Misheru

“I’m not getting forgetful. I just can’t remember things any more.” — my mother

I thought this article from Time. com was pretty cool — Googling For Your Grade.

For both Wilkinson and his students, the “Internet Famous” course marks something of an educational, and technological, experiment. In essence, they are attempting to quantify fame on the Internet by developing a matrix that simultaneously measures the number of eyeballs, the amount of attention, the caliber of the social network, and a variety of other factors. The goal of it all? To help students learn how to use, and even manipulate, the new set of rules guiding online commerce.

Reading about this made me think about my own blogging and lack of “famo” or Internet notoriety. I started this blog mostly to keep friends and family updated, and my readership has varied over time. I hit a high of nearly half a million pageviews one summer, when I posted a rather boring post about a trip to Portland and put this “handsome man” picture up. That was pure accident; we used to do the “I am a handsome man” routine from SNL as teens, and Steve’s expression looked just like that, so that’s what I named the picture (handsomeman.jpg). Since Google still struggles to index photographs, a popular radio station Googled “handsome man” and Steve’s photo came up as number one. Suddenly, I was inundated with traffic.

This blog is still something of an experiment; I’ve never kept to one topic, as all the books say you should, although I set up a different blog for politics and finance after a while (I don’t link to the finance blog, as it is anonymous). My readership plummeted when I did paid posts, although I made more money overall; I am occasionally surprised at who reads my blog (my in-laws) and who doesn’t (my parents and siblings).

I was surprised and slightly bitter when I discovered that my husband’s blog, Critical Moss was more widely read than my own. Not only does he hardly post to it, but I’ve had this blog for at least 2 years longer. I will admit that his posts are shorter and more humorous than mine, which probably makes for a better read online. Perhaps he’s the real author of the family.

It would be great if more people read my blog, but terrifying at the same time. Kind of hard to explain, really, but with recognition comes a kind of expectation of greatness, and some days…I just like writing about my own boring life, without worrying what a disappointment I am to my readers.

We’ve arrived safely in Idaho. A couple of things:

* We were forced to go through Utah rather than Wyoming. The good news: we avoided several small blizzards. The bad news: it was Utah.

* I saw a cookbook in Utah called “The Mormon Cookbook: friends, fun and the spice of life.” I immediately began to reconsider my impression of the state. I had no idea they cooked Mormons. Mmmm, delicious!

* I have been in my mother’s house for nearly 12 hours and still have not had a fight with a family member. This must be a record.

* We forgot that, you know, tomorrow is Christmas and the kids might like presents to open in the morning. Luckily, Walgreens was still open at 10 p.m. when we left our family gathering in a rush to buy something, anything to put in their stockings. Unluckily, we were labed Bad Parents of the Christmas Season by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

* It’s 1 a.m., our lame presents are wrapped under the tree, Santa has left a note explaining that Ben’s mother is an ass and wouldn’t let him deliver a bicycle because it wouldn’t fit in the car on the way home, but that he would be back the 2nd of January. Santa hopes Ben buys it.

* Marti has some great pictures of us sledding in Colorado at Critical Moss. Have a great Holiday!

It’s very cold.

Day Three: I find it interesting that I had such drama when I lived here in Iowa, because really, Iowa is a very undramatic state. It is a quiet place, a place with little crime, where neighbors are neighborly and the words “milquetoast” is actually used to describe university students. Compare this to Tucson, where police officers chasing men with guns have stopped by my place to ask, rather casually, if I saw an armed man running down the street? Or did I hear gunshots? Yeah? Which direction, do you think? Okay, thank you ma’am, you have a nice day now.

That’s not even the best story — about 2 weeks after we moved into our house the FBI stopped by looking for a former resident. We had already found bullets in the walls when we took the paneling off, and one had to wonder; were those from the person the FBI was searching for? Or was there more than one nutjob in the joint?

Anyway, sometime last month we heard the police chasing and shouting “Stop! Police!” and our reaction was to turn up the sound on the television. Next thing you know we’ll be passing an old lady getting mugged and just stop and tie our shoes.

I appreciate un-drama now more than I did 12 years ago, and at this point in my life I’ve come to realize that I often create my own drama. I hate boredom, and what better to alleviate the ennui than to get crazy drunk and spend my hangover under the bushes in front of my workplace?

This last summer I stopped taking Zoloft, an act that caused several side effects, one of which was rage and an inability to say anything but the truth. I lost a few friends during this time, and I discovered that there is a great divide among people about psychiatric drugs; on the one hand, there are some people that think that you should take the drugs and never go off. There are others that think taking the drugs is a weakness. I ended up in the middle, where I thought I should take the drugs so long as they were necessary, but that if I could honestly make it on my own I should stop taking them. Of course, nobody agreed with me, because I didn’t support either side. Figures.

Taking psychiatric drugs is often compared to taking drugs for diabetes; along those lines, I think some people have a serious mental illness that never goes away, and they need to take medication every single day for the rest of their life, just like Type 1 diabetics. However, I also think that there are some people who become depressed for other reasons, and they may need the drugs temporarily but the illness can be corrected — much like Type II diabetics, who can correct the problem with diet and exercise.

I personally have had periods in my life where I have been extremely healthy, without drugs, and so I know that, for me, it is possible, I just have to figure out what kind of mental diet I need. This summer I realized that I was taking on too much stress, and that I was searching for drama, and these were overwhelming me mentally and the end result was a kind of exhausted depression. The first thing I had to do was give up some stressors — this included my job, and luckily I was able to quit without financial ruin — but I also had to stop looking for drama. I had to find a quiet life, and accept that it was okay if I did the same thing on Tuesday that I did on Monday. This was very hard for me, but I have embraced it, and I am finding new friends — slowly. Because I am taking everything very slowly.

So, at this period of my life, I really appreciate being here in Iowa, where taking it slowly is a kind of state creed. I liked the fact that the lady who took the money for my breakfast this morning stopped to talk to my kids — like she just had the time, even though she was working, and why not stop and talk to the little people? I had lunch with my long-time friend Seth, and our “lunch” lasted a few hours and included a tour of the university. For that matter, a maintenance guy in the elevator said howdy and talked to my kids, too, even though he was a complete stranger. Like Snook on “It’s a Big, Big World,” Iowa is the king of slow.

Kinda nice, really.