New Girl In The Neighborhood

Before I begin, I'll give mad props to who can figure out what pop trivia nugget served as the inspiration for the title of this post. Here's a few hints. It's from the eighties, as if you even needed to ask and all I did was change one word!

As I'm trying to settle back into my blogging digs, I've noticed that some things aren't the same as they used to be. After all, it was a wise Ferris Bueller who once said, "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." That being said, I honestly don't feel like I've been absentee THAT long. Yet, the speed in which the internet digests, regurgitates and regenerates things is insane!

For instance, when I started blogging, way back now in 2003, it was still a relatively new medium. In the beginning I would tell people I had a blog and I would get wrinkled up nose reactions that implied they had no idea what I was talking about and/or didn't care. While I still get reactions like that, mainly it's from people like my grandmother or an aunt who can't work the remote control on her new fangled television, much less "log on" to the internet.

After a while, however, I felt I would mention my blog and it was all but passe. Suddenly having a blog was like having a cell phone, everyone, except your grandma and that aunt had both. The fact that you do also doesn't make you special, it makes you the same. About two years into blogging I noticed that the medium was starting to get saturated with anyone and everyone who had something to say. And really, who was I to judge? If I even remotely thought someone, somewhere might find my daily musings mildly interesting, it would be naive to think that someone wouldn't think the same about someone else's goings on, right?

But the more I think about it, I don't really feel it's about how mundane (or exciting) your life really is, but more so it's all about the presentation. For instance, you can write a whole post about going to lunch that could bore someone to tears (and believe me I've read PLENTY of those) or you can make light of the conversations that happened, the food that was eaten, the waitress that was crazy...you get the idea. In other words, making the uninteresting interesting is an art form. It doesn't really matter if you are good at it or not though because like it or not, there are plenty of bloggers out there, the good, the bad... and the boring.

Then, in the past year or two, I noticed an even newer trend. Long before my self-imposed, though not preferred absence, I started seeing other bloggers fall off the blogging face of the earth, too. The worst was finding out the hard way. I'd go to click on a link only to discover the dreaded, "this url no longer exists" message, or something along those lines. There's nothing worse, by blogging standards, then completely losing a blogging connection without any warning or any way of reaching said blog contact. Return to sender. Address unknown.:(

Which reminds me of a sub related, blog link issue. You know it's been a while when my blogroll is like an overgrown garden that needs a lot of weeding, but I don't know where to begin. In fact, I went to add a link the other day and would you believe I don't even know how to add links to my own blogroll anymore? I can log on to blogrolling, but I can't update it. Instead it keeps adding links to this mythical blogroll I allegedly have entitled "Tell It To Me Tuesday", after a weekly entry I used to do. I have no idea where blogrolling got the idea that I want other people's blogs saved under there, wherever there is, but even worse, I can't seem to figure out how to update my current blogroll since blogrolling itself has evolved into something I no longer recognize. I mean maybe people don't even use blogrolling anymore, and I'm just THAT out of touch. As a result, any help on this matter would be much appreciated. (On a related note, what is up with so many blogs being by invite only now? I am trying to visit my old links and I have gotten a few messages that say I need an invite. What is this madness??)

Recently, as I mentioned to you in my last post, I had become very lazy when it came to blogging related matters as it it became even easier to update via Facebook. Suddenly, traditional blogging with like complete paragraphs of five sentences or more was downright prehistoric. And now I can already see the new wave will be the phasing out of social platforms such as My Space or Facebook and the ushering in of Twittering. Once twittering started taking over that's when I knew.

I was officially old.

Now I feel like twittering is like blogging's version of the Fight Club. You can't talk about twittering unless you are in fact, twittering yourself. I still don't see the difference between twittering and Facebooking and when I ask someone to explain I feel like I get the passion of a defensive teenager who will protect their twittering superiority to its death, yet never pause to explain what it is they are actually defending. So another question is out there for you...if you can explain to this old blogger what is so great about twittering I'd be much obliged.

This is just a sampling of how I feel things have changed and how I'm trying to figure out where I belong now in this great big and new blogosphere. I imagine this is what Teri Garr's character in Mr. Mom must have felt like after she was out of the workforce for so long. She didn't know where she fit in either, nor did she know what she had to do to fit in again with so many other things to juggle. But she managed to get through it, with or without Martin Mull's help. In fact, I would venture to guess this is how Teri Garr feels like a lot these days. But perhaps that's another post for another time.

Welcome Back, Welcome Back, Welcome Back...

Have you ever gone down in your basement and uncovered a bunch of old, cheesy memorabilia? Perhaps it was a bunch of photos of yourself with a bad 80's hairdo, or maybe it was your New Kids on the Block cassette shaped bubble gum. No? Well, I digress.

The point I'm trying to make is that when you revisit a part of your past, a few things are certain. One, it may be equal parts comforting and discomforting, and two, it may be awfully, awfully dusty. That's how I feel about returning to writing here at AOGB, but I'm doing my best to embrace the dust and the cheese and forge ahead.

I'm fortunate that many of you have allowed me to maintain, or at least, reenter your lives by Facebook which by the way, has made me extremely lazy in terms of formal communication. In fact, I think if I hadn't found Facebook to be so easy, I would have returned to blogging a lot sooner. But Facebooking is really the fast food of blogging. By default, Twitter is the fast food of Facebook. (which by the way I deem is completely unnecessary) I shudder to think what is coming next. Perhaps an internet version of Charades? Anyway, courtesy of FB, I know what some of you are doing from day to day, even if it's just kissing a girl....and liking it. You in turn, learn the same things about me, minus the kissing the girl part, of course. Things haven't changed THAT much.

So what have I been up for those of you who don't think the world revolves around me and/or haven't been on Facebook? Well the answer is everything and nothing all at once. In the four months since I last wrote, another school year came to a close. Although I didn't write much about this school year, it's really only because all had been pretty quiet on the chalky, western front. For the first time in my five years of teaching I had a really nice bunch of "normal", age appropriate students. Even better, I only had thirteen of them! Some might think of thirteen as an unlucky number, but not with this class. There was no drama in this bunch, and believe it or not, no retentions either! They got along with each other and tried their best to listen. Rarely, if ever did they see my really mad face, or as former students would have told you, "the when Miss B gets red" face. Even when I was mad at them, justified or not, I still felt extremely guilty afterwards about getting angry. Who knew that normal children could have such an effect on me?

Some of the parents, on the other hand, were another story.

Other than that, I've spent a lot of time trying to work on the house and learn how to be a wife. Never been in my life have I had to take care of a house, or a husband for that matter, so that has taken some of my time (and energy). Now for the most part the house is under control, although as I'm sure you older, wiser homeowners will tell me that it is constantly a work in progress. The same can be said for marriage. Boy, do I miss the lazy days of my twenty-something, carefree blogging. Remember them?

So new resolution. Starting small, but I'm doing so while I have the time so that I'll try to keep my promises. My guarantee to you, if I can keep it, is one new post a week, at least. If I don't write one new post a week, you get your money back. Well, I mean if you want to give me money to begin with, that is. If not, then all bets are off.

Actually, if I act now, I might even squeeze out TWO posts this week, if you're good that is. Because after all, this is the trillionth "getting to know you, let me apologize for being such a crappy blogger" post I've done over the past year that it's really a bit redundant now isn't it? Redundant, albeit on some level, necessary. I don't like just walking back into blogging as if nothing happened. I leave that form of disillusion to the likes of B movie and tv stars who return a la reality TV.

So on the count of three here we go...the question is...who's with me???