On this momentous (blogiversary) occasion I want to say, first of all, I can not believe I've been at this for as long as I have, and what's even more unbelievable is that you animals are still coming around to read any of it! The least believable thing of all is that no one has emailed me yet to kindly tell me to log off the interwebs and buy a diary! Actually ... Maybe they have, and I just haven't made it to that circle of Hell in my inbox yet. So, thanks (I think?) for putting up with eighteen years of my screed, so far.
This year I'm celebrating with Carnations, and no I don't care what some cable TV show said about them in the 90s, they're wonderful, and if you can get your hands on some heirloom seeds you owe it to yourself to grow some of your own - even in pots if you're low on space! They get a bad rap for being common, inexpensive filler flowers, but that's just because they're so easy for growers to produce - exclusive doesn't always mean better, and neither does an obscene markup. I mean, we're lucky to have the access to them that we do, imagine getting angry at abundance! Here's the kicker, though ... Did you know, for like, the last 20 odd years, Big Flower has been breeding the fragrance out of commercial Carnations (well, most flowers actually)? What an unforgivable crime against nature (I was going to say humanity, but even my stray cat enjoys sniffing the potted Dianthus collection that is going crazy all around my back porch this Summer). Anyway, if you're interested in learning more, I'll let the Flower Nerd take it from here, she does a really thorough job explaining it! Maybe neither of us will turn you into a fan of Carnations, that's fine, it's still nice to learn new things. I think what stopped me in my tracks in her reporting was how we've conditioned ourselves to even stop smelling the flower bouquets for sale at stores. I know I've done it, I used to be a big ol' flower-sniffer, and I can still recall the conditioning process as my bewilderment over the missing fragrance waned. In the beginning it was absolutely crazy-making. I grew up with fragrant store-bought bouquets, went away to college where everyone was too broke to bother with them aside from the big milestones, and when I came back into the "real" world, all the flowers were unscented. I thought I'd woken up in a simulation. And since, I've stopped doing something basic that comes naturally to us as humans, because a corporation can make more money if they strip one of the most obvious and innate qualities from a product ... Boy, the essays a person could write. As for this joint?
It started with flowers, because some days they were the only things in my life that were real.
In a world where so much is SO fake, there came a point where I needed to be near something, and touch, and take care of a thing that was alive, and real, and beautiful, and most of all, honest. Because that's what they really are: Honest. Without fear, they open up, they unapologetically give us everything they've got, and then when they're finished, they go. No games, no bullshit, just ... Truth (and maybe a little whimsy along the way). At the time, those were the things all of my human connections were severely lacking, and every single thing for which I'd been starving. No offense to Greg, the variegated Croton (
A few years prior, when Greg was little more than a sapling, I remember thinking: If I can just make it back "home," and closer to family, everything will be okay. And then I made it, and nothing was okay ... Every time I turned around, I found myself in another position where I had to choose the lesser of two evils. There was never a fundamentally, or even obviously "good" choice, and I am most definitely not a problem for every solution kind of gal. Solutions are kind of my thing, if you've got a problem, yo, I'll solve it! So if I'm ever struggling to find the silver lining, then know that the struggle is insanely real. Some days, my only coping mechanism was to remind myself: Better the Devil you know, than the Devil you don't. I made my selection, and woke up one day in my late twenties to discover my entire life was a lie. I don't mean little, cute fibs, or frilly delusions we talk ourselves into so we can endure a less than stellar reality a little better, like romanticizing not being able to afford three meals a day, or something - skipping breakfast, and seeing spots by noon is, in fact, not very chic at all, no matter how you try to spin it! But no, I mean BIG stuff. Nervous breakdown sized stuff. I was exhausted, sick, burnt out, all of my resources had been siphoned whilst I was treated like a parasite, and I had absolutely nothing left for me, except for maybe, spite. Imagine my surprise when I learned much later on that nearly all of it had been by design ... And certainly not my design.
More often than I'd like to remember, I felt like I didn't have one single place left to turn.
I'd already had a spot where I'd written dribs and drabs of nothing particularly interesting, and I'd see people show up just to fight with each other in the comments section. No one was even pissed off at me, or anything I'd said, they'd just get in there and start swingin' on each other! Within the week of creating this page, another fight popped off back at the ol' Ponderosa, and the first comment I got over here was about joining a giveaway contest, and I just thought, NOPE. I'd already been on the fence about open comments, but that clinched it. I was absolutely leaving behind the very least attractive attributes of social media I'd come to loath, or whatever internet presence I'd built behind for good - I wasn't dragging that dumpster fire into my new space where I was at least attempting to do something different. This decision put a few noses out of joint, I'll tell you, but I just thought if audience participation is that important to folks, you all are free to go make your own pages, filled with all of your own content, and throw the gates to your own comment sections just as wide open as you like them! I hated seeing bullies, and I really hated seeing people picked on - especially when, at the time, they were all people I knew in real life! I was watching people I cared about turn into vicious gremlins, and I was giving them the platform to do it. I'm not a cop. I'm not interested in policing other adults, and I really didn't feel like waking up to a fight every morning. I was going through enough.
I needed this to be my place where I got to scream into the void, not the water cooler at work where we gossip about coworkers, or the neighborhood fire hydrant where all the dogs start marking their territory on something I built. If that comes across incredibly selfish, I'm not sorry. I don't think it's the least bit strange for someone to do with what they want in their own little corner of cyberspace ... There's way more than enough to go around, further, by running this place in a way that helps me heal, I'm not taking anything away from anyone else. If you hate it, go make what you want to see in the world, where you'd like to make it, but if any of this lands, or connects with even a single reader out there, then great! Even better if someone wants to get in touch, and talk privately about whatever happens to be on their mind, but I was never interested in turning this place into one big mud wrestling pit. And with that, I deleted all of my social media accounts (which honestly wasn't much to speak of back then) and put all of my energy over here.
I may have been young, but I already knew there was so much more to life than what I was being doomed to in my real life, and my virtual life.
If Hemingway taught us to, "Write hard and clear about what hurts," I feel compelled to point out, things didn't exactly turn out that great for him. So I decided, in addition to that, I'd speak into existence more of what I wanted, and what I wanted to understand. I wrote about what I appreciated, the little glimmers throughout the day that reminded me to allow life to continue to delight me even (especially) when everything is hard. So on a random Thursday evening, I started. Back then I didn't think the internet, or social media could get much worse than it already was - all the vitriol, everyone so ready to pounce over nonsense that doesn't even matter, and very few ready to stand up for anything that does. I found it overwhelmingly bleak, and not at all the world I believed I'd been raised to participate in. Like I said, I didn't see what I wanted, or needed in the world so I decided to attempt to create it. I don't think I quite succeeded with the original version, but I'm still here, and I still like coming around here even though blogging allegedly died a few times already, but I like kicking the tires, and firing the old girl up to see if she can still run.
I look back at that first post, and the girl who wrote it, and the geraniums I selected at the store (the same flowers my mother and I bought every Summer while I was growing up, in fact we potted some up on my front porch at the first hint of Summer this year) ... I see where I've come from, where I am, what I've gained, what I've lost, and what I still dream about. All things considered, I think I'm proudest to say, I'm still me. So what am I celebrating today? Never letting the bastards keep me down, that's what! And I hope in all of your lives out there, wherever you are, you can celebrate the exact same thing.
xoxo
