Two Things to Get Over in 2013

Nobody reads my blog. This is not one of the two things I need to get over, it's a fact I have accepted. I can see who is clicking and why and from where. The post that gets the most traffic is a two-year-old post I made about a product I liked (still like) and apparently I'm the only person on the Intertubes who ever reviewed it. And sometimes friends will check in, sometimes people want to enter a contest I'm hosting, sometimes a blog hop will get a few curious eyes who never stay.

But mostly I'm in this tiny corner of the web talking to myself.

So here I will share two things I want to get over in 2013, the year I'm going to turn 40 (but not for a while). They were supposed to be part of a zine I was supposed to publish supposedly. I suppose that's part of this too - letting things go out of my head and into the world. I can always make a zine too...

1. When I was in something like 7th grade, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer with my whole heart. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And then my English teacher - who I vaguely remember as being also-the-gym-teacher but I might be wrong? - he read this piece from the newspaper that was a bit over the top and that contained the phrase "Please God! Save us from this frozen hell!" And then he used that phrase to describe something I wrote a few weeks later - implying that I too was crazy over the top ridiculous and should shut up, or at least that's how I took it. And all of the passion and flowery writing that I wanted to do just kind of fell on the floor. Splat. I mean, it didn't stop me from writing - it didn't stop me from writing good and bad poetry in high school, it didn't stop me from writing sad poetry in college, it didn't stop me from writing...whatever it was I was writing, poetry-wise, in grad school. But it changed me on some molecular level. I have a few people (it's a secret) who have styles I admire desperately and who I want to emulate (I probably am writing this paragraph by slipping into their voices, actually) and in 2013 I might actually do that again. Let go. Open up. Be saved from that frozen hell. Not care what anyone thinks. I just want someone to read what I have to say.

2. When I was a kid, I remember overhearing my mother on the phone. She was complaining to someone. She had been interviewed for a newspaper article and apparently they'd promised that she would be anonymous, but her complaint was that the author of the piece described her so perfectly that "everyone" would immediately recognize her without her name attached. Somehow this was devastating. I don't remember what she was talking about, but I definitely took to heart that you're not supposed to attach your name to things. To beliefs. To ideas. Stay anonymous. Stay quiet. Stay out of the spotlight. Again, this didn't necessarily stop me at all times, but sometimes I pull back. I don't send my writing out to be read by anyone. I stay quiet. I don't comment. I don't want someone to read my name and those words attached. It's ridiculous. I'm going to try to get over it in 2013.

If you actually do read this, leave a comment saying hello, would you? Even if you stumbled on this post and never plan to come back. (Though not if you're a spammer. I hate spammers and I don't approve their comments so don't even try it, jerkface.)

2013 is going to be the year of experimenting with this blog, I think. Getting over my fear of flowery language, of posting too often, and of saying THIS IS MINE, THIS IS ME.