I am blogger, hear me… pimp myself?

In my experience, there are two kinds of bloggers out there: Those who write because they love writing, and those who write because they love attention. (Occasionally you find a third type: those who love writing and love attention, but overwhelmingly I would argue most bloggers are one or the other.) Now, you could make the argument that someone who only loves writing would never put their words “out there” for others to see, but to me having an audience reading what you write is part of the overall process. I love to write, but I also love to share that writing with others.

I don’t love attention so much, but of course to some extent it’s part and parcel of the blogging life. Put a website online and people are going to see it, comment on it, want to interact with you—that’s kind of the point. But as an introvert writing online suits me because I an interact with others in a way that’s limited; responding to comments and emails is easier for me that lots of face-to-face interaction.

Every now and then, I find myself receiving some sort of nomination or award and then I’m… deeply conflicted.
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I write for a living. I write online for a living. I write online about many very personal aspects of my life for a living.

But I don’t write about politics, particularly with a presidential election looming.

There are a lot of reasons for this, and most of them boil down to “I don’t wanna.” I feel like political opinions tend to be deeply personal and—for a lot of people, particularly people with whom I don’t agree—not necessarily based on facts, but on feelings; and I’m not in the business of trying to change people’s feelings. Also I dislike the kind of debate that tends to turn ugly and rarely actually changes anyone’s mind. I’m comfortable chronicling my day-to-day life, but I am not comfortable laying bare my political beliefs, essentially inviting people whose beliefs frighten me to attack my position.

I’m a wuss.

Okay, I really am kind of a wuss when it comes to public political debate, but I’m also someone who lives and works online and isn’t interested in being branded as an extremist.
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Earlier today I was among a group of bloggers when someone asked if folks would be willing to share their most controversial posts. This led to what I felt was a really interesting discussion, both because the posts in question often surprised me (I had a hard time seeing why there would be any debate about several of them), and because time and again folks would respond by saying that they didn’t have any controversial posts.

In fact, multiple people said that they fear disagreement and/or drama, so they try very hard not to write anything that could offend.

It’s not that I have a problem with this viewpoint, per se, but it definitely got me thinking. Bloggers are usually folks with opinions—who reads blogs written by writers who don’t have strong feelings about things? That would probably be boring. And certainly bloggers are portrayed as loving the social media back-and-forth, if not a plain ol’ spotlight. So I started wondering how true that supposed archetype is, and where I fall within it.
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As a brand new freelancer, it can feel like an endless dog-and-pony show of finding the kind of work you want, attempting to get the attention of the people who might hire you for said work, impressing those people once you have their attention, and building your resume up to the point where all of those things will ultimately land you some paying work.

Once you’re somewhat established, you spend less time looking for work, and more time doing work. Still, you have to spend some of your time looking for new work, because you need more clients.

As a veteran freelancer, if you’re lucky you pretty much don’t have to look anymore. You spend most of your time doing paying work. And then every so often new clients will find you, and they’re doing so because your reputation precedes you, and so they know who you are and what they want and why those two things might go together well.

For a long time I was in the “veteran freelancer” category where I didn’t need to look for work, and that was lovely, I won’t lie. But as I’ve pulled back on work some to tend to my family, I’m now back in an unfamiliar position: I need to relearn how to seek work opportunities.
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Here, let me sum up 80% of what is currently flooding my Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds for you:

“ZOMG BLOGHER IS THIS WEEK! WHAT DO I PACK? WHAT DO I WEAR! I’M SO NERVOUS! I’M SO EXCITED! NEW YORK CITY AHHHHHHH! MARTHA STEWART! BARACK OBAMA! BLOGHER, BLOGHER BLOGHER!”

So… yeah. In case you’re living under a rock, you might not know that the BlogHer 2012 conference is this week, and bloggers everywhere suddenly have extra social awkwardness coupled with nothing to wear.

I’ve always been a proponent of blog conferences as excellent opportunities to network, but I’ve never been shy about expressing my mixed feelings towards huge conferences like this one. They’re expecting something like 5,000 attendees, and that makes it an Event (capital E!) unlike a smaller gathering. It’s not for everyone, and even if it is for you and you’re the most extroverted socialite to walk the planet, it may have its moments of being overwhelming.

And no, I’m not going this year. But I have a few pointers for you whether you’re going or not.
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I think I’ve been pretty honest, both here and elsewhere, about how tough this year has been for my family. For months I think I tried to operate on the assumption that the Bad Stuff was temporary, and if I could just tough it out a little bit longer, things would go back to normal and that would be that. (Ah, naivete. I miss you!) By the time my kid ended in the hospital for the third time, though, it became clear that 1) this wasn’t going away and 2) any new normal we might someday attain would be very different.

During the first hospitalization I all but stopped working. Slowly, once my daughter was home again, I tried to pick up where I left off. Then she went back into the hospital and I stopped again. Then she was home but things were still busy and stressful and I really hadn’t even gotten my feet back under me when this last hospitalization happened, and now she’s been away for far too long and I’ve continued to struggle with finding that elusive groove where I can get stuff done.

I haven’t been able to quite put my finger on what my continued difficulty is—aside from “life kind of sucks and it’s hard to care about anything other than my child right now” which may be true, but doesn’t excuse me from working—but I accidentally figured out a way to jump-start myself again.
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Back in the early days of blogging (you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth) (kidding; more like about a decade ago), there was this constant conversation about audience and boundaries. Personal blogging was a new beast; no one knew for sure how much it was okay to share. Some advocated total honesty, others feared some sort of mysterious backlash that could only come of reckless secret-telling.

I sort of feel like we’ve come full circle. That conversation was a constant, for a while, and then it kind of petered out as people blogged about things other than their personal lives—and those who did blog about their lives figured out how to set workable boundaries—and now I see it coming up again in different ways.

A few months ago when BlogHer was soliciting panel proposals, I was approached about being a panel about blogging about your special needs kid’s school. Our panel was not selected, unfortunately, which is a shame because I think it would’ve been really interesting. More and more you hear about unintended repercussions particularly among those of us in the IEP/special education trenches, and I was eager to hear others’ stories on the topic. Of course, at the time, no one at my son’s school was reading my blog, so it was kind of theoretical for me.
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I’ve written before about the challenges that face any freelancer who attempts to take a vacation; unlike those who work salaried jobs, freelancers can (theoretically) take vacation whenever they want. The problem, of course, is that salaried positions limit vacation time, but then you are (usually) not expected to do any work while exercising said vacation days. I can go wherever I want, whenever I want, and if I have my computer, I can work.

The problem is that it’s very hard not to do that. It’s very rare for me to stop working entirely even while “on vacation,” and most of my fellow freelancers suffer from the same malady. All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but if Jack was a freelancer writer I suspect all work and no play would make Jack a burned out, bitter person. Just a guess.

I’ve taken several different approaches to various vacations over the years, from killing myself for up to a month beforehand to get work done ahead of time (stressful!) to just telling clients I will be unavailable and giving up income for some time period (also stressful!). This time, I’m winging it.
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The harsh realities of my life right now are… less than ideal. I am still struggling with a continuing kid health crisis on the home front, and the havoc that’s wreaking on my career. Things get better, I start trying to get back to working more, then things get worse and I work even less, etc. [Pro tip: I find that I simply cannot recommend chronic illness as a "growing experience." I'd rather we have a little less personal growth and a little more feeling like life is manageable, thanks.]

Professionally, I am scaling back on everything (again!) and begging for mercy from my clients (again!) and feeling very much like a failure because I can’t seem to find my equilibrium. Personally, i am worried sick (literally, though my health issues are paltry compared to what my kid is facing), exhausted, and feeling like a terrible mother because I can’t fix this. And yes, logically, I know it’s not for me to fix. Emotionally—particularly when, say, my child is crying “FIX IT!”—I feel like… a failure. (Do you see a pattern emerging, here?)

So rather than focusing on the (rotten) reality, I thought a bit of fantasy would be more fun.
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I know I’ve written about this before, but I’m going to do it again because it keeps coming up. And it’s possible that I’m just a curmudgeon (likely, even), but it’s also possible that our society has, by and large, just forgotten what it means to behave appropriately and professionally when requesting help. Either way, we’re going to visit this particular goat rodeo one more time.

Here’s the thing about asking someone for their time and/or wisdom: They’re doing you a favor. It is best to approach any request with that pertinent little factoid in mind.

Do you run up to strangers you’ve never met before and ask them to do things for you? I don’t. I would find it presumptuous unless I was experiencing an emergency and the request was for the kind of help that starts with “Please call 911.” The exception to this rule, of course, is that sometimes you run across someone virtually who you think may be able to offer you something no one else can, and then—although you don’t know each other—you may end up reaching out via email or phone to make a specific request or establish a connection… but at least when I do that, I go to great pains to 1) introduce myself, 2) make it clear why I wish to establish a connection, 3) offer a succinct explanation of what I’m seeking, and 4) thank the other person profusely for their time.

To me, this is just common sense. But… not everyone sees it that way.
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