Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Blogger Downer

Apologies for my absence yesterday. Even though I don't deserve it, I feel like a bank holiday = a blog holiday for me.

When I say I don't deserve a holiday, I really, really mean it. To cap off a summer in which I accomplished far less than I intended, I spent this last long weekend maximizing the time I spent lying horizontal. And no, we are not "trying" for a baby. More like I'm trying for a world record in utter fucking laziness.

Ahem. It was a "relaxing" weekend, we'll say. Not that we didn't get out some: we took Haruki for a hike up Mount Sanitas and also around our house, and we also took a long mountain bike ride up towards the little town of Ward, Colorado. We are planning on taking this ride again in a few weeks when the fall colors are in full bloom; will post photos then. I also managed to make some to-do lists that I woefully started work on today.

But mostly I watched the US Open and episodes of Nip / Tuck while eating spoonfuls of peanut butter and chocolate chips. Sigh.

In truth, I was a bit depressed this weekend, and felt motivated to do very little. It got me to thinking, actually, about how infrequently blog girls write about depression and/or anxiety. I mean, we write a lot about what we eat, and some of us even write about how disordered our relationships with food are. But very rarely do I read one of the "big" bloggers writing about a period of sustained or serious depression, or feeling so anxious that they experience what my therapist used to call "analysis paralysis."

This isn't to say that I'm going to start writing about my depression or anxiety issues, but I am curious about whether you all agree with the point I'm making here. Is it possible that the blog world has made eating disorder issues acceptable as a topic of conversation while other mental illnesses like depression and chronic anxiety remain secret? Or am I just reading the wrong blogs? Seriously. Instead of reading about a blogger who--in one day--goes to the DMV, gets the car oil changed, does the grocery shopping, pays bills, goes to a doctor's appointment, etc., I'd love to read a blogger who writes about how she keeps moving her Monday "to-dos" to Tuesday, and then to Wednesday, and then to Thursday, and then, well, you get it.

Finally, I had a treat while out grocery shopping today.




For those of you who don't know who this is, it's Taylor Phinney, a local professional cyclist who just got some amazing results in both the Olympic Games and in the USA ProCycling Challenge. (Check him out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Phinney.

GAH! I was totally star-struck! (Not least because he was perusing the nut butters with a very serious attitude.)

*Whattya think about bloggers writing about anxiety/depression? Ever met someone famous that made you feel like a babbling geek?

6 comments:

  1. I think the bigger a blogger gets, the more cautious they are about what they write. Look at Kath Eats for example. She posted about spray painting one bookshelf while pregnant and got horrific backlash about it, not just in her comments section, but also on the GOMI website. Like she had caused her child to have birth defects or something. I think there are a few bloggers out there who do lay it all out on the table, but I don't think they are the big ones. Ya know what I'd like to read? A blogger having a fight with her husband! I mean, come on, life is not all rose petals and sunshine. I have a great relationship with my hubby but we fight sometimes. You never see that. Maybe I have no right to complain because I don't post that stuff either, but I also don't post a dozen pictures per week of the two of us in happy poses atop a mountain we just climbed or looking lovey dovey all the time. I am a little skeptical of the bloggers whose lives seem too perfect. I prefer bloggers that are real and not a picture perfect postcard. To be honest, I can't relate to your eating disordered posts since I have never suffered from that, but I am still interested in what you have to say. Anxiety is pretty universal though...I don't care who you are, if you are alive and breathing something at some point has bothered you. So I say jump in! Chat about it. Okay, the babe is squeaking over his monitor so apparently it is time to get out of bed this morning.

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    1. Great response--and you're coming up with this while still in bed, semi-conscious?!!?
      I totally agree about the fear of criticism. Do you remember a few months ago when Kath made some comment about Matt coming to bed buzzed and everyone jumped on her a$$ like she was being a bad wife? I guess if I had her audience I'd prolly try to nix the bitchy wife bizness too. (Sidenote: based on my grammar and spelling here I'd guess I'm like the least educated English Ph.D. in the country.)
      Also, will post about marital fights soon...maybe my motto should be that for every cutesy pic of us hiking up a mountain I should throw in another of my face when we're fighting and he is literally in danger:-)

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  2. Nooooo, I missed the Matt buzzed thing. You'll have to send me a link to it! I do feel bad for Kath as she is totally under criticism all the time. Of course her job is her blog and thus she wears flip flops all day long while taking yoga classes and going for long walks so it's probably not a bad trade off.

    Yeah, you don't really sound like an English Ph.D. I don't really sound like I have a Bachelors in English unless B stands for Bullshit. I like that about you though. One of these days you should freak us all out and whip out some Ph.D jargon. Maybe post a paragraph from your dissertation. The many levels of Nikki. You could compare it to an onion or an artichoke to really seal the food blogger deal.

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    1. I can't find the post on KERF, even after searching on her site and also googling things like "KERF, Matt coming to bed drunk." Strange--there aren't many things that come up when I search for that...
      And, um, thanks for saying that I don't sound like an English Ph.D., I think. I'm not sure, but did you maybe just tell me that I sound illiterate and perhaps ignorant??! Ha. Just kidding. I actually sound particularly stupid compared to David, since his research is on philosophy of language and he really gets upset when people dangle prepositions or say "the reason is because" instead of "the reason is that."
      Also, yay that you're an English major! What have you been reading lately? I need some new material!

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  3. No no silly, not illiterate at all. I think your blog has a casual feel to it. As if you are speaking conversationally to us all out in readerland. I like it. My Father-in-Law has done two guest posts on my blog and he was so worried about grammar and whether I needed it to be accurate or "how they talk on these blogs." He was a college professor before he retired.

    I haven't done a ton of reading lately with all the house stuff (keeping it clean enough to show is kicking my ass), but I am currently reading Catch 22 as well as North by Northwestern by Captain Sig Hansen of Deadliest Catch Fame. I am multifaceted.

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  4. I completely agree about my conversational tone. In fact, I took it as a compliment that you might find me illiterate; the further along I've gotten in academia, the more certain I am that professors are just bs-ing in lingo that they've made up. When I write for the blog I try really hard to write exactly how and what I'm thinking. Since I'm usually thinking things like "That's what she said" I'd say I definitely lose a tone of academic professionalism. But sometime soon I will post a paragraph from my dissertation...I'll try to find a juicy one with bits about vaginas. (I hope you've read enough of my blog to know what I'm talking about here...)

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