Stacey L. Willets, Commitment-Phobe
I’d like to think of myself as a loyal person, but once you begin to stack the evidence against me, I guess I’m really not. I have a bit of a roving eye, seemingly never satisfied with what I’ve got at the moment. Many relationships have been cut short when I abruptly left for something better. It’s a terrible character flaw, I know, but I assure you that I have been trying very hard to change. That’s why, despite my overwhelming fear of commitment, I intend to stick with this blog.
When I was young and capricious, I blew through the Livejournal and Blurty platforms before I even spent enough time with them to ever feel attached. They just didn’t meet my needs. Sure, using little hamsters to illustrate my present mood was cute . . . for a short time . . . but I wanted more than that.
Eventually I stumbled upon AOL Journals. I liked the platform. The design wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was a step up from what I had been using in the past. I started a blog there called Cynicism As an Art Form. I wrote about my Bohemian life as a starving artist and shared my experiences working in community theatre. I also wrote about an imaginary llama named Fletcher that lived in my pantry. Fletcher was probably more popular than I was. People found the stories and commented. The interactive aspect got me hooked.
Cynicism and I were like peas and carrots. I enjoyed writing, I had a good group of readers, and I was starting to earn some attention. The blog was featured by AOL on their journal front page or something like that for about a week. That was when I started getting negative comments.
My self-esteem has always sucked ass, so the hatefulness of these people bothered me tremendously. I began to second guess anything I wrote, afraid to offend people. Shortly after that I deleted the whole blog.
Before long the addiction called me back and I started a second AOL Journal called Facetious. That one didn’t last nearly as long. Life got in the way of blogging. The journal was neglected. Eventually it disappeared.
Next came Unrequited, which cataloged my dating misadventures. Things were going well, and then AOL pissed me off. They booted one of my favorite bloggers for “offensive content.” (They had an issue with a comic something like this.) THEN they started talking about putting ads on all the blogs. The controversy sent me straight into the arms of Blogger.
Most people knew me on Blogger as “Rabbit” where I wrote a blog called Two Thoughts Before the Epiphany. All was well and good until I suffered a bout of depression. I had always kept my blog content lighthearted, so I felt like I couldn’t post any of my thoughts or feelings. Two Thoughts didn’t want to know the real me, just the fun me. It got deleted.
Being the blog-whore I am, several weeks later I was back with Everyone Loves an Underdog. I thought that was it. I thought Underdog was The One. Come hell or high water, I was ready to live out the rest my days blogging there.
Then someone I knew started reading it and began to email me about how he knew all my “innermost thoughts.” Creepy! That was the end of Underdog.
After that I pretty much gave up on blogging. When I started TouchedByMadness it was a private blog hosted on WordPress. I kept it just for me so I’d have a place to store all my favorite stories. Then I started taking my HTML class and needed to figure out what kind of website to build for the course. Hmmmm. What type of site would be a good fit for me? And where would I ever come up with content?
So here I am. Again. With a new blog. Again.
But this time I am ready for the commitment. I’ve invested time and money into my own domain and hosting. I’ve done a little SEO optimization. I’ve even made it through my first WordPress upgrade. AND I can futz around with the design to my heart’s content. I’ve got it all, baby.
Plus, if I change blogs one more time, somebody is going to kick my ass.
Posted by Stacey in Adventures in Adulthood, Geek Stuff, Memoir, Random, Relationships
I remember the days when I bought only whatever food was on special at the local supermarket, when I was barely able to make minimum payments on my credit cards, and when my “nice” clothes came from Target. It sucked living paycheck to paycheck. There’s no doubt about that. But there was one small (yet significant) benefit to being dirt poor . . .
Day 1: Attend my first Intermediate HTML class. Discover that the final project is building a web site with requirements such as “Must have at least one use of event-based ‘feature’ javascript,” “Must have at least 8 examples of ‘SEOed’ text / markup,” and “Must work in both Internet Explorer 6/7 and Firefox with AND without javascript.” Hyperventilate and consider dropping class.
Ok, I’ll admit it. When I was a child, I wanted to be a superhero just like any other little kid. I ran around the playground imagining I had super speed, tried to melt the nuns with my lukewarm heat vision, and attempted to take flight by jumping off my bed in my Wonder Woman underoos.
