Saturday, October 16, 2010

Silver Post-iversary Contest

I’ve told you before about my high school boyfriend D.J. Qualls, right? Well we used to play a little game together which I will call Opinionitis! After many nights of four-hour talks on the phone, you can really learn a lot about a person, despite what disenchanted mom’s and dads might choose to believe! This is what Deej learned about me: there seemed to be nothing no matter how large or microscopic in the finite or metaphysical world, for which I did not have an opinion—and a strong one at that--


I ranted about things like:

• Why computer geniuses could not make a less offensive operating noise for people trying to explore the world wide web via AOL

• Drive through Windows

• The permissive sexual mores of our time

• People who eat chicken and call themselves vegetarians

• People who pretend to like Coffee

• The Nazi Regime,

and

• Blue Cheese

I raved about things like:

• The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who demonstrated his love for us in this: while we were still sinners  died for us, justifying us by his blood and saving us from God's wrath,  

and,
• Frito Pie

Qualls thought this was cute, but made it his mission to seek out something for which I had neutral thoughts and feelings. And so he would try and sneak a little something into each of our conversations:

“Hey what do you think about the new football field? Shaggy hair on guys?Karate?Hinduism?Three Pronged electric cords?”

He caught me without an opinion once or twice, but generally that is a most difficult thing to do.

I took a personality assessment that called this trait of mine, connected.  It said “nothing is without meaning to you, because you see how everything interconnects”. So there you have it folks, you can stop rolling your eyes and stretching out the word O-PIN-YUN-ated, when you describe me. I am connected, thank you very much, things are very meaningful for me.

One thing in particular that has been popping up on my meaning-meter lately is this blog. Next week will be my 25th post, which might not sound like much, but I had a lot of worries about this little baby of mine:

• Maybe it won’t be funny

• Maybe I am not a very good writer

• Maybe no one will ever look at it

• Maybe I will care if no ever looks at it

• Maybe I will be such a bad writer and care so much that no one is looking at it that I will give up and go back to no writing at all

But here we are 5 months later and I feel proud because it is mine, and because you guys have supported it with comments, compliments, advice, etc. So to say thank you and to celebrate my 25th blog post I want to include those of you who have taken the time to read my thoughts on some very meaningful and some very meaningless material. I want to do this by using your very own words, here’s how you can play along:

Submit the Topic or Title of my 25th Post – You can see that I have thoughts on the most random and profound subject areas, so I should be able to write a funny and/or spiritually meaningful article about any subject that you give me! (Topic Ex: Elephants, candy corn) (Title Ex: Feeding Candycorn to Elephants)

Submit mystery words- these words are not the main topic, they are just funny words that you would like to see me incorporate somehow into the body of the next article (ex: lemonhead, viscous, epiglottis, ect.

• Submit any blog ideas that you would like to see rolled out over the next 25 posts (ex: blog page ideas, taglines, contests, posts, etc.)

Readers whose topic, title, or mystery words I use will be given credit using your celebrity pseudonym, so if you don’t have one yet, this is a great chance to get one! Also, Post 25 will not go up on time, I hope to have it up by Thursday, but if not it will be the next Tuesday.

Thanks for Playing!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Calling all Big Books

Well, as promised, I went to see the Social Network, took a week off from writing, read this great article, and spoke with many of you about the nature of my blog-sin. Honestly, I feel almost all atoned up and I am cautiously but honestly moving forward with this little self-hired writing gig. But, before delving straight into some snarky, self satisfied commentary, I want to transition by opening up the “big book” conversation. And in this particular instance I am not referring to the Bible.


Instead, I am talking about a concept that my friend Kate Hudson brought to my attention a few years ago. She asked me once, if I, unlike a couple of other friends, thought she was a “big book”, meaning someone whose life and personality has many chapters, stories, mysteries and yes ,even contradictions. It is this amount of depth after all , which might make each one of us all the more frustrating or enticing to become acquainted with and Kate who is quite like me wanted affirmation that she was layered enough to be hated and adored. I would and did argue that each of us like Whitman himself, are “large, containing multitudes”. That means, Kate Hudson is a big book and you are a big book and so am I.

This feels salient to me at the moment because I know that sometimes I concretize things in my writing that are actually quite fluid. I write from an exaggeration of my point of view which means these little life vignettes that I share seem BLACK and WHITE as I type and post them. I like writing in black and white because I amuse myself an embarrassing amount with my own rigid versions of stories. But, I do believe in the gray in between. My entire life, in many ways, is the gray in between. So this morning I want to leave you with a few chapters from my big book and I would love for you to do the same in the comments section .

Chapter 1: Luddite Blogwriter

Chapter 2: Objective Hyperbolist

Chapter 3: Extreme Moderate

Chapter 4: Extroverted Homebody

Chapter 5: Lost and Found

Ok, Tag your it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!