So I’ve been in not so fine fettle lately. I could go on about my woes (have done so in a sentence or three following that first one, multiple times, and fortunately for all of us I keep scootching the cursor back over them in fits of discretion). Really they can be summed up with two words: current events. That’ll do. Detailing could include: current events, LGBT civil equality battle/violence against women/racist police violence/overall climate crisis sub-files. Menopause just makes the impact of events, good and bad, more — how shall I put it? — intense.
All of the above has led to my utterly misplacing my mojo, and even when I think I’ve found it, I lose it again just as quickly. When and if I do find it for good, all’s I can do is hope I’ll remember how to get it working again. For the mojo misplacement (and the consequent sluggish LD content) I apologize to those of you comrades both seen and unseen, known and un.
But LD content is not the only casualty of the MIA mojo. Several chums — both of whom I esteem highly, read daily, and even met in person after first meeting them on the internets! — are coming to the end of their Weblog Awards roller coaster rides, and all’s I’ve done is gone and voted for them daily. Another chum reminded me that it wouldn’t hurt for me to at least plug them a teensy bit here, and I must say I heartily agree. I feel a bit like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, and my guardian angel Clarence just emailed me and pointed out one of the dire consequences of my keeping the covers pulled up to my chin and my typing fingers away from the internet.
So! Daggone it, Mombian is the best LARGE blog I ever read. First time I laid eyes on it, months into our daughter’s first year, I promptly made it my home page, and have kept it thus ever since. I have said once and I’ll say it again to whoever will listen, every lesbian, upon becoming a parent, should be issued the URL of Dana’s blog (along with a copy of Penelope Leach’s book, maybe, and vouchers for a dozen date nights, thanks to friends/family/whoever trustworthy who’ll babysit). And while Mombian just might not take first place in the Weblog Awards whirligig thing, she deserves every lesbian parent and lesbian parent-loving vote out there.
Go here and press the little button next to Mombian; you only have ’til midnight Tuesday anyhow, thanks to my being distracted, rummaging around under the couch cushins for my mojo.
And my man Looky, Daddy! Well. Where do we even start? We could try here (where he stumped for me individually and gay people at large, in one humor-packed swoop), or here (where he told so many people, so eloquently, what they needed to hear). His whole site is the repository of all you need to be convinced to vote his in as Best Parenting Blog. I say unto you, if anyone other than a Cris Williamson-humming, tofu-eating, emotional needs-processing lesbian deserves to win that award, then Mr. Looky, Daddy! does. He is the closest thing to a Cris Williamson-humming, tofu-eating, emotional needs-processing man as I ever hope to meet. Though my downstairs brother in-law comes a verrrrry close second.
Please be so kind as to go here and press the little button next to Looky, Daddy!, because he is neck-and-neck for first place with some other, I’m sure totally fine, I’m sure totally deserving but they’re not my close personal friends blog. Contarn it, if you go vote right now, a queer ally, at-home straight guy dad of two twins and a precocious, electric daughter, a man utterly incapable of writing a dull word, just might be slowly strolling down the stage, barely keeping the dozen roses up, waving his arm in the air (elbow, elbow, wrist wrist wrist), weeping prodigiously out of both eyes, this year’s winner of the Best Parenting Blog.
Grace the Spot is up for Best New Blog, and a great number of blogs I read regularly are up for Best LGBT blog. Like for instance Pam’s House Blend (first spot I go to for queer news/analysis, sometimes second), Bilerico (second place I look for queer news/analysis, often first), and This Girl Called Automatic Win (where I go to to measure the gaping chasm that separates me from the Younger Generation, plus to get a taste of how J.D. Sallinger would be writing, if he were blogging as a footloose NYC lesbian).
What do you get when you win the Weblog Awards? No fame, no fortune. But you do get bragging rights. And maybe even a little random traffic. Which, as wacky as the whole thing is, is totally worth the effort.
There truly is an ebb and flow to blogging. Sometimes, you just don’t have it in you. Or worse, you have it in you, but you can never seem to get mojo and time to write at the same time.
It happens. And then it comes back.
I’ve read you for quite a long time but never managed to get over the “register to leave a comment” hump. Yes, I do somehow manage to feed and clothe myself despite my treading the waters of Lac Lethargy over here. I would like it if you would start writing more again because you’re one of the smartest bloggers (read: writers) out there, but we are all well entitled to those moments where we just can. not. I am sure that I, and your other devotees, will continue to be happily fed by the prodigious photographs of your beautiful family. They (silently) tell your story.
Very best.
Hopefully to help with the mojo, and the menopause – the inimitable Alison Bechdel gave us a brief taste of Dykes to Watch out For recently:
http://www.dykestowatchoutfor.com/xmas-check-in
I wish I could find the right keyboard characters to convey, in emoticon terms, the warm smile of gratitude that cartoon — and your sharing it — brought to my face. Thank you thank you.
Just this morning a local gal (LD reader & all) wrote to corroborate what she called a “lingering malaise” her household is still feeling, and how hard it is to explain to others. It’s just overall creepy/exhausting. Which of course all civil rights battles are. Creepy/exhausting, or violent/exhausting, or dispiriting/exhausting, or enraging/exhausting, or even inspirational/exhausting.
One works with a blind faith that we will one day know what triumphant/exhausting feels like. But periodic fatigue seems to be part of the whole shebang. (If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a struggle, would it?) All of which is why we need so damn many of us on the job, so we can “spell” one another on a regular basis.
Anyhow, thank you again.