{"id":7875,"date":"2010-08-16T14:50:46","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T18:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7875"},"modified":"2010-08-16T14:50:46","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T18:50:46","slug":"blogit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/blogit\/","title":{"rendered":"BlogIt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Every year around now, a large chunk of blogosphere real estate is turned over to posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and Flickr albums about a gathering called BlogHer<\/a>. As the conference title suggests, the focus in on women who blog — it’s apparently attended by a number of guys, as well — and for the several days of BlogHer, attendees take in workshops and panel discussions, attend parties, and go out with friends to take in the sights of that year’s city. (This year, earlier this month, it took place in New York City.)<\/p>\n

I’ve never gone to BlogHer, and never expect to, although I follow and admire the bejeezus out of maybe a half-dozen of the BlogHerers (?) with wide name recognition (Maggie, The Bloggess, Kelly…) and make occasional trips through the takeout windows of another half-dozen or so.<\/p>\n

There are a few reasons while I’ll probably never get there:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the first place, although I really like one thing or other about their writing, what they write about is not what I write about. These are honest-to-God writers, whose talent I wouldn’t mind having a thimbleful of, but as a rule they don’t post about writing as such, or about books or music for that matter. They generally, with occasional exceptions, post about everyday life, frequently about raising their kids, getting along with their spouses, being suddenly single, battling domestic abuse and other personal tragedies…*<\/p>\n

…and they’re young<\/em>. I’ve never seen a survey, but a careful browse through some of those Flickr sets positions the center of the bell curve at around 30 years of age, maybe a little older, and another plus or minus 10 years encompasses 90% of those in attendance. (A few statistical outliers are in evidence, sure, but by and large that I can even see these exceptions among the crowds tells me how, uh, exceptional they really are.) They’re still in the bloom of excitement about the decades ahead of them. They’re still getting used to the idea that they can write, and are jazzed about that feeling. They’re driven. They’re not just young: they’re determinedly, powerfully<\/em> young.<\/p>\n

Finally, well, they’re… they’re gregarious<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I imagine a prehistoric ancestor who shared 99.9999% of my DNA something like this: He played a key role in the hunt by encouraging the spearmen, reassuring them about their supreme spearmanship, and wishing them well as they set out after the nearest mastodon, unable to accompany them because he himself, alas, had a prior engagement. He played a key role after<\/em> the mastodon banquet by bucking up the spirits of those who had to clean up, pointing out that no one, in his experience, had ever washed the bark platters or swept a cave floor quite so professionally, and no one had ever done such an outstanding job hauling away the gnawed-up bones to the locations where future paleontologists would be most likely to find them. Although he had a prior engagement and thus couldn’t actually, you know, help<\/em>, he’d hand them the exact cleanup tools they needed. (“Did you remember to sign ’em with a couple telltale whacks with a pointed implement? Yes? Attaboy!<\/em>“)<\/p>\n

Only he would not, y’know, have been visibly interacting with them during the meal itself.<\/p>\n

He’d wait for everybody else to hack off their portions, first. They’d be all lined up with their big flat bark plates in their hands, telling jokes, recalling the excitement of the hunt, yelling to the one a few places in front not to hog the shank. He’d hang back, maybe filling and draining his coconut once or twice. Then he’d take his time picking through the remains. With his own sheet of bark or slate piled high, he’d find an empty seat as far back against the wall as possible.<\/p>\n

And he’d eat, watching the rest of them. Laughing at their jokes. Oh, he’d be comfortable talking to one or two of them at a time. But here at the MastodonCon he’d just be envying them: wishing that he, like them, could carry on a conversation flowing back and forth across the rocks among a dozen people at once — or even serially, one at a time. (He’d just about work up the nerve to approach someone when someone else, with a better-developed left cerebral hemisphere and probably with silkier fur, would interpose him- or herself. My ancestor would slink back to his place along the wall, as quietly as possible, so as not to embarrass anyone.)<\/p>\n

Emily Dickinson wrote:<\/p>\n

The Soul selects her own Society \u2014
\nThen \u2014 shuts the Door \u2014
\nTo her divine Majority \u2014
\nPresent no more \u2014<\/p>\n

Unmoved \u2014 she notes the Chariots \u2014 pausing \u2014
\nAt her low Gate \u2014
\nUnmoved \u2014 an Emperor be kneeling
\nUpon her Mat \u2014<\/p>\n

I’ve known her \u2014 from an ample nation \u2014
\nChoose One \u2014
\nThen \u2014 close the Valves of her attention \u2014
\nLike Stone \u2014<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “her” there doesn’t mean this applies strictly to women, of course. And it’s true: in large groups, whether institutional or social, I find that I tend to gravitate toward two or three or maybe a dozen of the people I encounter, and then stop looking for new ones. (This is as true of my online as my offline self.) When the ones I’ve singled out are busy elsewhere, I just wander off for a while — nodding politely, laughing vicariously, and waiting for one of the ones I already “know” to heave into view, momentarily unattached. I do a lot of waiting; I don’t mind.<\/p>\n

So now I’m trying to imagine a blogging conference tailored to people like me…<\/p>\n

…I guess it would have to be attended by no more than a dozen or maybe two dozen people, people who already pretty much knew one another’s minds. Most importantly, they’d have to be people willing to carry on a conversation — however intermittently — about almost anything. No one would object if any one person opted out of any one group activity. No one would have to talk about everything. A certain amount of wallflowery wouldn’t be encouraged, exactly — but it wouldn’t be unexpected, either.<\/p>\n

My conference, I suppose, would have to be a BlogIt. It wouldn’t be held annually, except by accident, but pretty much whenever I (or anyone else) felt like it. Maybe even a couple times a week.<\/p>\n

Oh. Right. I guess that does<\/em> sound like blogging itself, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

* I have encountered the term “mommyblogger” and must say, I loathe it. Not only does it sound condescending, in ways that (say) “politicoblogger” or “techblogger” do not; not only does it ignore the fathers among them; it also dismissively waves away the sheer quality of the writing (to say nothing of the quantity) offered up by these people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year around now, a large chunk of blogosphere real estate is turned over to posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and Flickr albums about a gathering called BlogHer. As the conference title suggests, the focus in on women who blog — it’s apparently attended by a number of guys, as well — and for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,247,94,37,5],"tags":[177,229,1940,1941],"class_list":{"0":"post-7875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-02_in-the-news","9":"category-onlineworld","10":"category-06_writing","11":"tag-neurosis","12":"tag-blogging","13":"tag-blogher","14":"tag-wondermark","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6kZSG-blogit","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8543,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7875\/revisions\/8543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}