Why Your Blog is my Favorite Thing on the Internet

Blogs are the eighth wonder of the world. I've been blogging since mid-2007 -- this is like, my fourth blog (and no, the first two no longer exist, so don't go looking). I feel like the height of blogging was sometime during my sophomore of high school. Everyone had a blog. Everyone was a poet. Everyone's life was a drama. Ever since early 2011, I've been sure that blogging was on the out and out. I blame Twitter -- I think that's what did it for me, at least. I blog less now than I ever have in all my years of blogging. 140 characters makes things easy.

The millennial generation gets a lot of flack for being self-involved and overly dramatic and lazy. Again, I blame Twitter. 140 characters makes broadcasting the drama of your existence to throngs of followers easy. Don't get me wrong -- I love Twitter. It's my social media of choice. Validating my narcissism in only 140 characters and I don't even have to leave my bed? Yes please. I am, evidently, the poster child of the millennial generation. Please love me.

But here's the deal, on Twitter, there's a tendency, as with all social media (and this is something I incessantly blog about (here & here), apparently) to make your life look beautiful and great, and even when there are those horribly sad and dramatic tweets, they're this tactic of being like, "My life is complicated and interesting just like I am a complicated and interesting human being." But blogs are a whole 'nother story.

Right as I thought blogs were dying once and for all, they started to come back. Everyone's on Tumblr or Blogspot or Wordpress, and you can usually find the link to their personal blog in their Twitter bio. Blogs are back, and they're here to stay. I swear to you, every single day I see someone new tweet something about "I got a blog!!! Go follow it and see the adventures of my life!" But here's where things sort of go awry: These blogs seem to be less life-glorifying and more real-live honesty. I know it's true for me, at least. I would like you people to look at my Instagram and be like, "Ah, she's so pretty and chic and fearless," or go through my Twitter and go, "Ah, she's so clever and cool and wise," and I make sure that the only things you see there are things that wouldn't ever make you think anything differently, but here? On the blog? Shiz gets real. I'm scared of the dark. I feel lonely and lost a lot. I don't do my hair. I wear sweats.

You people all have these blogs where instead of trying to be funny or look pretty or sound cool, you're sitting down and writing honestly about what it feels like to get your heart broken for the first time and what it feels like to graduate from high school or what it means to fall in love or how you feel about your best friends or why you're being angsty this week. It's amazing. Blogs, somehow, produce an honesty that I can't find anywhere else in the cyberworld. I mean, sure, we all still life-glorify and vie for attention, but blogs are different. They're special, and somewhere in between your pictures of your wedding and your vague, dramatic post about who-knows-what, two amazing things have happened:

1.) You have discovered that your feelings are valid, and
2.) I have started to genuinely care about your feelings, because I feel the same feelings.

And that's what I love about blogs. All of this crap the millennials get is, sure, in some way valid, but also it's kind of amazing. Suddenly, we have this generation who is going, "My feelings are valid! My sadness is allowed! My joy should be celebrated!" and then I read your blog and go, "Hey, my feelings are valid, too! My sadness is allowed, too! My joy should also be celebrated!" We're this amazing generation that really loves itself  and then blogs give us this incredible outlet to broadcast that love, that validity and people read them and feel less alone because they feel those things, too.

Alan Cohen, who's the guy behind those Chicken Soup for the Soul books, said, "Wouldn't it be powerful if you fell in love with yourself so deeply that you would do just about anything if you knew it would make you happy? This is precisely how much life loves you and wants you to nurture yourself. The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. You can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from the inside out." And he's totally right. Loving yourself, feeling that you are this valid, wonderful being is the number one way to be fulfilled and blogs are this cool, weird, wonderful step in that direction!

So, no: I don't think you're all amazing writers, no offense. And I don't expect all of you to think I'm an amazing writer, either (even though I'd like you to think I am because again, I'm the millennial generation poster child and also because I'd like to make a living doing this (please buy my book someday)). But the point is, I LOVE YOUR MELODRAMATIC BLOGS. I LOVE YOUR OUTFIT OF THE DAY BLOGS. I LOVE YOUR LIFE ADVENTURES BLOGS. They matter to me so much. Your feelings are valid and I'm just so obsessed with all of you for discovering that because I think it's just a healthy and generally awesome thing to discover.

So keep bloggin', babes. You're all the coolest.

"I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do." -Gertrude Stein
XOXOXO x infinity,
Addy

Poetry Post: Take 10,001

Hey, blogger dudes. Remember when my (old) blog was just vague, sometimes-good poems? Ha ha! Well turns out that phase of my life isn't actually over yet or something, because I have more poems. But they're different or better or something.

Also I got my copy (a year later) of the Speak for Yourself book in the mail today and it made me pretty nostalgic. But that's beside the point.

Point is, I wrote some poems (as sanctioned by my creative writing teacher here at college (who is actually the best man)). Welcome to the newest stage of Addy poetry.

This one's a untitled found poem, and I used people's tweets, so that was cool and fun.

If you don’t want ugly pictures,

get out of ugly wars.

You’re so perfect, it hurts.

& now it’s raining – November

has been good to me so far.

Shake my ash to the wind, Across

the Universe,

like an experience,

Lord forgive all of my sins.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair,

and I eat men like air,

I require a palace by the sea and

diplomatic powers over some small country, please –

I’ve had my regularly scheduled panic attack,

hate to reign on your parade,

but New Yorkers don’t cry.

I am sharing this with you all

because I love you.

Falling slowly, Ole Miss is still racist,

And you’re like a well-choreographed Broadway musical.

You is kind.

You is smart.

You is important.

This is gold, shake the dust,

Dear merciful God – ask Ralph Waldo Emerson – for blue is wrong for
roses… witch lover.

And this one's supposed to be a poem around my favorite word. I almost started writing about how I'm still just mad that I don't speak all the languages in the whole world and still have to read some things in translation and also there are so many beautiful words in other languages but I've probably ranted enough about translations to last all of us for the rest of the eternities.

The Glory Poem: Take 10,001

Here is a list of words that are my favorite words because I like the way they sound:

·      elongate

·      also

·      pocket

·      locket

·      poubelle

·      petrichor

·      demure

·      ingénue

·      plethora

·      waffle

·      plié

But here is my favorite word:

·      glory (i.e. “high renown or honor won by notable achievements” or “magnificence; great beauty”)

just conceptually.

Glory’s like, “Girl, why you so obsessed with me?”

And I’m like, “Maybe I’m a raging capitalist.”

But mostly because I just like the idea.

High renown. Honor. Notable achievements.

Maybe I just like awards shows.

Give me all the Oscars. Give me all the Pulitzers. Give me all the Tonys.

Maybe I’m a product of a society that has told me

for eighteen years

that I will never have physical magnificence,

that without makeup and photoshop, I will never possess great beauty.

But I’m sorry, mainstream media,

I like my body.

And maybe I’m a narcissist,

but I also really like glory.

I’ve written ten thousand poems

and they are all about the same thing:
Glory.*

Glory, glory, glory, glory.

What an ugly-sounding word, glory.

*Also, yes. I stole this bit almost word for word from a poem of Avery's. I know. She's brillant and writes really glorious (lol, get it?) poetry.

So that's the end. Sorry if you hate it when I post poems. But also I'm not really sorry. Because I like poems and this is my blog so I'm the boss. The end.

Oh! Wait! Before I go, let me shamelessly self-promote (again, my blog): I've gotten the opportunity to do something way cool, and that is that I'm writing a weekly column for NYU's arts blog, The Highlighter (if you click on "Columns" in the header, it'll give you a drop down menu, click "Matrons of Art"). It's called Matrons of Art, it usually comes out on Wednesdays, and it's just a short little thing where I tell you about cool women in the arts and why they rock and why you should love them and why they inspire me, etc. So far I've done Audrey Hepburn, Beyonce, Cindy Sherman, Lady Gaga, J.K. Rowling, and Patina Miller, and I just wrote a brand new one about Frida Kahlo. So it's awesome and informative and inspiring and you'll feel cultured and cheery after reading it, so you should go read it.

Now it's the actual end.

"And I summarize the whole world in the warmth of your shirt." -Ahmad Shamlou

Yours,

Addy Baird