VirusHead

Lin at Telling It Like It Is has shot me right in the head with what she’s calling a 357 magnum meme. Assembled over at Home with Heather, this one asks some basic questions about blogging. Far be it from me to refuse such a sweet request from a fellow former JW… so…

1. How long have you been blogging?

I started blogging four years ago (November 2003). I actually had a couple of other blogs – one at Blogger and one somewhere else that I’ve forgotten – but this is really the only one that counts. My domain – woo-hoo!

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

There wasn’t any one reason that I started blogging. I wanted to bookmark things that I enjoyed, mark life events, comment on politics and culture and so on. My first posts were a couple of poems, a celebration of the birth of my nephew, a collection of funny religion products like the Huggy Jesus, an ex-JW take on Michael Jackson, thoughts about Bush’s campaign discourse, and wondering if snipers had “nests” before Oswald. So it’s always been an eclectic blog.

Mentors? None, really, not for blogging. I’ve enjoyed many different kinds of blogs, but I just do my thang. Where I’ve needed the most help is for design and coding issues, and fortunately other bloggers are very generous with information and assistance – too many to name.

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

Neither. Once or twice a year, I get enough commission from Amazon to get myself a book. Not for the money, then. On the other hand, it’s not just for fun. There are a lot of different reasons that I blog. It’s a ritual that helps me stay grounded and in touch with myself and the worlds that I inhabit (and that surround me). It’s a personal journal – although somewhat censored – about important events and thoughts. It functions as outreach to other former JWs and people who are dealing with various issues having to do with Jehovah’ Witnesses – and that is very healing to me, too. It allows me to have the feeling of having some small voice with regard to what has happened and is happening in the United States, and to support activism, however small.

4. Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.

Three things? I love meeting and communicating with people I would never have known otherwise. There are at least a dozen people that I’ve met through this blog that I consider to be good friends, notwithstanding the fact that in most cases we never have met off-line.

I love reading other blogs, and I feel strongly that blogging has encouraged a wide variety of people to do more writing… and thinking. This encourages me and contributes to a feeling of hope about the future. Even when I vehemently disagree with someone’s thoughts, the very fact that they are writing means that they will do more writing. The more you write, the more you think, and the better you become at both.

I love the social aspect of the internet. I’m a little isolated these days, working part-time as a consultant, being a mom, and now without my own car again. One of my last close girlfriends here just moved out of state. Through the blog, Facebook, Care2, MySpace, and so on, I feel like I’m keeping up – at least a bit – with friends, old and new, and they each have extremely fun things to do beyond social networking. I digg Digg. I love to StumbleUpon things. I love to find things on YouTube (see Salvadore Dali on What’s Your Line – of course he’s an artist, but also an author, and according to him, an athlete too (hee-hee).

5. Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

The main thing I struggle with is having time to do all things I love to do. I sometimes have trouble with just playing around instead of writing something substantial in the blog.

I also get overwhelmed by how much information there really is – news items, blog posts, political actions, petitions, votes, bookmarking, weighing different viewpoints and perspectives. Sometimes I have trouble keeping up – even with just the things that really matter to me.

Last, as you may have seen in posts before, I struggle with being fair, ethical, compassionate, caring. It’s a high value for me, but it is sometimes very difficult to hold myself to my own high standards.

Ok, so that’s how it goes.

Now, as far as tagging five more bloggers, I’ve become a bit hesitant. On the one hand, a link from this blog to another blog is almost always a good thing – it gives you another little bit of reputation at Technorati and it might bring more readers to your blog to see all the other cool stuff you’re writing.

On the other hand, some people are tired of the memes, have too much else to write about, and so on.

So we’ll do a win-win. I’ll tag 10 people from 9 blogs – only people I’d really be interested in knowing more about and who haven’t already answered these kinds of questions as far as I can tell (that lets you out, Todd, and Jolly Roger, it’s up to you). “The tagged” are then completely free, with total diplomatic immunity, to participate or not. No worries.

• The Artist formerly known as PusBoy and magicalshrimp at Virtual Pus
• PB at Prose and Thorn
• Jamie at The Online Rant
• Vance at Meditations on an Eyeball
• Traci at Buttrrflyyz
• Bev at Makanani
• Larry at Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm
• Don at Life Cycle Analysis
• And just for the “most unlikely to respond” factor, let’s say Neil Gaiman

Now, just because I haven’t named you doesn’t mean you can’t participate!

I’ve been tagged by my dear friend Grateful Bear for the “Random 8″ blog meme.

• Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
• Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
• Players should tag 8 other people and notify them that they have been tagged.

So here are 8 random facts about me, VirusHead, Heidi:

1. I wish that I had thought of a different name for my site. “VirusHead” captured who I was, but not so much who I am now.
2. I have always wanted to learn how to play the guitar (I watched Stranger than Fiction last night, and loved it).
3. I’m writing a vampire novel. I’ve got the background ideas and plot worked out, and I think the characters are pretty good. However, I’ve discovered that I’m not very good at pacing or dialogue. I think it’s going to be a while before I’m happy with what I’ve written. Now I sort of wish I hadn’t mentioned it to anybody (grimace).
4. I am attracted to very precise descriptive language. I have the soul of a poet. If I don’t always find the words myself, I do appreciate when others have done so. Two of my favorites: E. B. White knew that his girlfriend would become his wife at the moment when she referred to dental floss as “tooth twine.” A couple of years ago, our son Ben complained when I turned on his light in the morning. Why? What’s wrong? “The light bites my eyes.” Exactly, of course it does.
5. I have a very ambivalent attitude toward community; I am both repulsed by and attracted to being a “member” of a group. I see the benefits, and I long for them, but there is something inside of me that strenuously objects. This creates obstacles and problems, and I’m still not sure how to resolve them.
6. I will take almost any opportunity to sing. I love to play with voice. My favorite recording was a version of Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” in which I was pretending to be Susan Sarandon in Rocky Horror. It’s hilarious, or at least it is to me.
7. I prefer wearing dresses to wearing pants or jeans, especially in the summer. I don’t like current fashions, and I’m always looking for beautiful dresses to wear. Unfortunately, I have had multiple surgeries on my feet because of a birth defect, and it’s really tough to find the shoes that I require (with little or no heel). In the summer, I can usually find sandals, but sandals don’t support my feet very well. I’ve grown accustomed to the pain in my feet, and can usually tune it out, but heels are out of the question. It looks odd to wear even a business outfit, much less the dresses I adore, with the shoes I have to wear. I can’t jog, and I’ll never sky-dive (to my regret), but at least I’m not in the wheelchair they predicted for me by age 35. If I have to wear goofy-looking shoes, it’s a small price to pay.
8. I love hats. I wish there were a wider variety of hats that were socially acceptable for women to wear. I used to have an extensive collection, but these days I only have a few. I have a blue felt floppy hat (that faintly reminds some people of Tom Petty as the Mad Hatter in that “Don’t Come Around Here No More” video) that has a blue velvet sashy sort of band. I have a black hat with a fake pearl clasp on one side, out of which spouts a curly feather. I have the sort of New England roll-up and put in your pocket flowerpot hat that you really can’t wear in Georgia, but it’s great for camping. I have a standard woven garden hat, and a tan hat with a lacy veil. I’m not counting the various absurd ski caps… I dug up some photos. In chronological order:

Your Hat Personality Is A

Beret

What Hat Are You?

Now, here are the 8 I’m tagging (in alpha order!):

• Gerald
• Jolly Roger
• Laureth
• Lord Matt
• Mary
• rev. billy bob gisher
• Todd (Hells Kitchen)
• Vance

In answer to NOW’s Question of the Week: Do you read blogs? Tell us if blogs change your views on political issues.

Blogs are of many kinds: scrapbooks, personal journals, advertising spaces, photo logs. Political blogs are only one form of the blog. The blogosphere is about freedom of expression – dittoheads, propaganda portals, soap boxes, fake identities, but also debate, discussion, original ideas, and scrapbooked information/evidence/argument.

Some political blogs actually investigate and report news. Some are focused tightly on one specific topic so that there is a constant flow of targeted and detailed information. Others are like a scream of despair, or a series of billboard advertisements.

Blogs do affect my political views, if for no other reason than that they are a valuable supplement to the information and perspectives that I am able to glean from other media. If you are interested in a particular topic, you can search for related keywords (using search engines or more specific tools like Technorati) and get the latest range of feedback and opinion. Subscribe to your favorite blog rss feeds, and it’s like building your own newspaper. Through a service like Feedblitz, you can even have the feeds delivered via e-mail.

What is still more powerful, however, is that because of the ease of blog publication, more people are writing and publishing. There is a sense of political empowerment that comes from dwelling with your thoughts and observations long enough to claim your own distinct perspective – and then to express it, to “offer it up” to others. Blogs encourage this. People who might never write an article or book for print publication can still have a syndicated column as a blogger. Blogs are used for political opinion, activism and reporting. Blogs can distribute information, and calls for political action. Bloggers can report on things that even investigative journalists never observe – and they offer the viewpoints of many who are otherwise never heard.

Blogs encourage people to read, think, write and debate – all in mutally reinforcing feedback loops that make them better at doing all of them. What’s not to love?

As opportunities for real political discussion in public spaces dwindle, the blogosphere offers one form of the social arena for information exchange, conversation, and debate that in other times and places might have been held at the local pub or cafe or quilting bee or bowling night or barbeque. In many cases, we simply don’t have the places or the occasions for those discussions, but we need them more now than at any other time in my life’s memory.

We need more debates in the public sphere. We need politicians to debate in front of us rather than simply reading their statements to the press. Pundits and spokesmen and think tank representatives aren’t enough for us anymore. Americans do smell mendacity, and we are working it out for ourselves as best we can. Political blogs help us to do that.

What’s your view on this question? Post it there, post it here, post it at home.

I actually spent some time beginning to compose a persuasive and compelling letter to the assorted pseudo-Christians, neo-cons, anti-liberals, supergreedy imperialist corporatists, and dominionists/supremacists (I think most of them wear the same hood).

But I caught myself. Why bother? Why do I expend all this energy at this level?

I went to a local pool with my son and his friend’s family. I was able just to sit and observe the people around me. I’ve been a bit isolated lately, and I had forgotten how much I love to watch people. I felt my whole perspective shift as I observed the people all around me, all different – each with their own voices and expressions and gestures. I felt reconnected at a fundamental level, and I realized that I’ve been letting my political anger generalize.

I’m considering putting the blog on hiatus for a while. I feel as though I don’t have much to contribute until I recharge and recenter. I would like to spend a little more time doing some other things, including other kinds of writing.

The blog keeps me doing at least one thing every day, but I think a more productive discipline would be more rewarding on a variety of levels.

Thoughts?