Mormon Mother Misfit

Song:

“you say i’m out on a ledge, come stand with me.  i need the company”

Scritture: Ecclesiastes 9:11

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Pitture:

Story:

So, blogging.  I was on the fence about coming back on here.  Blogging had left a bad taste in my mouth – what with the drama up in P-town and the upheaval of the last year.  I found I was experiencing trials that were all the more challenging because I felt obligated to either confront them in this public forum or to pretend like everything was la-ti-da fine and lovely when it really wasn’t.  It was a tightrope.

But then there was the allure of having a daily audience of about a thousand people.  What attracted all those people to read this?  Why was that popularity such a gratifying experience?  It took me five years and a ton of life crises to build that readership and the numbers became important and satisfying to me.  It was easy to consider blogging popularity as validation.  I had a forum to explain myself which worked for me because I’m kind of contradictory.  Liberal, feminist, brash, punk, smart, pink, LDS, mother, closet dork, suburbanite, professor, morally conservative, and a lot of other words all define me.  I needed a way to explore how they could all line up and work out because for a long time I didn’t even make sense to me. 

I am one of those people who is blessed/cursed to see both sides of every situation and I am drawn to both.  I can see all the wonderful reasons to live a tame life here in the suburbs.  I can see all of the excitement and diversity a big city (LA, my home away from home) offers.  I see the merits of normalcy, I am drawn to the creative weird parts of life.  I’m a free spirit who wants to drive BMW’s.  I want my kids to have a stable friend group and I want them to be able to grow up as vagabonds traveling from country to country.  The gospel is a non-negotiable: I am firmly rooted in the gospel of Christ, but it is because I fight every day to endure to the end and not skip merrily into religious ambivalence and call myself a buddhist or mystic or some other cheery-easy sounding morality.  I want to check the natural man and I want to suck the marrow out of every adventure leaving no stone unturned – and I’m trying to do so as a mother/Mormon/misfit.

It’s a conundrum.  I see so many ways to live this life.

But it’s one thing to navigate life privately, another entirely to do so in a public space.  I know why I’m here, but why am I HERE?  In bloggerland?  It’s not just a journal, it’s a public journal.

I think it’s because I like to see the process.  I prefer it to personal journaling because it provides me with an external system of checks and balances.  In my journals I can be as inconsistent and flighty as I please, but in a public arena I have to make sense and use reason to write my thoughts.  Things have to make sense.  I can’t just bitch and moan, I have to find positive things to say. 

We use our communities as external barometers while our internal thoughts are private.  My blogging is a bridge.  It’s a way to link the “everything is fine” exterior with the “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing” interior.  This challenges me.  It helps me figure out what the hell I’m doing and also, I hope, provides a glimpse beyond the smiling faces at church where everybody just seems flawless and untroubled (though we know they’re not).  Oh, you have trouble sometimes too?  Welcome to Team Unicorn, where we don’t pretend that life isn’t kicking our butts.  Come stand with me.  I need the company.

So I’m here.  I’m working it out.  I’m muddling through.  You get to participate if you wish.  Thanks for helping and your feedback is always welcome.