This is not a post about baseball.  But on Saturday, we went to see the Nationals (remember, I’m a super fan) play the Colorodo Rockies.  It was our first time in the park this season, and when we walked into the stadium, it felt like going home after a long time away.  We have two usual places we sit, either behind home plate or near third base, but Josh suggested that we take four tickets by the Nats bullpen just to switch things up.

It didn’t occur to me until after he bought the tickets that I could possibly be brained in these seats.  He brought his glove to protect me.

While I didn’t enjoy watching the game from that angle — it made me feel very removed from the action — I did enjoy being a few feet away from Roger Bernadina.  He turned around and gazed at us calmly while we jumped up and down, shrieking his name.  Because that’s what super fans do.

The other cool thing was that we were next to the Nationals bullpen.  I hung over the side watching Curtis Ohlendorf warm up before he jogged out to replace Dan Haren.  My boys completely ignored me as I leaned over to stare at them.

“I think you’re being rude,” the ChickieNob informed me.  “How would you feel if people stared at you while you were at work?”

“I would hate it.  But I also wouldn’t take a job that encouraged people to stare at me.  The whole point of being at a baseball game is to watch baseball.  And in order to do that, I have to watch the baseball players.”

“I still think you’re being rude.”

I probably was. But it is true; I would never choose a profession that made people watch me while I did my job.  I would never be on a reality television show or a regular television show.  I wouldn’t be in theater or in a movie.  I wouldn’t be a musician.  I didn’t even love being a teacher, and I set up my classroom with my desk as part of a circle so people were encouraged to look at other students as well as me.  Being a pitcher looks like my version of hell.  You not only have to sit outside, even when it’s really really hot, but people just sit there, looking at you.  Watching your every move.

Being that close to the bullpen was sort of like being at the zoo, with the pitchers as the caged animals.  They sort of were like caged animals.  I mean, they’re animals.  And they were in a cage.  And we were all gawking at them.  The only difference is that they were being paid several million dollars whereas the animals get nothing.  Oh… and when the game was over, they could leave.  So perhaps the analogy falls apart a bit.  But I’ve never been that close to real, live baseball players before.  Exotic baseball players in their natural habitat.

Spaulding Gray has a great part in Monster in a Box where he talks about being in a group of actors and actresses over in Russia for a film festival, and they bump into a group of American high school students who start snapping their picture in the Hermitage.  And the Russia official screams, “Nyet!  No photo!  No!  Nyet!  Nyet!  Nyet photo!  No photograph!  Why are Americans taking pictures of Americans?”

Why do Americans take pictures of other Americans?  It’s almost America’s past time… like baseball.  Taking photos of random people who are not integral to our lives.  I mean, these pitchers have no clue who I am, so why am I documenting their existence on the bench?  What the hell does one do with these photos beyond embed them in a blog post?

And yet I know I would have had regrets if I hadn’t taken them.  And they were being filmed anyway.  My camera just added to the visual cacophony.

It goes beyond just documenting random Americans.  Josh and I talked about Paula Deen yesterday.  And he asked me if I had heard what Kanye named his baby.  And I devour People magazine: why?  Why do I spend so much time reading about other random Americans when I can be putting all of that time towards Candy Crush?  Level 79 isn’t going to solve itself on its own.

It is my blogoversary.  For seven years, I have shown up in this space.  I write pretty much daily.  I post about 5 times per week; sometimes more.  I leave about a quarter of my posts in draft; completed but unpublished.  There is no rhyme or reason to what I choose to post vs. what I choose to leave in draft forever.

I’ve seen blogging change a lot.  When I started, blogs were like little lights flickering from mountain top to mountain top, sending a signal across the land.  Now there are millions… billions?… of blogs.  Seven years ago, the blog was it, the end all and be all, the place you could find me.  Now, we’re expected to spread ourselves thinly across multiple platforms, keeping up with dozens of social media sites.  Or we’re encouraged to drop the blog and go ephemeral — throwing our thoughts into the fast-moving rivers of Twitter or Facebook instead of chiseling the words into slow-moving, semi-permanent blog posts.

Over the last seven years, I’ve seen memes come and go, trends take off and fizzle.  I’ve seen the blog be declared dead more times than I can count.

Which brings us to the most important piece of advice I have to give at this point:

Wait.

If you love blogging, if you get what you need simply from putting words on a screen, tune out the “experts” who tell you that you need to do this or that to be “successful.”  What does that even mean anyway?  Why measure yourself by someone else’s definition of a successful blogger?  Those blogging talking heads aren’t Merriam-Webster.  They do not get to define what makes or breaks a blogger.

YOU get to decide that.  We all individually get to decide that.

*******

Every few months, a new trend is floated into the blogosphere.  If you want to have a successful blog, you have to go visual!  You have to have images!  You have to be pinnable!  No… wait… to have a successful blog, you have to be on Twitter!  You have to have a lot of followers!  No… wait… to have a successful blog, you need to make your blog look like every single other space out there, so it doesn’t reflect your personality at all and instead drops you neatly into a single niche that you can present yourself in as an expert.

When all those ideas are floated by me, I nod.  And then I wait.  Because those speakers are anxious to make something happen, to make something go viral or find the next big thing.  And I’m happy to just be trucking along, putting words on a screen.  I get everything I need to get out of blogging; I don’t need to change this space or the way I write.  I like where I put my words.  I like the speed in which they come as well as how long they stick around for readers to find them.

The reality is that if you keep chasing all the things you’re supposed to do with your blog it will cease to be YOUR space in the same way that if you spend your life trying to be like someone else, you will miss you on being you.  I didn’t really get that when my parents would tell me that when I was a kid, and I was moaning that I wasn’t like this person or that person.  But I get it now.

So if Twitter is your thing, go do Twitter.  And if Facebook is your thing, go spend time on Facebook.  If you’re a big fan of hangouts, Google+ is for you.  Images make you happy?  Then there is Pinterest or Instagram.

But I like blogs.  I like reading them, and I like writing one.  So this is what I’m going to do, year after year after year, plodding along with the same thing and waiting when people tell me about the next big thing I need to do in order to be successful since it always changes anyway.

Thank you for being here for seven years.  Some of you have been here since the beginning.  Some of you have found this space quite recently.  And I’m grateful for each and every one of you who pick up my words, consider them, and share your own.

It is not often that I am left speechless, but three of my friends — Jona, Jessica, and Kathy — threw a book party for me last night to celebrate the release of Measure of Love.  I thought a few people would get together, drink a little wine, I’d talk about the book.  But… no.  They threw something so much larger than that.  Starting with a cake, the size of a pillow, that was a re-creation of the cover.

Tons of food and drinks for the many people who came.

Copies of the book for all the guests.

Little wine glass tags with an image of the book in organza bags as favours.

I swear I wasn’t drunk in this picture.  Even though I look drunk.  I was just teary.

And we made Jona cut the cake because she’s the brave one in the group.  How do you cut into a cake like that?

Do you see why I am so blown away?  Because who the hell is lucky enough to have friends like this?  Thank you is much too small a word; overwhelmed doesn’t even touch on it.  I am so grateful that I have these women in my life.  There are three billion ways the women who were there last night make my life better.  This was just the icing on the cake.

This is obviously for the other people playing the game.  Everyone not playing Candy Crush, feel free to ignore.  And for the love, if you haven’t started playing, DON’T.  I really wish I hadn’t started this.

So.

How the hell does one win this level without combining the doughnut (that brown ball with the coloured flecks) with the striped candy?  When I can do that, it obviously clears a large chunk of the board.  But I’ve only gotten that a few times.  Is there any way to win this without getting the doughnut/striped candy combo?  Should I try to clear the top first or start at the bottom so I get the cascade effect?  Or should I be aiming to clear the chocolate while it’s still contained by the licorice, or clear the whipped cream from the middle before I tackle something else?

With every other level, the priority has been clear.  With this one, I can’t tell what to worry about first.

How the hell do I pass this level?  I’ve been on it since I wrote that last post about level 70.

I am now understanding that this is going to happen every few boards, and I hopefully won’t waste your eyes bemoaning this game.  But this is for my health.  I’ve told Josh that I’m trying to stave off Alzheimer’s after reading about this study.  I’m hoping Candy Crush counts since it is about spatial relations and strategy and… OKAY, I know this isn’t really that mentally stimulating, but please, for the love, I need to pass this level.  And then I promise not to bother you until I reach the next one I can’t pass.

As the rest of the world fights about whether or not women can get pregnant later in life — They can’t! That’s why we should have babies as soon as possible.  They can! Take time to plan out your career and then have babies — we are infertile.  That’s all I could think of while reading the latest brouhaha over Jean Twenge’s article in the Atlantic about how women really can wait later in life to have kids.

All those statistics, they’re meaningless when you’re on the other side of the statistics fence.  Twenge, a psychology researcher, writes, “82 percent of 35-to-39-year-old women conceive within a year, compared with 86 percent of 27-to-34-year-olds.”  And that is well and good, except I have never been part of that 86% or that 82%.  I am part of the 14% or the 18%.  And from here, I think we’re too wrapped up in a numbers game.  A game where there are no guarantees, and we don’t even really know the odds since we’re all individuals inside a general population.  And those statistics are only speaking about the general population.

That is the place where I agree with Twenge, who states that the research is lacking to make any sort of firm statement about fertility decline.  That we need to stop thinking that we can control this because there simply isn’t a concrete answer we can arrive at and feel comfortable setting in stone.  She recommends, based on her research, for women to wrap up by 40.  But if we accept her argument, the research isn’t strong enough to direct us toward a cut-off age.  So I’m not sure why she negates her own argument and provides one.

Have children when you’re ready to have children because there is no controlling for infertility.  It’s not advisable to try to procreate before you’re ready emotionally or financially to raise a child just because you’re worried about age-related fertility.  And it’s foolish to believe that because an 82% statistic exists that if you wait, it’s pretty much a sure thing that you’ll be able to have children.  You don’t need a magazine article to tell you what you know in your heart: that life, health, and bodily functions are finite, and we need to balance that reality with our needs and mental preparedness.  Plus there’s that other reality: infertility exists, and not all of it is age-related.

All in all, the article was fine.  It contradicted itself a lot, and it was no more helpful than that ad in England.  But it was food for thought, and if all she says is true, then more research should definitely be on the table.

The place where I find Twenge smug and unhelpful is when she recounts the Saturday Night Live sketch at the end of the article and points out that “Eleven years later, these four women have eight children among them, all but one born when they were older than 35. It’s good to be right.”  Good to be right?  About what?  That all five of you randomly support your thesis?  And if they hadn’t supported your thesis, that story wouldn’t have appeared in the article at all?

And then I remember that these articles don’t apply to me.  They are for the 82%.