Effectively Nudged.

Okay. So. Um.



The other day my sister told me I needed to update my blog because my last post was just not 'me;' in short, it was overdramatic, it was depressing, it was eeyore. Things have not been good. I do not have time or energy to give an update quite yet, but since Mr. Lady tagged me for a meme that will talk, however obliquely, about how I blog and what I struggle in attempting to write this blog, it's kind of a perfect seque. I'll try to keep out the overdrama and the depress-ment.



How long have you been blogging?

Just under 2.5 years.



What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?



My friend Matt emailed me during the summer of '05 that he was starting a blog about food and wine, which is his thing. This would be my first visit to blogger-based blogs. I didn't read a bunch of them, or even think about writing, until the end of that summer and the shit started to hit the fan with The Kid. His preschool staff said he was too energetic and too hyperactive to fit into preschool anymore, just two weeks before Kindergarten was set to start. I knew I had a battle, I knew my brilliant child was a square peg, and Kindergarten was going to be a circle hole, and I just wanted to diarize it. And so Soapy Water started, during that two week period where I took a lot of time off of work, for the first of many times I found myself without childcare. While my views on what's going on with him have changed STARKLY since this blog began, I'm happy to have the blog to look back on, a document to my work on his behalf. Me (and my family) have been the only consistent thing to stand by The Kid these two and a half years of his very rocky education, and while my conclusions have evolved, the way I approach problems (critically, with much ire), has not changed.


I sent an email sending out the link of my brand spanking new blog to my bff and a few other friends. She wrote me back that she, uh, had been writing one herself for about six months. Here's the link. Go check it out. So, she didn't make me want to have a blog, as I didn't know hers existed until after mine did, but she made me want to write for her. She's the best, yo.



Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?



Is what I do fun? I think this is the problem lately. I do not make a dime off of this blog. No ads. No point. No traffic.



What 3 things do you love about being online?



1. I have connected with people that I know well, better.
2. I have connected with people that I don't know at all but are similar to me, or have perspectives I wouldn't have known about or considered prior to the blogging.
3. Primal scream. I've written some really angry posts in my day. I've also written thought processes out so that I can sleep at night.



What 3 things do you struggle with online?

1. Actually writing the blog. When life speeds up, and I have more to write about, I tend to post less.
2. Overdocumentation. I know that I am the only person who is actually interested in the ins and outs of everything I think about. In general. In relation to The Kid and The Kid's education, I think I tend to go overboard with details of his school issues, to the point that no one will read this but a person who loves me very much and wants to read our updates, and/or someone who is searching for answers to the same questions I'm asking, or teachers. I think. No one else wants to read about a mentally ill kid. Rarely do people even want to even acknowledge they exist.
3. This is not a fun blog. I used to write about funny stuff, about how The Kid's challenges were beautiful and entertaining somehow. But lately, not so much. Life is heavy, and so are my posts. I want to lighten things up, but I think so seriously, and this subject is so very serious, that the posts end up sad, troubling, troubled.