My friend asked me a question a few years ago that confounded me, and I still think about it all the time.  She was at my house and needed a roll of toilet paper for the bathroom.  She asked me whether I put in the roll with the toilet paper dangling over the top or underneath.

Without going to your bathroom and checking, can you answer that question?

I couldn’t; and not only that, but when I went to check, every roll of toilet paper was different.  I literally had no preference in the over or under debate.  She could not believe that I didn’t have a stance on this; she thought out of everyone we collectively know, I would have a preference.  But I don’t.  And I think about this every time I replace the toilet paper.

My friend is coming this week for a visit.  I considered walking around the house, making all the rolls of toilet paper the same and affixing a sign next to the dispenser stating our preference.  But then I decided that she probably wouldn’t remember asking this question and the joke would be lost.

*******

My new favourite way to annoy the twins (because they haven’t learned songs yet such as “The Song that Never Ends” and I’m sure that once they do, the tables will turn and they’ll be annoying me, so I want to get in my annoying moments now) is to pretend to be a GPS while we’re in the car.  We do not own a GPS.  But I like to do this calm, British accent, announcing everything before we do it.

“Go to the stop sign and turn left.  Turn left in 500 feet.”

Even better, sometimes I say things that I’m NOT going to do, and then I counter in my breathy, British voice, “Recalculating.  Now go straight and turn right at the second light.”

Drives. Them. Crazy.

Which reminds me of something I liked to do back in high school and college.  I’d get in my friend’s car, knowing full well that they know where we’re going — for instance, school — but giving them the directions anyway in this overly cheerful voice.  We’d get to the end of my street and I’d say, “okay, turn right and go up to the next stop sign.”  The first time I did this, the person would stare at me strangely but not say anything.  The second time I did this, they’d also look at me strangely.  I would count to see how many times I could give directions BEFORE they finally asked me what the hell I was doing, or why I thought they didn’t know the way between my house and school.

I still like to do this to Josh, even after 10 years of marriage.  He usually just ignores me.

I have so much fun.

*******

I have fallen in love with Starbucks VIA packets.  It’s an instant coffee, and you can get them by the cash register.  I wouldn’t want to drink it daily, but I take them on the road with me.  I had been squeamish about trying it, but my sister vouched that they were drinkable, and a Starbucks employee made me one to try in the store.

I only like iced coffee — even in the winter — and getting my daily 16 ounces of coffee is paramount to stave off caffeine headaches (I am so freakin’ addicted it isn’t funny).  So all you need is the coffee packet and a 16 ounce bottle of cold water.  You open the water, take a sip to make a bit more room in the bottle, dump in the coffee, close and shake.  And then you have an instant bottle of drinkable iced coffee.  Is it perfect?  No.  Would you want it daily in your house?  Probably not.  But you cannot beat it for convenience when you’re away from home.

My sister passed this tip to me, so now I spread it to you.

Thank you for the kind words about the Roundup yesterday.  I am very fond of this weekly ritual, happy that it’s still going five years later.  I never get bored reading blogs.  And while the same topics come around year after year, people always manage to write about them in a fresh way.  No two blog posts are alike, even when covering the same situation, the same emotions, the same wishes.

*******

On Wednesday, we had one of those sick days that wasn’t really a sick day.  We played in the house until mid-afternoon when we decided, after reading a few chapters in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, that we wanted to get a Harry Potter Lego toy.  We went to the toy store but they only had one set in stock, so we ended up wandering around the aisles.  That is where the twins found the magic set.

“This toy will help us do real magic like Harry Potter!” the ChickieNob exclaimed.  She’s the sort who likes to practice a lot, prepare herself for things.  She may have thought that she’d be a shoo-in for Hogwarts if she proved her ability to make a ball disappear well before that eleventh year threshold.

I explained to them the difference between real magic (right?  Can we all just agree that we’re going to believe that real magic exists?) and a magic trick.  You have never seen two children both more disappointed and more willing to still have a magic trick even if it was just an illusion.  And then, I heard myself telling them that I would drive them over to a magic store.

I had never been in the magic store; had only seen it from the road, and I have to admit that the exterior creeped me out a little bit.  And I can now tell you that it’s the sort of store that Ativan was made for.  You enter the store and you are in an empty room save for a fake tree and dozens of ripped up playing cards glued to the ground.  You then climb a concrete stairwell up two flights, encountering things like this along the way:

Finally, you enter the store and it is like being over at the Frankenstein place a la Rocky Horror.  I half expected Riff Raff and Magenta to come out from behind one of the red velvet curtains and do a song and dance before serving us Eddie.  The owner was incredibly kind and patient, immediately picking up on how important this trip was to the twins.  She took them to the side and showed them her wand.  She made flowers grow from an invisible seed in a pot.  She turned a penny into a dime.

Finally, the ChickieNob, unable to contain herself, sank down on the floor and said in the saddest voice, “please, can’t I have a real wand like you?  I want to be magical so badly and I can’t wait.”

And the owner just smiled at her and said, “you are breaking my heart because you’re so cute, but no, the Ministry of Magic will not let me sell you a real wand until you are eleven.  But until then, I can teach you how to appear to be magical with tricks.”

They both perked up with this and I wish I had filmed their faces as she did a series of tricks for them.  Delight.  That word perfectly captures the look on their faces.  We explained one last time that once she taught them how to do the trick, it would be ruined for them.  They’d be able to do magic for others, but it would no longer feel magical to them.  They took this chance and each bought a trick, and she taught them how to do it.  They drove home, practicing their trick in the car.  What they lacked in skill, they made up for in heart.  Then they woke up at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning to show Josh their magic trick (even though they normally sleep past eight) because they couldn’t wait.

Despite what others think, I don’t believe the twins are in for an enormous, life-shattering letdown when they find out that Hogwarts doesn’t exist.  Frankly, I think they already see the clear strings in life based on the questions they ask.  But they want to continue believing so badly that the Cinderella at the Magic Kingdom is a real princess, the tooth fairy is using their baby teeth to create laughter, that Befana rides to their house each year to drop off gifts.  I’m thirty-seven.  I want to believe in it all too; am willing to suspend disbelief.

Isn’t hope just another form of magic?

*******

Since the blogger writes somewhat anonymously, I’m not going to link to her blog here, but I will link to her children’s book, City Life, which rocks.  It’s a picture book (and I love the illustrations by Haytko) about a child going through the city with her two mums.  Great rhythm for reading it aloud.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “A Life Still Worth Living” (Single Infertile Female)
• “Why Don’t Apologies Make the Moment Vanish?” (Creating Motherhood)
• “18 Signs You Might Be a Blogger” (It’s My Life)
• “Tiny Opinions” (Here We Go Again)
• “On Being a Mediocre Parent” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Everyone Deserves” (Stink-Bomb)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Lissie’s Luck has a post asking if she is the only one who has the feeling sometimes that “everything is out of place and nothing I can do will fix it. I don’t know what brings on this feeling. I don’t know how to end it.”  It is the struggle between the “what if” side of the brain and the rational mind.  I hope writing it out helped her release it.

Better Full Than Empty has a post about hitting THAT point in your cycle, the one when you’re filled with dread that it didn’t work.  She explains, “I have come to that dreaded time of the cycle, where everything feels wrong and the doubt is pouring in like icy seawater into the holds of the Titanic. The alarm bells are ringing. So far one of our brave cyclesistas has already been dragged down by a BFN.”  It’s a familiar thought space, but one that she describes uniquely well.

Infertile Fantasies has a post about healing.  It begins with this thought-provoking assertion: “We carry our grief, our anger, and our resentment for further than is necessary when we haven’t yet decided what to do with it. We have, after all, paid dearly for our pain. It’s not reasonable to expect us to part with it easily, even though it is ugly and burdensome.”  It is about someone with primary infertility meeting up with someone with secondary infertility, and what we can give one another.  What actually strengthens us to give away.

Lastly, Baby Smiling in Back Seat has a post about kindness.  About those moments when you realize that you have baked more cakes for other people’s birthdays than they have ever baked back for you.  And just when you are about to sink into a hole of depression considering the lack of reciprocation for the kindness you have sent into the world, a hug comes around.

The roundup to the Roundup: Thank you for the kind thoughts about the Roundup.  Our trip to the magic store.  City Life.  And lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 15th and July 22nd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I have more thoughts piggybacking off the social media post, but they’ll have to wait until I can write them.  On my mind now is something else.  This is the fifth anniversary of the Friday Blog Roundup.  It started five years ago on July 21st.

Five years ago I wrote:

Every time I read something I love, I want to send it out to everyone I know. Which is how I came to the idea to do the Friday Blog Roundup and comment publicly on a few things I read this week. There is plenty that I read that also moved me, but since space is limited, I must pick-and-choose.

On a side note, I am still trying to figure out how one posts links to other blogs on the side column. Once I get that figured out, I’d love to start a list–a clearinghouse of IF blogs–so if you’d like to be included, let me know.

I both love the fact that I had no idea how to construct a blog roll (which now has close to 3000 blogs on it) as well as the fact that this idea that I started five years ago still continues to this day.  My impulse then was to send out links to great stuff I read, and my impulse still is to eagerly ask each week — did you read this?

Thank you for reading it.  Thank you for supporting it.  Thank you, now, for adding in your own posts each week.  Tomorrow will be the 350th Friday Blog Roundup.  Doesn’t that blow your mind?

“I am the Lorax.  I speak for the blogs.  I speak for the blogs, for the blogs have no thumbs.  And I’m asking you, readers, at the top of my lungs” — she was very upset as she typed, red-faced and bitter — “Please don’t give up writing your blogs for Twitter!”
–to paraphrase the late, great Dr. Suess

The comments on the ghost blog post made me think deeply about this.  And I want to start out by admitting that this may be a difficult post for you to read.  It may make you squirm.  I hope that you will read to the bottom instead of quitting in the middle. Hopefully when you get to the end, you will agree that it isn’t anti-Twitter. Rather, it’s pro-blogging.

I’ve made a decision that for the time being, I’m not signing up for any other social media site.  I have a Twitter account and a Facebook account, and I use both for about ten minutes per day total.  I jump on, see what streams past, maybe leave an update myself, and log off.

It’s a conscious decision to give my attention purposefully.  If I’m out with people, they have my attention.  If I’m on the computer, the words on the screen have my attention.  Which is not to say that I never glance down at my phone as I feel new emails come in to see if they’re urgent.  And I’ve certainly sat in the passenger seat on a long car ride and read a few emails.  But I try to make that the exception to the rule rather than my norm.  I like to give my best self to every task or person, and the only way I can do that — personally — is to compartmentalize and give each task or person their fair amount of uninterrupted attention.

This is precisely why Twitter and Facebook and the like don’t work for me as well as blogs.  They are all written on the other person’s time line rather than my own.

It’s the difference between getting your news from a ticker tape and getting your news from the newspaper.  If I’m getting it from the ticker tape, I need to stand in front of the building and read and read and read or I’ll miss the news.  Of course, I can make the choice to step away and do something else, but it’s understood that the words are marching on without me.  And while I stand in front of the building, reading the ticker tape, I am only half paying attention to everything else around me.

Newspapers are on my time line, except for the fact that they’re only printed once a day and in the morning.  I sit down and read them when I am ready to read them, and they sit, waiting for me, until I’m ready to come around.

The same can be said for the difference between social media sites and blogs.  If I want to keep up with another person on Twitter, to know what is happening in the lives of my friends, I need to do it on their time.  If I don’t, the words will pass off the screen by the time I come around to log in.  Whereas with a blog, the post sits in my Reader until I am ready to dedicate the time to read it.

Twitter is wonderful for the quick question and the quicker answer.  It is wonderful to jump on when you are having a terrible day, declare that you are having a terrible day, and reap some comfort.  But too many people leave important information on social media sites and then get cranky when people miss their news.  People are ditching their blogs because they don’t feel like they have the time to write a full post, though they can quickly throw something up on Twitter.

But I didn’t get into blogging for the ability to throw something up quickly any more than I got into cooking so I could jump into pulling together fast food.  There are nights when I need to phone it in with a bowl of cereal because it’s all I have time to make, but it would make me really sad if that’s the way we ate most nights.  Cooking matters to me.

Blogging matter to me.

I am the Lorax, and I speak for the blogs (for the blogs have no thumbs), but I think we all know that I’m really speaking for myself.

*******

When I got into blogging, I got into it because it was about writing and I was a writer.  Even if I wasn’t a published author at the time, writing was the fine art medium in which I best connected with other people.  The Web gave all people the ability to dabble in their chosen art form and get their work out there to a vast amount of people — a task that felt nearly impossible prior to the advent of the Internet — whether it was in the form of video, podcast, music, or words.

What happened to the idea of getting your writing out there?  Of blogging as a writing exercise?  When did it stop being about piecing together the best paragraphs possible, conveying your thoughts with words?

Because while Twitter may contain words and there may even be some clever 140-character phrasing that I’ve found moving or funny, it is far from a writing exercise except within the idea that you need to parse down your phrasing to as few words as possible.  I would give a nod towards those who use Twitter in the same way that poets use haiku, but so few people on Twitter actually go into their status updates with that kind of mindfulness.  With that kind of sacredness given to the choice of words.

Not everyone went into blogging with the intention to write masterpieces.  Some went into blogging simply because they wanted to get down what happened in their day.

But inadvertently, due to the emotion imbued in the words, masterpieces did take place.  Someone may write a post about going to the beach, but their words, what they describe, the story they tell transcends the intention simply to record a trip to the beach.  Everyday, bloggers inadvertently create what is a masterpiece in another reader’s eyes.  I find dozens of them weekly.  I pick out my four or five favourites for each Friday Blog Roundup.

Twitter was supposed to support what blogs started rather than replace it.  It was supposed to be a way to additionally express creativity.  But now it seems to have devolved into what amounts to a public IM conversation or a way to advertise — either the self or a product or sometimes the self as a product.

Blogging, a medium that started about writing, has devolved into branding and chasing followers.  Blogs — that actual meat, the protein — are being ditched in order to spend time exclusively with social media — the carbs.  It’s fast.  It has a lot of energy.  But it doesn’t stick with you.  And I would argue that as a writer, it certainly doesn’t make you grow.  As a reader, I’d be hard-pressed to accept an argument that it furthers your creativity.

 *******

I am aware that the last two paragraphs may have pissed you off.  Raised the hairs on your back.  You are free to click away, but I hope you read on and don’t leave misunderstanding how I feel about social media.

The fact is that I’m sad to hear people say that they ditched their blogs for Twitter because it’s faster and easier.  And I gave you fair warning in that opening that I’m red-faced and bitter.

I am bitter because I feel a tug-of-war between blogs and social media (rather than a supportive collaboration), and it makes me unfairly lash out at Twitter, ignoring its good points and focusing solely on its underbelly.  But also — to be fair — Twitter has a fairly large and exposed underbelly.  Would Twitter have catapulted to success if the number of followers you had remained hidden, known only to the user?

Or is part of the draw of Twitter because we can easily grow our reach fairly quickly.  Follow someone and they most likely will follow you back.  Read someone else’s blog and comment on it (a task that takes a lot of time) and they may or may not follow you back.  But I think we all know that Twitter numbers are fairly meaningless.  I have 2000+ followers.  How many of them do you think really read my status updates?

Shit.  I’m doing it again.  I meant to beg you to stay and read the rest of my thoughts, but my frustration with social media rears its ugly head.  It is such an ugly side of my brain at the moment.

*******

I am also aware that this post makes me sound like a curmudgeon, shaking my stick at the younger generation.  In my day, you wrote blog posts, and you liked it (and you had to type uphill to the computer both ways).  And certainly the Once-ler saw the Lorax as an old busybody, getting in the way of his fun.  And maybe the Lorax did come across as fun-loving as my militant, AFL-CIO-preaching ex-boyfriend, but wasn’t the Lorax right in the end?  Even if he spread his message in the most insufferable way?

I may be an insufferable fool, admittedly unable to keep up with this newfangled technology, but I also fear that we’re not using the mediums afforded to us well enough.  Writers have an amazing opportunity to not only practice their art, but to send it out there and get feedback on it.  Without this blog and my ability to prove that people respond to my words, I doubt I’d have two books out on the bookshelf.

This is not an anti-Twitter rant (or an anti-Facebook or anti-Google+ or any of those sites rant) — as I said in the beginning, I have a Twitter account and a Facebook account, and I’m not planning on ditching either.  Though I’ll continue to use them as I’ve been using them: sparingly.  And I’m not signing up for the next big thing that comes down the pike.

And despite what you may think from the words above, I’m not anti-branding or collecting followers.  On the contrary, I am going to do a sponsored review post soon for a brand that I believe in.  An opportunity came up that fit who I am and gave the twins items I possibly couldn’t have afforded otherwise.

At the end of the day, without meaning to monetize this blog, I have inadvertently monetized this blog simply by writing it.  PR people offer me free things and I have gotten many paid jobs on account of this blog.  As I’ve already said, I probably wouldn’t have two books out if not for this blog.

Making money doing what I love AND getting the life I want with the twins is something I understand and support when I see other people attempting to get it too.  Therefore I support people who are trying to make a living at this.  That’s not really the problem I’m writing about.  I’m talking about those who are ditching their blogs in favour of something faster.  Of a place where they can collect more followers.  Where they can point at their numbers and have that mean more than the quality of the writing.

It’s a fine line to walk, but I think you can do it.  You can take the opportunities and enjoy them, or monetize your blog AND still write something that is enjoyable, that changes how people see the world, that touches people emotionally.  I can point to many bloggers who do it well.

And there is a lot of good that comes from Twitter.  There are revolutions that have come from Twitter, though if we’re going to say that, there are also revolutions that have come from blogs.  I think we need Twitter, we need Facebook and the like.  But we also need balance, co-existence.  Not one for the other.  I get sad when once rich blogs lie fallow, their authors now streaming all of their words from their phones in 140 characters.

*******

Not everyone on Twitter started out on the blogs.  Not everyone wants to write or be a writer.  Sometimes people just want to let their friends and family know what they’re doing.  Sometimes people start blogs solely to monetize it and try to make a living at home, and they’re not using blogging as a writing exercise.  Sometimes people simply lose interest in blogging and writing is not a worthwhile use of their time.  Those are all valid reasons to remove the focus from the blog world and put it on Twitter.

This post is not for those people.

It’s for those who started out as writers, who got into blogging because they like to write and they want people to read their writing.  And they still want to be writers, but they’ve stopped writing.

*******

I want you to take five minutes today to write down why you got into blogging and stick it over your computer.  As a reminder.  Because sometimes we need to remember why we entered the game since we’re spun round and round by new information once we get inside.

And I wrote this as an admittance that I can’t keep up.  I can’t keep up with the new social media sites that pop up daily, forcing me to learn new software and build new circles.  I can’t keep up with the existing ones — with Twitter or Facebook — and their constant stream of information.  I dip into it, but I miss more than I catch.  I just can’t keep up.  And I’m not going to try.

I started blogging because I wanted to write.  I wanted people to read my writing.  I wanted to connect with a community of people experiencing a similar situation to my situation.  I wanted to give support and information to others.  I am going to a blogging conference in a few weeks and I hope to connect with others who came to blogging for the same reason.

Why did you get into blogging?

And are you going to write a post today?

Pull out a chair and sit down with your cup of coffee. It’s time to have a little talk. Today’s discussion: ghost blogs.

That phrase has been on a post-it note on my desk for a few months.  I don’t even know why.  I’m talking about those strange spaces on the Internet that haven’t been closed; they remain up, abandoned, their owners disappearing into the ether.  There is no final post at the top announcing the cessation of the project.  On the contrary, the most recent post (which is sometimes years old) usually gives no sense that the blog is coming to an end.  It’s like walking into a house and finding the table fully set with a warm meal but devoid of people.

Last spring, Times Online had an article about the decline of blogging, which always makes me think of that Twain quote, “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Their doomsday predictions aside, the part about people abandoning their blogs was interesting:

Some internet analysts call them “ghost blogs,” lingering reminders of a cultish enthusiasm for self-expression that is rapidly wearing off. Others liken the abandonment of blogs to “the suicide of your virtual self.”

I was drawn to that idea of “suicide of your virtual self,” which sounds fairly extreme. Does walking away from blogs or social media sites really have anything in common with ending your life?

I’m never sure what to do with these blogs on either the ALI blogroll or in my personal blog reader. I usually leave them up on the blogroll because I figure the archives could still be helpful to someone seeking information. I also usually leave them in my Google Reader because there have been a handful of times that the person has — years later — popped back on with a new post (and, let’s face it, I’m too lazy to prune my Reader).

What do you think about ghost blogs and that Times Online quote? What do you do with them in terms of your blogroll or blog reader?