There’s a female exchange student from the dairy state of America who gets a lot of flack (behind her back) about what my culture vulture cohorts deem trashy behaviour. One of the things that drive the boys crazy (and not in a good way) is the way she’ll flirt with every White boy with a penis and say things like, “Oh you!” with a good floppy wristed pat.

Today, I felt the urge to go, “Oh, me!” Or is it, “Oh, you!” myself? What the heck, I even wanted to give myself a real hearty pat on the back for good measure.

I wish I could say that my ego was awarded this massage because of the defeat of the Procrastinator Demon, but alas, you would not be reading this if that were the case.

The eagle-eyed and dedicated are already aware that I had been getting frustrated by the lack of feedback from people I know in the flesh. I know that it is silly, but travelling along the spectrum of relative anonymity has been challenging for me. I actually had to muster up the courage to forward this URL to various real life friends.

One fun thing about this exercise is finding out who cares/is polite enough to respond to this kind of reaching out with a simple “Wassup?” kind of e-mail. What surprises me is not so much who responds (as I likely only sent the link to people I thought would give even the tiniest of damns), but who doesn’t respond. Not even on MSN. Not ever.

Even more generally, as sad as this sounds, while checking my reader stats, I’d wonder why there was such a glaring discrepancy between general site traffic and comments.

On some level, I was/am grateful for so many quiet readers. I have been silently moved by many people’s personal writing. I definitely understand the beauty in simply sitting back and reading—to absorb the joy and pain of the sharer without tapping out an inadequate response like a monkey.

Even without the threat of the troll attacks that affect my favourite big name bloggers, I’m wary of the potential negativity heading my way if I am too eager to obtain feedback. Trust me, I speak from experience.

And so, with the idea in my head that some read without being stimulated enough to pipe in while others don’t even bother to read because of apathy or boredom, I was at the brink of throwing myself a pity party. As this party was about to begin, I shared my feelings with someone very near and dear to my heart only to have her retort that she couldn’t bear to read this old thing because she found it too “annoying.”

To learn that I consistently annoy someone whom I love with words from the heart disheartened and puzzled. I write because it feels good. Does that good feeling adequately counteract pain directly borne from the writing?

Thankfully, I remember the answer now. I can never stop flexing these baby writing muscles of mine because I need to do this for more reasons than I count on my fingers and toes.

I won’t lie about lapping up unsolicited compliments on MaH MaD wRiTinG sKiLLz (ok, not her words, but you get the drift) from my darling writer friend in Edinburgh. Those heartfelt words definitely helped draw me back from the edge.

In all seriousness, I’ve been thinking about my journey towards normalcy. Not normal in the banal, conformist sense, but more like, “Hi, I’m not crazy.” Or “Hi, I’m not fat.”-sense.

Maybe the hormones have toned down or more generally, maybe I, the notoriously precocious (read: OLD) girl have started to grow up in ways that I never dreamt possible. But really, I think that this right here–this open venting space–does my body and soul good.

So, dear readers, that is why I am here typing away after the midnight oil has run out. Thank you for giving me an audience beyond my wacky self.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 11:34 am and is filed under Emo-ed Out.
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