So the latest buzz in the mommy blog (ugh) world has been from Ayelet Waldman who stopped writing her blog after having a breakdown of sorts. In her words, she stopped "in part due to a book that needed copy-editing, in part due to a catastrophic depression." A recent entry on her blog was recognized by her husband, Michael Chabon (and by a few other sensitive people), to be a very disturbing, thinly-veiled suicide note. She writes all about this on salon.com where she is now a columnist.
In her salon.com column, Waldman talks about being interviewed by the New York Times about parenting blogs and says that blogs like this are "narcissism in its most obscene overflowering." By using her children as subjects for her (blog) writing, she felt that she was exploiting them. This is also a reason why she stopped her blog and she laments what her children will think when they discover it someday.
I have been mulling this over for a couple of days, and while I can understand Waldman's statement, I also have to disagree. I think it all boils down to intention and audience.
When I started blogging I did it for a couple of reasons. Mainly, I wanted a way to chronicle my exploits are a parent in an urban environment, and to show how different it was from a suburban environment. Things changed along the way, and now it is much more about motherhood than I ever thought it would be. In any case, I wanted to record the highs and lows of being a mother—the successes and the mistakes—and my thoughts about it along the way. It was a chance to document a totally new and foreign experience and to do it without glossing over any of the bad, hard, yucky stuff, and, celebrating all the extraordinary, facile, wonderful stuff.
In some respects I also view it as a sort of interactive baby book for my kids. I hope that someday they will read CityMama and see it as a testament to how much I love them, and how much I (sometimes) struggle to be a good mother to them (eh, but let's be honest—most of the time I slack), instead of being all freaked out by it. In that regard I hope they discover it after junior high, but if they want to see it before then, that's okay, too.
I think because Waldman is already an established writer, her intentions and audience are different from mine. In her column she talks about blog writing in the following terms:
Living Out Loud (quoting Anna Quindlen)
living at the top of your lungs
rising to the literary challenge
satisfying, not merely therapeutically, but creatively
That's pretty high-brow stuff. I, on the otherhand, am a blogger not a Writer (with a capital "W"), so I just view my blog as a place to write some shit down so I don't forget it tomorrow.
If I came around to blogging relatively late in the game, Waldman came to it even later only having written her blog for a few months before shutting it down. I wonder what made her feel compelled to start one, especially given the fact that she is an extremely prolific writer, who, it seems, is able to crank out a new novel every 10 minutes. I wonder who she thought her audience would be? I say this because as far as mommy blogs go (god-I-hate-that-term), hers was pretty uncompelling, in my opinion. There are momblogs by non-famous-writers/non-famous-blog-mom-personas (some that are linked to mine, for example) that are much more touching, much more interesting, much funnier, and much more addictive than hers. Waldman was blogging partly for fans of her writing, to be sure, but beyond that, I'm not sure that she was really trying to put something out there to connect with other mothers. Not that she had to. Just saying.
I started my blog with no audience in mind other than myself and J. and a few friends. I didn't even tell my family about it although slowly but surely family members have stumbled across it. I am always pleasantly surprised when anyone comments on my blog, and the comments that mean the absolute most are from other mothers who can relate to what I am going through.
I suppose another intention for the blog has evolved over the course of the year that I have writing this, and that is to bear witness to the trials and tribulations of being a mother (especially) and to try to support other mothers that are going through the same thing. I struggle everyday with writing things down that are often too scary to say outloud. (Like today my kids are being assholes and I want to beat them. Especially the 6-month old.) I hope that by doing this, other mothers won't be afraid to do the same. (And, no, I am not going to beat my kids. That would be wrong.)
I have no "fan base" to satisfy. I do not feel pressure to tell stories that are more fabulous than the last. I do not rush to the computer to blog my children's every move as Waldman felt she was doing. I feel like a total jerk even comparing myself to her, but there it is. She views blogging as airing dirty laundry at a cost to her kids' privacy. I view it as a way to express my love and adoration for my beautiful girls, and, at the same time, give props (as it were) to motherhood. It's tough out there.
But we both agree that it's cheaper than therapy. And I do sincerely wish her the best.
