Blog Closet

When I started writing this blog, I was a total blog newbie. I started it at the suggestion of two friends who thought I had something to say out here on the Internets. I still don't really know what I'm doing out here, in the blog cyberscape, as I didn't think it would last long (my fatal flaw-- I never think anything is going to last long). But I started this, and I didn't tell anyone that I knew about it. Not because I wanted to write anything that would get me dooced. I knew I would keep it sassy but classy, as the Pussycat Dolls would say. (Yeah, I just quoted the Pussycat Dolls. Such is my lot in life). I figured I'd talk librarian stuff, life stuff, pop culture stuff. It would be for me. I told Neighbor J and Biology Girl and Jenny. Then I told Ali and Map. A couple more after that. But for the most part, I just kept it under my hat. Don't really know why.

After a bit, I discovered that there were people out there who had found me, and were reading my stuff, and being really kind to me about it. People I had never met. Most of my readers are in the Midwest, which I find so interesting because I am originally a midwesterner myself. I wonder if there's something about the way I write that appeals to my homies back home. I don't know how it happened, but these people (alla yous reading this) are so great, so generous, so smart, so ridiculously funny in your comments and emails. It made me want to keep writing and checking out your blogs and feeling the love out there.

I'm leading up to something here, and it's not just a Sally Field "you really like me!" moment. Now that I've been doing this for a bit, and I have you guys out there who listen to my blatherings and seem to understand them, I feel, well, strange about coming out of the blogging closet to people that I actually know, in person. I'm unsure about whether I need to. Maybe I should just keep it the way it has been, which is great. But there seems to be something so secretive about not telling people, especially at this point. And I am not a secretive person, by nature. For instance:

When the Whole Foods in my neighborhood first opened, I went there almost every day that summer to get a smoothie. I was having a serious addictive love affair with those god damn smoothies. They may as well have been crack flavored. So, into the Whole Foods I would go, to order up. At the counter, they always ask your name, so that they can call it out when your smoothie is up. I didn't give them my real name. Again, this was not out of some paranoid idea that anyone gave a shit about what my name was so I had to keep it a secret. It's just that I have a hard to pronounce first name. Let me re-phrase. I actually have a very easy-to-pronounce first name, but it is unfamiliar to most, so people butcher it. This gets confusing. I have been called "Brenda" and "Rhonda" and "Braillah" (the feminine of "Braille"?), none of which are anywhere close to my name. So I told the smoothie guy that my name was Jane. Because that's easy to say, easy to spell, and people are familiar with the name Jane, right?

Well, the next day, when I came in to get my smoothie, the guy who worked there remembered me. "Hiya Jane!" he said to me as I walked in. I felt embarrassed, but I didn't correct him. How could I tell him that my name wasn't really Jane? Wouldn't that have been too weird?

This went on ALL SUMMER LONG. Not only did this guy continue to call me Jane, all of the other people who worked at that counter also came to know me as Jane. They all greeted me warmly each and every time I walked in the door. It was like Norm on Cheers. "Jane!" they would say, all happy to see me. But it was too late. How could I go back now? How could I tell them, after weeks and weeks of so much niceness, that I wasn't Jane? I felt terrible every time it happened, and this ended my smoothie habit for good. At least until the staff turned over.

This is how I am starting to feel about my blog, people. How can I tell people that I see all the time, that feel like they know me, that um, hey, I have a blog and have had one for six months, and just sort of, um, forgot to tell you guys about it? Not because it's a secret on purpose, but just something I forgot to mention?

Jane, you're such a weirdo.

Kiss the rings, I'm out.
Librarian Girl