I wrote about this last week, and thought I’d present the other side. People who don’t appreciate finding themselves (or aspects of their life) in someone else’s book. The New Yorker covered this recently, too:

I realized that the real world is full of people who, presumably, have feelings about being appropriated for someone else’s run at the Times best-seller list … When an author plants a made-up character in a novel, that character gains breath, agency, life. But when an author plants a real person in a novel, she metes out a kind of death … Is moving someone down the existence scale from “human person” to “character” anything like murder? Is moving someone up the scale anything like art?

Whoa.

As in, by fictionalizing, you flatten the person, you turn them into a character which is always two-dimensional (or maybe three-dimensional at best) whereas a human is four-dimensional and super-complex.

The article is about Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, which was on my TBR list, as well as the author’s own experience finding herself in the pages of someone’s book, her life fictionalized. It begs the question: who owns a story?

The person who lived it? The person who observed it? The person who heard about it? If I heard your story and feel moved by it, can I write about how I feel (and by default, tell your story)? Is it only your story if you’re the only one in it? Once there is a second person in the story, do you no longer own the whole thing?

Big questions without clear answers.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Back in college, my friends and I had a bad movie club. Everyone went to the video store and chose what they thought would be the worst movie. And then we’d watch them back-to-back all night, and vote at the end over who had done the best job choosing the worst film. This is how I saw four of the nine Children of the Corn movies.

Bad films are in the eye of the beholder. People hate my favourite film: Jeffrey. Maybe it’s not my favourite film anymore, but it was for a very long time, and it’s exactly for this reason: catharsis. I cry so hard watching that film/play. I was horrified when someone labeled it a bad film. Bad film? It is my favourite film. How can it be bad? I feel the same way about Love, Actually. I know it makes some people throw up in their mouth, but I love watching it every winter.

Spill: what is your favourite “bad” film?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Has there ever been a line that has described me more? From the Washington Post: “Human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent gain.” I mean, yeah, the gain is a few extra pages read or another episode watched, but is my life appreciably better because I consumed that media then vs. later? No. But I will still stay up too late tonight doing the exact same thing.

Did you know that it matters which side of your time zone you live on? “People on the eastern side of a time zone, where the sun sets earlier, tend to go to bed earlier than those on the western side.” I live right in the middle of my time zone, though it’s a little on the earlier side. I should be going to bed earlier than people in West Virginia. I’m not.

It’s such a funny idea to think about how where you fall in your time zone could affect your whole life. We thought about where our jobs were and how much house we could afford based on how we wanted to save and where our family was located, but we didn’t think about how we’d get more sleep if we lived in place X vs. place Y.

How much thought did you put into where you live?

I am skipping the Roundup this week (though please still add great posts you read in the comment section, and I’ll pull them in the next time the Roundup goes up) but instead unloading a post from one of my two saved link folders. I keep two. The first is for the Roundup. Whenever I read something that sticks with me after I leave the post, I drop it in that folder. On Thursday night or Friday morning, I pull out three or four for the post. I clear the folder after I write the post and start anew.

The other folder is an ongoing folder. Whenever I start reading something and think, “Oh… I really want to spend time with this” or “I am going to want to write about this,” I drop it in a folder. Sometimes I go back and read the whole piece. Sometimes it doesn’t grab me as much on the second try. Other times it ends up in a post, and then I remove the piece from the folder. I only clean out that folder once every year or so. It’s where I go when I know I want to write but I have nothing to write about. There is always something interesting in that folder.

That’s also how you keep a blog going for 13 years. Keep a folder of anything interesting you find.

So I am unloading an article that I love but have zero clue what to even say about it. It’s about a modern day, professional wizard in Brooklyn who tries to answer this essential question: “What would a wizard do in the modern era?”

“Wizards are people helpers,” he said. “They are who the hero encounters on their journey, and they’re able to give the hero a bit of advice, maybe a magical artifact, some sort of assistance that helps the hero get over their obstacle and on their journey.”

That is awesome.

So what is something you’ve saved recently to read later?

This blog is 13 years old this week. I started it back in 2006, and I’ve posted on average 5 times per week for the last 13 years.

I’ve thought about stopping the blog about 100,000 times. I know, not the typical thing a person admits on their blogoversary, but you can’t talk about how you keep something going for 13 years without a break without admitting the other option: stopping.

There is a very simple way to get a 13-year-old blog: write for 13 years. That’s it. There is also a simple way to not have a 13-year-old blog: don’t write for 13 years. There is no magic, no advice beyond two words: show up. Sit down in front of the computer and talk about what is happening in your life or something you read or something that is annoying you at the moment or the very cute thing your guinea pig did when you opened the refrigerator door. I do that because the alternative is not doing it. Until I am completely certain that I’m ready, I will continue to show up because I know that once I take a tiny break, it will be over. I won’t be able to convince myself to show up again.

Because blogs take time. A lot of time. And you need to write them because you need to write one, not because you need someone to read it. That is a hard lesson to learn and take to heart. I’ve said it a lot over the years. I don’t check my stats anymore because it helps me to maintain that focus: I write for myself. I love that you are here and that you’re reading what I write. Blogging without anyone reading is very lonely, but loneliness isn’t a reason to stop. It’s just a feeling — one that is important to acknowledge — but it isn’t the endgame. I am the endgame, and I choose to show up.

So thank you for being here. Thank you especially to the ones who have been around for 13 years (or close to it). And thank you to the newer people who have found me along the way. I am so grateful for every word read.