A night of narcissistic pleasure and the subsequent blogging about it
Last night I hung out with Ep, Squid, and Liz at Writers With Drinks.
Ayelet Waldman was one of the writers who gave a reading. I was so excited to get to meet her! We did chat for a bit before she took the stage. I asked her what it was that she had done to piss off all the moms in Berekeley (something I had heard from a friend who lives in Berkeley), and she told me she actually had pissed off all of the moms in America by writing an essay in which she admitted to loving her husband more than her kids. OH MY GOD! I actually think that's a pretty healthy attitude to have and I told her as much.
At Writers With Drinks, Ayelet read an essay she had written for Salon called Living out loud -- online. It's about her conflicted emotions about blogging and her decision finally to give it up. It's also about how she blogged about suicide, and how she realized that it was the wrong way to ask for help.
As a mommyblogger, she was interviewed by the New York Times for a January 2005 article about parents who blog that also featured Heather Armstrong from Dooce and Eden Kennedy from Fussy. Of the interview she gave for the Times, Ayelet writes in her essay:
I think she may have a point and yet, that's also what I love about my blog. There's so little in my life as a mom--a selfless person in the service of small children who demand juice almost incessantly--that is about me, that can be called narcissistic. I need this blog to convey ideas and images and thoughts that are important to me.
I'm sorry Ayelet gave up her blog, but I understand why she did. I think most of us who blog wonder on a regular basis if this is really how we want to be spending our time or if there will be repercussions in the future to the blogging we're doing in the present.
Don't we?
***
Technorati tags: writers with drinks, ayelet waldman, narcissistic blogging
Ayelet Waldman was one of the writers who gave a reading. I was so excited to get to meet her! We did chat for a bit before she took the stage. I asked her what it was that she had done to piss off all the moms in Berekeley (something I had heard from a friend who lives in Berkeley), and she told me she actually had pissed off all of the moms in America by writing an essay in which she admitted to loving her husband more than her kids. OH MY GOD! I actually think that's a pretty healthy attitude to have and I told her as much.
At Writers With Drinks, Ayelet read an essay she had written for Salon called Living out loud -- online. It's about her conflicted emotions about blogging and her decision finally to give it up. It's also about how she blogged about suicide, and how she realized that it was the wrong way to ask for help.
As a mommyblogger, she was interviewed by the New York Times for a January 2005 article about parents who blog that also featured Heather Armstrong from Dooce and Eden Kennedy from Fussy. Of the interview she gave for the Times, Ayelet writes in her essay:
A couple of weeks before, I was interviewed about my blog by a reporter for the New York Times. I tend to approach giving interviews with the same sense of circumspection and restraint as I approach my writing. That is to say, virtually none. When asked what I made of blogs like my own, blogs written by parents about their children, I said, "A blog like this is narcissism in its most obscene flowering." I uttered those words lightly, almost but not quite in jest, but I believed them.
I think she may have a point and yet, that's also what I love about my blog. There's so little in my life as a mom--a selfless person in the service of small children who demand juice almost incessantly--that is about me, that can be called narcissistic. I need this blog to convey ideas and images and thoughts that are important to me.
I'm sorry Ayelet gave up her blog, but I understand why she did. I think most of us who blog wonder on a regular basis if this is really how we want to be spending our time or if there will be repercussions in the future to the blogging we're doing in the present.
Don't we?
***
Technorati tags: writers with drinks, ayelet waldman, narcissistic blogging
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