Blog Snobdom

My friend David told me that I need to blog more. My friend Laura wrote a brilliantly funny posting about nothing, really, and my other friend Denise posted about spiderwebs, connections and coincidences. I guess my point is that I'm always waiting around for the perfect blog moment. Something REALLY big to write or tell about. I hate using the word "blog" as a verb; I still have vestiges of blog snobdom. I've always been a bit of a cultural snob, anyway -- I scorn bestsellers and hate genre fiction and anyone who knows me knows that I wouldn't be caught dead listening to pop music. My old college friends remind me of the time that I heard the song "We are the World" and commented that it was so great. The only thing was it was about a year after the song had come out. And it's the same with the blog. I have a near-addiction to a number of blogs whose authors aren't writing anything that earth-shattering nor do they seem all that concerned with "the writing." And these blogs are so good, so funny, so well-written that I feel like I'm really on to something.

I'm ready to make some sort of big cultural commentary -- about community and the 21st century. I'm proudly trying to justify just how addictive and fabulous blogs and blogging are. As if the tens of thousands of people who actually do it regularly don't already know that (start humming "We are the World" right now in your head and rolling your eyes).

So I'm stuck here in snob blogdom, or is it blog snobdom, waiting for the next good story. A cousin of mine recently looked at my blog and made the comment that she was reading "the intimate details of my day to day life," and was "impressed at my honesty and willingness." I have to say that I winced at this. I don't want to write about too many intimate details of my day to day life. I don't want to be one of those people.

Honestly, the majority of my hours are completely and utterly boring. I drive around town all day dropping children off and picking children up. I make a lot of phone calls to insurance companies and school districts and doctors and do a lot of paperwork. I check my email and my favorite blog list. I read the New York Times and the calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, but aside from the constant low-grade anxiety that I have about Sophie, that's about it.

The good thing about blogs, though, is that they force you to look for differences, look for moments. They are, I'm thinking, the modern world's call for mindfulness.

Because of the blog, as I drive my boys to school, up the same street that we've travelled literally hundreds of times in the last few years, I'm listening extra hard to what they're saying, because then I might post it. I'm more present in the moment but I can also store things, here, seemingly forever.

Look! I'm already out of the blog snobdom. I've got a post, here. It's boring but I've got a new post.

OH! This is what I overheard a woman say to a man outside Trader Joe's today: "I don't know. Angelina's lips are just too distracting for that part. I know who else read for it and..." The best thing is that I listened to this in a sort of distracted way but because of the blog then was jolted into a more mindful state of being. I started thinking only in LA does one hear the casual remark about a super-celebrity, another person who "read" for her part, big lips and this is all outside of the grocery store in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday! Then I started thinking about all the cliches of LA and how they're true and how they're false and that led to some civic exhiliaration and then I was at my car, loading everything up. My brain was working and I was thinking, again, about the blog.

Enough. I'm done. And I think I'm going back to the important stuff.