I'm not sure I can accurately remember my own trajectory in Rhetoric Management. I suppose I built those literacy and comprehension skills through my undergrad, and started a foundation of critical thinking skills, but I didn't gain any proficiency then. I have thought of four major areas where I find it most important, and I can roughly put them in order. [ETA: I started this post when Bean was a baby, it originally referred to teaching "my child" and I'm only getting around to finishing it now. For pete's sake, none of the personal pronouns are even capitalized! /sigh]

Area the first: Religion/Christianity. Boy, was this a trial by fire, when I moved to the US midwest (during the run-up to the 2004 election no less, but we'll get to that later.) I had often felt buffeted by conflicting positions and rhetoric during my angsty teenaged faith, and had trouble reconciling what I felt was right with the oh-so-persuasive arguments of more extreme opinions. I had to learn to trust myself, and my interpretation. I had to know it was okay to read a persuasive argument for something I disagreed with, and just politely acknowledge it was well argued without feeling the core of my beliefs had been shaken. I had to stop taking things personally. People have opinions, people like to share them, people now have the internet to do so freely and loudly and without restraint - but I don't have to listen, and even when I do, I don't have to feel like my beliefs are being attacked or destroyed or even challenged. Because it's just their opinion. We can all be grown-ups and exist in this world together with different opinions just fine.

[Here I'll add: since 2004, the internet itself has matured in many ways, I find particularly when it comes to religious discourse. I think in large part because we've all conglomerated into our meta-tribes, and there's so. much. room. for as many small niches of religious thought, it's really fantastic. So not only is it easy to ignore rhetoric you disagree with (and I mean truly ignore, without trolling) but it's also really easy to find those you do agree with, and just (virtually) pet and rub each other all over with mutual love-festing.]

It's a good thing I got a handle on that, because I was about to get a crash course in American partisan politics - area the second. I truly didn't have a clue. I thought Canadian and US politics were pretty similar, 'cause we're pretty similar in general. Not so at election time. It was (toooooooo) easy to get caught up, to get emotionally invested. It was easy to be (utterly, distractedly) engaged by so. much. rhetoric. But after a few exhausting, commercial-filled months, man oh man did I have to turn that shit off. I had to handle the rhetoric, and remember that opinion is just opinion, even in these matters of Great National Importance (and not for my nation, mind you lol.) I had to remember that politics don't need to be personal, and I was still friends with my same friends I was friends with before I found out if my friends were Republican or Democrat. We are all grown-ups.

[It helps that I moved away lol. If I thought the 2004 election was bad, I cannot even imagine living through the 2008 or 2012 ones. To my American readers, I salute your perseverance! As much as the internet has matured for religious discourse, it has devolved when it comes to politics. My facebook feed is evidence enough of this. As a way of contrast, the development of my Rhetoric Management toward religion was to broaden my horizon; for politics it has been to narrow my focus/position. And I think it's interesting that these two areas required such opposite solutions.]

Area the third: Scientific Literacy. Given my BSc. I suppose my critical thinking skills developed earliest here, but didn't really... settle, until I was learning to navigate the morass of medical science and effective vs. ineffective healthcare. And I did this while entering a young, controversial, not-yet-completely-scientifically supported profession (don't kill me, Chiropractor friends, for that edgily wishy washy description.) Because I have the background for this, it maybe wasn't so thorny as the religious and political arenas. But it is life and death stuff being discussed at times, and certainly the ethics of healthcare in our (so privileged, so first world) society gets increasingly muddy. In general, I am saddened by the general public's scientific illiteracy. Research is presented so journalistically as to be virtually useless, especially on the internet. And I'm not sure any amount of interwebz maturation is going to compensate for the lack of quality science education being provided our children. If I'm going to be a Tiger Mom in any fashion, it will be drilling the scientific method into my poor children's heads and hearts until they weep for the sheer joy of deductive reasoning (lol... kind of.)

Ah yes, won't someone think about the children? Well, parenting is the most recent and, frankly, batshit crazy arena of rhetoric and flat out propaganda I've been thrown into navigating. Just when I think I'm getting a handle on it, I'm thrown into a fit of self-recrimination or sputtering indignation once again (from "I'm a horrible mother!" to "JFC shut your judgmental pie-hole!" and back again. Repeat.) If I hadn't honed my chops or whatever leading up to this, I would go crazy. Because when it comes to our children, everyone's opinion is the only way and everyone else is ruining their children's lives and there is just. no. end. If a mother isn't willing to just turn it off, walk away, and trust in her heart that she is doing the loving, most bestest job she can with the resources she has, she will be destroyed. I like to dabble and read and engage with both sides of any debate, and I find it all pretty entertaining. I'm not always the best at articulating why I make the choices I make (homebirth, for e.g.) and my lack of articulation can feel pretty weak in the face of so much interneticulation (can I make up that word? I think I just did. But do you know what I mean? The voice of the articulate internet - anybody can sound totally reasonable or totally unreasonable to anybody else on the internet.) But every day is an exercise in filtering parenting rhetoric, and I wouldn't say that exercise is best performed by the sleep-deprived haha.

[Speaking of internet maturation, I think since Bean was born (when I started writing this) the way parenting is treated on facebook and twitter, and even blogging to an extent, has really changed - I think people are starting to get the message that kindness matters. The trolls have been ignored out of existence, maybe a little? At least, I get the sense parents are less willing to rise to the Polarizing Bait - there's more focus on being supportive? Maybe this is also in my imagination...]

[I'm sorry this ended up so disjointed. I just know that my emotional health depends on my rhetoric metre - I sense the rhetoric, I sense how it could elate or enrage me, I evaluate if I feel like or have the resources for elation/enragement, I proceed accordingly. This is just my story of traveling the steps of Rhetoric Management. Critical thinking keeps me sane, in a crazy world. I hope it does the same for you.]

Mama Bean knows you on a certain level, you know?

When I was in university, I concocted a system of interpersonal knowledge levels by which I evaluated and/or grew friendships/relationships. Despite the world of adult relationships being vastly more complicated than how complicated I thought my social life was in my early 20s, I still find the system useful, at least for analyzing my placement in a particular friendship or wider group/web of relationships.

The system has three levels. Primary knowledge is the basic nuts and bolts info about someone's life - their family, their occupation, what they do on a day to day basis. Obviously, knowledge at this level can be pretty superficial (dog's name, what car they drive) and can get very deep (particularly detailed knowledge of someone's history, for example, or in this day and age, a solid understanding of their religious or political views, perhaps.) And every relationship starts here, with the basic exchange of information. Secondary knowledge has to do with preferences - again from a superficial level (favourite restaurant, hobbies, taste in music) to the more detailed (I don't know how to describe it, but just a very solid idea of their world view, to the point of predicting what they'd like in novel circumstances, maybe?) And this level also encompasses understanding a bit about value systems, but not so much as the third and final level. Tertiary knowledge is when you know someone well enough to know their motivations and drivers, their values, an understanding of their personality. This gets more into having predictive abilities as far as their choices or behaviours go - you know what they'll do or what they're thinking/feeling. It's more than just knowing opinions. For me, being a Myers-Briggs junkie, I need tertiary knowledge to feel comfortable guessing at your four letters. (By the by, the very fact that I have this system fits perfectly with my INFJ personality type, and I thought that was hilarious when I found out.)

So I've been thinking about this as applied to groups, as Papa Bean and I have been examining ourselves during this church search, and also a little bit as it pertains to parenting (and cloud parenting). I think a group that comes together on the basis of some primary level commonality is what I'd call a community. Any given church congregation is a community of people joined at this primary level of common religion. Your workplace is a community of people with a primary level common business/service. Mom groups of many shapes exist on the very basic primary commonality of motherhood. And depending on the specificity of the primary information, the community can be loose or tight, you know? 

I think when we start to look at people joined by a secondary level of commonality, we're talking about a tribe (in the meme-y meta way that we now use that word.) When PB and I consider the church we want to serve in, we're thinking about finding a tribe - not only joined by common religion, but a common specific expression of preferences within that religion, a particular progressiveness and politic. I don't think I have to say that this is a difficult thing to find! I think if you look at really cohesive workplaces or fantastically successful businesses (Apple?) you'll find more of a tribe mentality - people have bought in, have invested in a common goal/vision/process/preference. And I think I've written before about how comforting the Interwebz can be for finding your parenting tribe, somewhere in the Cloud - something that can be near impossible on the ground. 

I suppose a really tight tribe would start to approach a tertiary level of knowledge and connectedness, which I would call synergy. But I'd say it's pretty hard to get cohesive understanding of motivations and values across very large groups of people (churches have split over much smaller issues than that, amiright?) I'd say it's even pretty rare in two person relationships - I mean, I'd hope most marriages start here and grow into it from there. I can count on one hand the number of people I feel I know (or used to know) on the tertiary level and who know me the same. (Well, and being an introvert, I wouldn't want that number to be much bigger, but tell me extroverts if you have the same experience?)

The complexity of adulthood muddies my system on many many levels. For one thing: geography! When I was in university, everyone most important to me (give or take) lived in my city; not so anymore. I have these synergistic friends living their primary lives miles away from me, and I am ashamed to admit how little time I invest in maintaining that primary knowledge - what do they do day to day? What car do they drive? Let alone their parenting strategies, their workplace conflicts, their political activity... I know I can't hold onto my tertiary or deep secondary laurels with these friends forever, without supportive knowledge of their actual physical life. Because everything changes, and that's the other thing: time! I mean, values and personality are relatively stable over time, but still - people are falling in love, making new humans, building empires or destroying them!

More than anything, having indulged in some profound nostalgia of late (five year college reunions will do that) I find myself wishing (oh so dangerously tinged with regret is wishing) that I'd known then, when I was spending my valuable hours thinking myself so clever for figuring out the world in three simple levels, when I was discovering who my secondary and tertiary levels really were at Palmer, when I was growing and developing that selfhood in early marriage and now in early parenthood... I wish I'd known what and who really mattered. And I wish I'd taken the time - I wish I would take the time now to tell those people, to say what I feel, to hash it out with them, "Hey, here's where we're community and I like that, let's keep that" or, "Hey, here's where we're tribal, it's awesome, and I like it, let's keep it" or, "Hey, I think you know that we have something beautiful and synergistic between us, and I treasure that, please... please, keep that with me." I mean, I don't think every relationship can necessarily handle that exact depth of conversation, but in this age of ridiculous digital-connectedness, you'd think I could find the time to at least be honest.

So, tell me things: do you organize your sense of friendship in a system like this? Does your personality jive or clash with this system? (It's not perfect, so I'm not going to be insulted if you've got other ideas.) How do you navigate the communities and tribes in your life? How do you cultivate or communicate your way through tribalism or synergy? Think about it while we enjoy the sweet dulcet tones of Mr. John Mayer.

Mama Bean wants to explain why sometimes she doesn't write anything in a long time

Or rather, why she doesn't publish the things she writes. Here's a step-by-step peek into my stupid writing process. Enjoy! (That is, if I publish this... lol)

1) Have a thought or opinion about something that people do that is weird or irksome or annoying or downright infuriating. Spend a few mind-blogging moments thinking up clever and funny and hyperbolic ways of describing why this behaviour is so weird/irksome/etc.

2) Then, at the peak of clever, funny, hyperbolic vitriol, think to self, "But surely, Self, I do this very same thing sometimes. In some ways. It is unkind to think such vitriolic (though clever and funny, etc.) things about people who do this."

3) Then, think about the ways I do said activity differently, which makes it less weird/annoying/etc. That is, engage in The Rationalization. This is listed as part of my Skill Set on my Resume of Life. Perhaps it is part of your Skill Set, also?

4) Use the insights garnered from Rationalization to distill the essential weirness/infuriatingness/etcness. of the activity, and separate it from the intentions of the person performing the activity (including when said person is myself.)

5) Muse over the particular personality traits that make me so prone to dissecting intentions and underlying motivations.

6) Realize not everyone else cares about intentions and underlying motivations the same way.

7) Realize also I don't want angry comments from angry people I've offended, because they do the thing I find weird/annoying/etc. and/or don't agree with my secondary opinions/rationalizations behind their (and my, admittedly, on occasion, under certain circumstances thus dissected in step 3) behaviour,

8) Fear these people may wish to offer (angrily) their own rationalizations for the behaviour, which I will then have to disagree with (maintaining my Correctness) or, even worse, agree with (attaining Incorrectness.)

9) Decide not to write about it, and just tell PB instead.

Apply this process to almost anything related to parenting, Christianity, politics, and you have hundred of posts-worth of excellent blog material that stays in my brain and never gets out. Ha!

Oh!

I should also mention steps 10 (wonder if this all merely stems from my insatiable need for acceptance and approval) and 11 (chastise Self for the terrible Feat of Ego is takes to think people would even care enough to get offended or comment.) Okay, that's all the steps.

Mama Bean stews in Disappointment, and blogs for your edification

You know, there are so many things we do differently in this electronic age. We communicate differently, we spend our money and our leisure time differently, we raise our kids differently. It's all so different. For so many of these new things, the rules are still being written. It feels like some kind of Brave New World. And as a momma, I wonder how I'm going to teach my kids to navigate this world, and still behave in a proper and respectful way. Sometimes I wish there was just some sort of Guide or Book - Here! Read this! And you will never make a mistake on the Internet EVAR!

Haha. If only.

Let me present this scenario, which is woven through and through with Sour Grapes, so keep that in mind - but let me present it anyway, for the google searches of the future, for the people out there looking for the Dos and Don'ts of this Brave New World; When you're selling something on kijiji, don't tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else. (In fact, when you're selling something anywhere, but for the sake of this post, we'll talk about the great K.) If the Great Rule Book of the Interwebz is ever written, I think that should be in there.

Shall I get more specific? I shall. Let's say Seller wants to sell a Doodad, and lists it on kijiji for $45 OBO. Let's say Buyer A offer $40. Let's say Seller says, sure I'll take $40. Let's say Buyer A asks for a pickup location and time. Let's say Seller doesn't answer. Let's assume (accepting the inherent risks of ass-making of u and me) Seller has received a better offer from Buyer B. Let's say Buyer A asks again for a pickup location and time the next day. Let's say Seller has already sold the Doodad to Buyer B.

Let's say Buyer A feels angry.

Just for an example.

When you're selling something on kijiji, don't tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else.

There are no rules in the wild wild west of the online garage sale that is kijiji. It's all Seller and Buyer beware - we're all flying by the seat of our pants up in here! But I think there can be an appeal to human decency, and here it is, my appeal, "Please, don't do that! Don't be a jerk!" I know there isn't some Terms of Use that was clicked on without being read (because nobody reads those things, srsly) that says you have to be nice. I know we're not business people, and there's no public way in which buyers can offer feedback about sellers, and there's no obligations for anyone to do anything but buy and sell their crap. I know. But in the interest of Keeping the Peace...

Shall I get specific again? I shall. Let's say Seller heard from Buyer B(etter offer), but had already agreed to sell to Buyer A(waiting purchase). Let's say Seller is excited about the better offer, but realizes it's necessary to chat with Buyer A first. There's no rule that says Seller must abide by the terms with Buyer A, but there's also no rule saying Seller can't negotiate new terms. And in the interest of Keeping the Peace, with a little effort, new terms are easy enough to secure. Let's say Seller tells Buyer A about the better offer, and Buyer A is unwilling to pay full price (or match the better offer, whatever). Buyer A says no thanks, Seller still sells Doodad. Let's say Buyer A is willing to pay full price, or more out of gratitude to Seller for being such a nice person. Buyer A is a happy camper, and Seller still sells Doodad. A little extra effort for the sake of Keeping the Peace, and money and goods still exchange hands.

To be fair, there's a disappointed party in each scenario. But it's my blog, so I'm writing from Disappointed Scenario A(ngry). And I realize the caveat "OBO" gives sellers plenty of leeway, in the online and offline worlds of business. I totally agree that any Seller has the right to get as much money as possible for their Doodad. I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't been told my offer had been accepted. And I also wouldn't be writing this if the solution to avoiding disappointment and hurt feelings wasn't so simple as whipping off a few extra emails.

Bottom line, I just don't think it's okay to tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else.

So, Buyer B(etter offer), I hope you enjoy your Doodad. I'm off to search for a different Doodad to buy. And at least this situation has provided the Internet with one nugget of Webizen etiquette for all posterity. Say it with me, kids! Don't tell someone they can buy your thing and then sell it to someone else.

/ end rant.

Mama Bean is getting a little hand-wringy about writing and focus

Today, I was lamenting all these blogs posts rattling around my brain that I can't seem to get down on 'the page.' (Sprout's birth story, homebirth advocacy, not washing my hair, washing dishes, baking and domesticity, the list goes on...) I was wishing that there was some way to just curl up somewhere warm and comfy and just be able to write and like not have the internet or distractions or the internet or facebook or the internet or my RSS feed or the internet nearby - like, seriously, why can't I just be on my computer and just be writing and not thinking about my email or my facebook or minesweeper for eff's sake!

Oh! How glorious that would be! What productivity! What golden moments of blogging wisdom would fall from my fingertips!

Wait, Mama Bean, you mean with, like... a pen? and paper?

ohyeahright. that stuff.

Can you imagine how quaint the idea of pen and paper will be to our children?

Tell us the story, mama, about the strange tools that could only do one thing at a time, when multitasking was just a dream of the future! Tell us again, mama!

I am not getting all curmudgeonly on y'all, over here. I am not a Luddite who wrings her hands at what Beastly Technology Hath Wrought. I'm not a so-called first adopter, but I'm also not the last. I was on myspace, I left before it got totally uncool, I've had at least four blogs in my lifetime, I have Twitter, people! So. I'm not gonna go on about the death of print media or anything like that.

On the other hand, it does make me sad, that. Print media.

On the other hand, I do like paper.

I am a paper person. Before blogs, I had those funny things we used to call journals or diaries. lol. I continue to be a Little Pieces of Paper Person, or L3P. Papa Bean is, too (but differently). Are you an L3P? Are there little notes and lists and phone numbers and store receipts with measurements for that shelf you want to put up downstairs and three month old schedules and appointment reminders and candy wrappers just littering your car and countertop and pockets?

If so, we are kin.

It used to strike me (and designers of sit-com sets) that this sort of paper paraphernalia was part of motherhood. All moms on my TV were L3Ps. I embrace it. But I'm getting left in the techno-dust here, folks. I don't even have a cellphone, let alone a smartphone. When I try to use Papa Bean's Blackberry he winces at my ineptitude. My new ipod is driving me crazy because the darn thing won't just do. what. I. want.

Paper never did that. /whine. /pout.

[Here's a lengthy aside: this is what gets me about all these small, portable electronics - the mother effing batteries. I just gah! I don't want to be a freaking battery babysitter! I don't want to have to coddle and care and worry about one more thing dying on me and leaving me helpless in the midst of my most desperate need! Or, you know, when I want to listen to a song or whatever. I am a terrible cellphone mommy, I'm turning out to be a terrible ipod mommy, there is No Hope For Me. Why can't these things charge themselves from the air? Can someone get on that already?! End aside.]

Anyway...

We don't write with pen and paper anymore. How will I teach my children to write in this electronical screen-y way that I, like, get, obviously, or I wouldn't be all bloggy and facebooky etc. but still... are we losing something? (Here comes the hand-wringing...) Are we losing the skills of focus and attention and whole-bodiedness of writing with just our hands holding the pen to the blank sheet of paper? Is there something magical in that which should be sustained, and not merely remembered as... quaint?

And how timely, that Veronica Mitchell should be writing about reading books with the whole body, too:

I bought a book today because of its scent. Because some day my children may want to browse our shelves on their own in the cool basement, and smooth slim volumes may call to them (now where did I leave that pencil?). I bought a book because reading is a dangerous endeavour, and I should be grounded in case of lightning strike, my hands touching something real, my feet rooted with the tree its paper comes from.

So I bought the book with the dusty-rose cover. I will read it with my whole body, even if I only use my eyes.

So maybe that is what I was lamenting - not only my inability to focus and leave the goshdarn RSS alone! I was lamenting writing with my whole body. And now I've got it all out in a shiny shiny blogpost. Aah, irony.

(Ack, Irony! How will I teach my kids about irony?!)

Mama Bean has clearly been absent

Good. Grief.

(As a too-early-in-a-post-to-have-an-aside aside, this is my newest speech idiom. I say it more often than is humanly possible. And I don't even feel like breaking the habit, because it's so much better than saying for EFF's sake (without the 'eff' y'know?) all the time. I guess I have to start watching the potty mouth around the Bean, so eventually I'll be saying things like Crikey! and Drat! or something...joy.)

For the first few weeks, I was keeping this mental list of all the things keeping me from posting, but now I don't really have a great handle on it. I know there were a series of visitors - my parents, Papa Bean's youngest brother and his girlfriend, then Papa Bean's parents. During the visits I started to lag on my RSS feeds entries - I used to clear it by bedtime every day which, in hindsight, is so totally ridiculous I don't know what was wrong with me. I had upwards of 500 new items to peruse before I finally started clearing some feeds that I just know I'll never be bothered to actually read. It's not so much that I don't still really enjoy or care about all the sites I've subscribed to. I think it was more a lesson in how much excess time I was spending trying to stick to an arbitrary standard (clearing my feed) that really doesn't change anything meaningful in my life's function or purpose.

Then I had a wicked low back spasm that just completely laid me up for three or four days. I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand up, I could barely lay down comfortably. I was cuddling up to ice so hard I got freezer burn patches that are still tender and bruised (oddly enough.) I took a Monday off from work. I didn't even turn on my computer for at least two days, and then only to clean up my email. And that was another good lesson. As internettingly connected as Papa Bean and I may be, I think I'd lost some perspective on the difference between my on- and off-line lives. I will always contend that online life is every bit as real as my offline one but offline has that important distinction of being physically and temporally Immediate and Present to my physical and temporal circumstances. Online everything is removed in both space and time, that's just the facts.

I needed to remember this now, because with every day, Bean gets bigger, smarter, and more Immediate and Present in his own ways. I want to spend all his waking hours making him smile and giggle in that impossibly adorable way that I didn't even know existed before him. His waking hours are longer now, and that's just going to keep me away from the computer for now. After experiencing how much a physical problem kept me away from fulfilling his most basic needs (I could barely nurse him, let alone bend to change his diapers, or lift him from the crib) I know I can't let online issues keep me from him anymore. It's not good for either of us. I go through giggle withdrawal.

Finally, our life tippled through another wave of change, as Papa Bean started a new job. He has been on parental leave for the past six months, and would have stayed stay-at-home-daddying if a supreme job opportunity to work at the college where he's taking his pastor schooling hadn't come up - with an ASAP sort of start date. He's still an IT guy, and as an employee, his tuition will be paid. How awesome is that?! We have arranged for child care to start in August, when his parental leave would have been exhausted, and that is when he will start full-time. For now, he works part-time around my clinic schedule. Part-time, he makes essentially the same amount as he was making from parental EI, and with an excellent new benefits package (plus the tuition thing, did I mention the tuition thing?) which is good.

Since I went back to work, I haven't really been with Bean alone on a regular kind of basis. At work, I was away from them both, and when I was home, Papa Bean was generally always around. He was the one on parental leave at Home With The Baby, see. So this part-time working thing is a new world for me - it's just me and Bean when PB's at work, and just PB & Bean when I'm at work. It's like we're both part-time stay-at-home parents lol. This is now the primary factor in my decreased 'puter time. I don't know what that means for blogging right now. I definitely have missed it, and regularly have post ideas float around during my long commute or night-time nursing. With each new day sans posting, the unreasonable pressure I put on myself to Get On With It Already weighed down my motivation somehow, and I'd just go randomly wander through my RSS instead. But I'm back now. I'll try not to disappear again... (Thanks to everyone who encouraged me that I've been missed. I truly appreciate you!)

Mama Bean plays well with others

Elizabeth Esther hosts this blogging party called the Saturday Evening Blog Post. Other bloggers are invited to share their favourite post from the past month (or two). Please feel free to head to her site and join the fun! I linked to this post about the Trials and Tribulations of finding appropriate nursing apparel.

Mama Bean is absent again

Ack!
Parents are visiting.
For nine days.
Do not think regular posting will be possible.
Gah!

Sorry...

Will crank out a Friday Link Love For SURESIES.
(Because I deffo have made time for webs and links and love.)

Except I had a browser full of tabs waiting for me to Deal With Later. And I accidentally closed it without saving the tabs. And now all those shatteringly inspirational or funny or whatever things that I didn't have time to read or manage or save or link or whatever are GONE! LOST! (or whatever. These are the words of the day!)

This is the problem with So Much Internet. When you're just stumbling around, it's very easy to lose track of these little shiny needles of Awesome in the big pile of World Wide Mostly Porn.

Anyway...one day I'll write about my discomfort regarding writing blog posts directly to people, as opposed to abstractly writing about things that people may or may not be reading. It feels very presumptuous and ego-filled to do so, as if anyone was getting really unhinged about how I haven't posted much lately.

And yet, here we are. Me writing pointlessly on and on about how I'm not writing, and you feeling comforted and calmed that I have checked in, laid out the 411, and offered assurance that I will return to my Normal Posting Schedule. Yeah, right.

Until Friday! (Hopefully sooner...)

Remind me to tell you about that time I went to play with the baby goats, mmm-kay?

Mama Bean won a prize!

I've never won anything before! Well, okay in junior high I won a missions trip to Venezuela, but I would have had to raise my own money to go, so I mostly won the privilege of going on the trip, and then I couldn't go anyway because I was studying all summer for a piano exam, so I didn't get to claim my prize. So... I've never actually gotten a thing that I've won before!

Margaret gave away a charm from her Etsy store on her blog. Lucky me! In case you couldn't tell, I'm super excited. Thanks, Margaret :)

I'll have to figure out these FCC rules or whatever (do they apply to Canadian bloggers?) and have prizes and giveaways one day.

Mama Bean doesn't like facebook status bubble bursters

You know these people. These are the people that have to suck the wind out of your sails when you post happily about some small-but-BIG-to-you life victory or celebration. There is a sense that they just want to share their experience with a similar situation, and demonstrate the common ground that ostensibly explains why you are friends (on facebook, anyway.) But it generally just sounds like oneupmanship. Or gloating.

Examples abound with parenting-related status updates. "Jane Doe is so happy Baby Doe didn't spit up her breakfast today!" Such a lovely status update, hooray for Jane Doe, because a) spit up is gross and b) it's worrisome when your baby keeps ejecting the nutrition so painstakingly given her. And then Bubble-Burster comes along, "Haven't had to deal with that. Baby Burster never spits up! LOL" Yeah, L-O-effing-L. Shut up, Burster.

On friend K's status recently, "First robin of spring!" I feel K's joy, because this is the hallmark of impending thaw-and-bloom I look most forward to every year. (As opposed to the return of the blasted Canuckian Geese, which I dread, as they are akin to rats.) When you live in a place with seasons, these transitional touchstones are important and visceral. (I am not being melodramatic.) So Douchey McBubbleburster comments, "They never left down here all winter long." Well, whoop-dee-effing-doo for you. Clearly, you don't live somewhere with seasons, and you cannot appreciate robins as we do, except to brag about them to the robin-deprived.

Look, I don't know K's commenting friend, I don't know where he lives, maybe their relationship can accommodate this kind of interplay. I'm just saying, from my perspective, it's annoying. The appropriate response to someone saying, "Yay for me!" is not "Yay for me, too, in this way that subtly one-ups your Yay!" The appropriate response is "Yay for you! I am happy you are happy!" and then, y'know, share your story if you feel like it. Am I being over-sensitive? This is entirely possible, I'm thin-skinned as all get out.

Don't get me wrong, I loooOOOOOOOOOooove comments. (Well, I don't love people who explain to you why the joke in your own status is funny. I know why the joke is funny - that's why I made it. But, I digress-as-usual.) Comments are like my crack, just ask Papa Bean. I actually giggle when I see them. (OMG, I smiled for actual days after Aunt Leila and Her Bad Mother commented on some posts the other week. Blogging heroes came to visit! So. Much. Happy.) So this should in No Way be taken as an admonition to forego commenting. If the only way you know to comment is by raining on my parade (or confirming that I did, in fact, make a joke) then by all means type it up! I promise your comment will bring me glee, No Matter What. I'm just saying, maybe try to keep my bubble intact, that's all :)

Mama Bean has run into the self-censorship wall. Hard

Every blogger gets to this question eventually. How much life is too much life to share? What does the Whole Wide World get to read, and what stays in the immediate, offline world? This blog, my blog, was created expressly to extend my social media Life in the first place. I have a weekly post dedicated to over-sharing! But I have to ask myself about self-censorship, too.

I think the older bloggers (which at this point means those who started before, like, 2007) feel the changes in the blogosphere more than us n00bs. They wrestled with trolls and flame warriors, and the issues of self-defense and self-censorship a long time ago, before monetization and sponsorships and giveaway rules and blogging conferences.

One of my favourite bloggers, Catherine at Her Bad Mother, wrote an un-rant early in her blog's life about how she couldn't use her blog to process a tough situation. Even though she knew the act of blogging about it would make her feel so much better, she also knew the public nature of her blog could allow discovery that would make a tough offline situation worse. More recently, Lindsay Ferrier at Suburban Turmoil asked if other bloggers had noticed momblog content being "toned down" in the interests of commercialization, and later her sense of feeling adrift in a mysterious new blog world. MckMama, one of the most attacked mommybloggers of all, has spent copious virtual ink on the merits of blogging honestly but responsibly, and not responding to one's critics.

Of course, it's not good to cater to the haters. But I do understand the desire to avoid conflict, and being considerate about sharing one's truth. Particularly when it's possible online content is going to have offline consequences. Well, all online content has potential offline consequences. Some that you might not even have considered. That might come completely out of left field, and knock the wind out a relationship you didn't even know to be worried about.

The beginning of freedom from anger is silence of the lips when the heart is agitated; the middle is silence of the thoughts when there is a mere disturbance of soul; and the end is the imperturbable calm under the breath of unclean winds." ~St. John Climacus

My heart is agitated, but I am being silent. There are things I want to write about today, pain I want to express and process away. These are functions of blogging for me - digestion and expression of my Life. But I can't write about these things, because there will be (more) offline consequences that I cannot, in good conscience, ignore. The answer to the blogger's self-censorship question is not the wisdom of Thumper's dad ("If you can't say somethin' nice...") But maybe the answer involves weighing expression and freedom in the balance. If expressing my truth frees me from one pain, but binds me to a larger Pain, I cannot write that truth. When telling my story frees me pain, and invites other people (online and offline) to their own freedom, when the Words of our Community start to magnify freedom, that truth must be told. And spread around. As much as possible.

I don't have that kind of story to share today. Sorry to get all vague-book-y on you, but I'm just going to have to keep this to myself. But I will write a metablogging post around the issue, naturally lol. I do have some memories to make and friends to make them with, and I leave you to your friends and families and memory-making this Easter weekend. I pray God will be big for you this weekend. It is his Big Day, after all.

Mama Bean is listening to the voices in her head

I am wondering if other people experience the phenomenon I call "The Writer's Voice." This is the voice I hear in my head when writing, and use to read aloud when reviewing and editing. I have now developed a distinct Blogger's Voice, that is a little different from what I might hear when composing a formal essay (or reviewing Papa Bean's assignments.)

I am struck by blogging topics randomly, often while driving, and compose paragraphs on a virtual screen in my head. (Don't worry, it doesn't distract from my driving, I am not a danger to my Fellow Commuter.) I have not yet perfected the ability to expediently get those paragraphs onto a real screen on my real computer into my real blog. This would be helpful, because I don't always remember the genius stuff I come up with on Country Road 2-0-whatever. And then I get frustrated, and don't want to write the post anymore, if it can't be exactly as wonderful as my flash of inspiration at 7 am yesterday. (It bears noting that whatever I've forgotten by the time I get to a keyboard likely wasn't as Amazing and World-changing as I think it was, or I would have remembered it.)

Every blogger has a voice. The Pioneer Woman has a distinct country charm that is inimitable, and she talks just like she writes. MckMama has particular idioms and phrasing that identify her in my mind, but when I finally saw an interview with her, she spoke nothing at all how I'd "heard" her writing in my head. If I can personally identify my own writing voice that is separate and distinct from my normal/everyday voice, how much more obvious is this difference to other people?

Previous blogs notwithstanding, I am relatively new to the blogging world. Certainly, as a writer-not-just-a-reader in the momblogging community. Because I have watched the momblog culture change and develop, I do get a little navel-gazingly meta about my blogging activities. As it was drilled into me during Technical Writing 203 (a BSc. degree requirement at the University of Cowtown, for reasons unclear to this day) you must Write For Your Audience. And so I consider my readers, though it feels presumptuous to do so, but I know I'm not writing this just for myself, or I wouldn't be pasting it all around the World Wide Internet, holyrunonsentencebatman *pause* I consider my readers, and I consider my voice. And since I'm looking at my bellybutton anyway, I pick out the lint while I'm at it.

I also wonder if the Blogger's Voice as subset of the Writer's Voice is really just a piece of the Performance Persona. I'm sure actors are aware of a particular actorly voicing they use, apart from a role, just that they use as their image of a Performer. Maybe an extreme example is the Beyonce/Sasha Fierce dealy. Or even just the way celebrities behave on talk shows. I've performed in a variety of (primarily musical) ways since childhood, so my performance persona is pretty developed, for better or worse. (It's taken time to stamp out the worse, and make it all for the better. Bygones. Or maybe a post for another time.) So maybe I hear this blogging-Mama Bean voice as part of that, and it's not something other writers waste much time considering.

And that's not to say I see this blog as some sort of performance. What I mean is, I understand, maybe more acutely than others, when I am creating something for public consumption, as it were. Right now, that public as I know it contains a diversity of people, from my husband, other family and close friends, to fellow Prairie Valley City moms, and purely online friends and fellow social-media-lites. If more people join the fun, the faces will increasingly blend together. And what will I think about my voice then? That question could keep me staring at my navel for many hours to come. In the meantime, I'll just keep typing out what the voices in my head tell me to :)

Mama Bean will live to blog another day

My first blog was on diaryland. (That link will not take you to said blog, which I wish would just disappear, but remains a shadow of its former glory (haha) on dland's servers in perpetuity.) (Brackets within brackets, I have a problem.) Several close friends also had diaryland blogs, and we all gave each other guestbook pats on the back. When I moved to the US for Chiropractic college, I figured this would be a good way to keep in touch with friends, so I didn't give a lot of thought to the rest of the blogging community, or attracting "strangers" to read my blog. Unfortunately, I never really fell into a regular posting rhythm. I'd think of things to write about, and compose lovely entries in my head, but forget the particular turn of phrase or whatever by the time I sat at the computer, so it would never get written. Only Papa Bean really got the hang of regular blogging. Most of those dland sites are now defunct.

Papa Bean was the first to switch the Blogger. My first blogspot was titled "Love Covers a Multitude of Sins" which is from 1 Peter 4:18: Above all, love each deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins. It is one of my favourite bible verses, and a guiding life principle for how to treat, y'know, humanity. I had so many good intentions to pave the road to that blog's hell. Thankfully, it did document some of my thought processes while struggling with American politics, and American Christians. But again, posting was never a priority, and the blog languished.

My second blogspot was created after graduating from Chiropractic college, returning to Cowtown, and getting married. I hadn't updated my other site in ages, I don't know why I suddenly thought I could commit to a new blog and really make something of it. This blog was titled "Deus Ex Maoir Quam Es" which is latin for God is Bigger Than This. It is another guiding life principle of mine, and if I weren't uber-scared of needles, I'd get a tattoo of it. (There were other blogs; a short-lived wedding blog, a joint blog with Papa Bean when we moved that we never update, an obsolete page for my graduating class from Chiropractic college. They didn't last.)

Despite the faith-based underpinnings of their titles, neither of these blogs focused on religious or theological content. Nor were they a traditional "web-log" account of my daily activities. I just shared thoughts and stories I needed to process in a written way, and which I thought my readers (i.e. friends, family) might enjoy. By the time Deus Ex came along, facebook was already a regular part of most people's lives, and the need for that sort of log-type posting and picture-sharing was supplanted by status updates, tweets, and flickr or fbook albums. Blogs had long morphed into the niched and branded self-publishing phenomenon they are today. And new programming allowed for greater community: better comment management, better forum creation, better everything. Praise the Lord for Wordpress, right?

I read mom-blogs for years before I became a mother. It's a habit I picked up from Papa Bean, who has remained consistent and involved in the blogging community. I love being part of this community, and have crept out of the lurking shadows, to comment and engage. I love writing within this community, even though it's not all mama-ness all the time on here (and even when it feels like it's all been said before by some other blog.) I told myself this blog would be different, and I would post regularly or So Help Me Blog.

My primary strategy for that is the weekly themed posts: TMI Tuesdays and Friday Link Love. Even just completing these entries each week has me posting about, oh, a kazillion times more often than all my other blogs combined. Another useful strategy of sorts is just the endless entertainment and learning Bean provides; I am inspired by multiple stories or issues a day. My problem is wanting every post to be perfect or meaningful or just somehow important. I want each entry to be crafted; to tell a story; to have a beginning, middle and end; an introduction, supporting paragraphs and conclusion. I fall into writing essays, when I'm really just writing a blog. Basically, I need to get over myself. (Basically, I need to stop italicizing everything. I have a problem.)

It's a journey. Get it? I'm on a road...

So, it's a process, and I'm getting more comfortable with writing lightly and briefly. I also plan to blog more in direct response to the mom-blogging community, because I find the communication within this group so valuable and fun. It's been a kicking good time so far, and I won't be running out of steam any time soon, as far as I can tell.