Do Your Thing

Last week, I sent an impersonal generic email to my family, and another to my friends, announcing my new blog. “There,” I thought after hitting the send button. “Nothing like self-expression to infuse some creativity into my life and re-energize my spirit!”

Still, I worried.

Blogging is weird. Many people (including myself until recently) have never read a blog. Ocho and I, after he got his new MacBook Pro, were talking about the blogging phenomenon. We went online and found an article by Technorati, an internet search engine and indexer of more than 11 million weblogs. It reported that in July of last year there were 50 million blogs and counting. More than 175,000 blogs are created each day—that’s two for every second of each day—with an average of 1.6 million posts. “Why would anyone want to spend time reading drivel about another person’s life?” Ocho asked. I agreed.

Still, I wondered…

I puzzled over why someone would post personal, even intimate, info in a public space. My friend J. had created a work blog, offering weekly advice and pep talks to people who work in inside sales, a tough and often isolating job, and I thought it was brilliant. I also was inadvertently directed to someone’s Apple 2.0 blog while reading another article about Apple’s decision to lower the price of its iPhone. It, too, was well-written, smart and useful.

But I’d never actually seen anyone’s personal blog. Curious, I sat down at Ocho’s new laptop while he arranged some hot-pink gladiolas, his favorite flowers, in a green glass vase.(“I know you think this is gay,” he announced, glancing over at me. “No, I don’t,” I protested, thinking otherwise while simultaneously running a list of his masculine traits through my head.)

I Googled "best blogs" and found www.thebestofblogs.com. Once there, I energetically avoided the categories of Best Book/Literary Blog, Best Inspirational Blog, Best Parenting Blog. I even shunned the Best Health Blog category and headed straight for the Funniest Blog entries. Priorities, as usual, properly aligned.

Since my parents are now “subscribers” to my blog, I won’t quote directly from the runners up. But I will say that the writers are ridiculously clever and produce some of the best comic writing I’ve ever read. Right up there with my heroes, Anne Lamott and David Sedaris.

While letting inspiration sink in, my friend Hedgie, who has been on the same breast cancer train that I’ve been on (same timing, same treatments, same oncologist, same street, kids in same school, same caustic sense of humor, etc.) created her own blog: www.princesshedgehogchronicles.blogspot.com. She produces incredibly tender and lovely essays on cancer, camping, dead cats and micro-organization.

Inspiration took root, and I created my blog, named after a phrase that Sam and I overused in our high school days. As waitresses, whenever someone would suggest that we do something we didn’t want to do, we’d respond with the phrase.

Example:

Irritated customer: “This apple pie is cold. Can you reheat it?”

Me or Sam: “Hey, reheat this.”

Hence, the name Reconstruct This… Cancer has demanded that I reconstruct myself. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. Sometimes I’m happy to oblige. Other times, not so much.

After writing a Reconstruct This… piece, I would send the link to Ocho and Sam, but since writing is meant to be read, I longed for a larger audience. So, I sent my blog announcement email. Then I began to perseverate. I worried that people would find the whole thing overly precious and self-absorbed.

The next morning, I found several emails in my inbox, including one from a co-worker: “What are you doing working here?” he asked, magnanimously. My sister and her best friend, who a couple years ago had inflammatory breast cancer and continues to bravely receive treatment for brain metastases, each wrote, as did friends from the city, friends from my kids’ school, and folks from my breast cancer writers’ group in Palo Alto. The encouragement was healing beyond words.

There was a time in my life when I wouldn’t have been able to put my fragile and self-conscious self on the line, especially a line that is so exposing. These days, however, I feel differently. I still angst about what people think, and I always will. But I’ve learned something in the past 16 months, and that’s that people are extraordinarily kind and generous.

“Do your thing,” wrote my friend, LM.

I will. Thank you.