Dogged Blog

Dear bloggers... no, the video clip does not say it all

I say this with love. I am, after all, one of you. And from time to time I post a video clip with little or no commentary because it has moved or affected me in a way that transcends words.

News and interviews do not fall into that category, however. So stop posting a video clip with little or no commentary and think you've accomplished anything at all.

I have now looked at the sixth or seventh re-posting of whatever it is Keith Olbermann had to say about Adam Lambert being gay. I don't know what he actually said, because I haven't watched the video clips. I keep clicking because I hope that one of you is going to include, I don't know, some commentary or a quote or two, or even a little bit of your own writing telling us what this means in the context of any of the TEN THOUSAND CULTURAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL TRENDS SWEEPING THIS COUNTRY TODAY to which this story is relevant.

I admit I went to journalism school and perhaps I'm being just too old-fashioned, but hey, I love me some Twittery link sharing as much as anyone. But that is not what blogs are for and if all I wanted was the link, well, I saw it on Facebook within four minutes of it hitting someone's DVR.

I don't need a lot. I just need you to write something. Isn't that why you became a blogger in the first place?

I'm just not that into you, PR hack

Why do PR people not take hints? I don't reply because I'm not interested. It's just that simple. Stop emailing and calling me!

Also, some people are really not as famous as they think they are.

Let's see, who else can I attack tonight?

Living in public: My life on Facebook, Twitter, and, well... here

I was reviewing some social media aspects of a project I'm working on for a non-profit group right now,  and its president said he'd like to have me show him how Facebook works sometime.

I said I'd be happy to, but mentioned that I had friended him on FB and he'd friended me back, so I thought he already knew how it worked.

"Not really," he said. "I mean, I see you posting away all the time, and I realized I don't have any idea what's really going on."

And then I thought: Ack. He reads my Facebook.

Well, duh. I friended him, after all. Of course I knew he might be reading my Facebook. It wasn't like the shock I felt when my father sent me that friends request a couple of weeks ago or anything. But I suddenly had this oddly disoriented feeling, like different strands of my life were converging in a way I'd never really anticipated or thought about before.

It's not that I have anything to hide from anyone. I'm sure we all cancel obligations by saying we're sick now and then -- and I suppose that blogging or tweeting that I'm at the beach with the dogs when I'd just told one of my editors I had a cold and needed a deadline extension would be, you know, stupid, and I like to think that I'm not that. (Note to editors: this was a purely hypothetical example. I'm always truthful when I tell you stuff.)

No, it's not really that I have anything to "hide" in that sense. But like anyone else, I have a private life, my intimate relationships and thoughts that are nothing I'm ashamed of or that are precisely secrets, but they're just... personal. Private.

For instance, search though you might, you won't find me blogging or tweeting or posting to Facebook -- which clearly is an action in dire need of a verb -- about my love life, my attempts to write fiction, or the unbearable cuteness of my nephew Ronan. I may from time to time mention these things, but I don't write about them publicly. And lately I've been trying not to turn the provocative things my friends say to me into blog posts, or at least, be far more subtle about it when I do, see the lead-in to this post.

But the rest of my life? My political activities and beliefs, my professional achievements (or failures, not that I have any of those), my shopping sprees, what I'm reading, the movies and TV shows and DVDs I watch, places I visit, and of course, pretty much any and everything to do with my dogs?

Those parts of my life, as well as my daily thoughts and activities, are pretty much spewed all over the Internet. Just look there in the left hand column of this blog: It's my Twitter feed. Follow the links over to Pet Connection: It's my dogs' lives. Friend me on Facebook: Pretty much every news article and blog post that makes me laugh, think, or rant is posted there.

And people I barely know -- or even don't know, since a lot of my readers follow me on social media sites or read this blog, and most of them aren't known to me personally -- read this, just as I read about or follow people I don't know personally. It creates a strange sort of intimacy. I've become better friends with a few casual or professional acquaintances after friending them on Facebook.  But it also gives those same casual acquaintances a lot more information about me.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not railing against the loss of privacy or anything like that. I like the wired world, love the Google, and have a news alert on my name. If I wanted to hide from the world, I'd be living in a very different way.

It's simply that my willingness to live in public, and my ability to do so, and the size of the stage on which that plays out, have all outstripped the extent to which I've integrated and processed them. I know, intellectually, that all the people who have me friended on Facebook, read my blog, or follow me on Twitter see what I post there. But when someone from one part of my life comments on something we wouldn't normally discuss, about something we don't share, or I didn't know we did?

There's just this moment of dissonance, a painful little snap in my synapses or something. This person now knows how I feel about shoes. Someone else has suddenly discovered I have an undying passion for Lucy Lawless. Another just found out I'm a flaming liberal, or a dyke, or that I have no problem with the Second Amendment, and now all these pieces of who I am and what I do are being assembled into a bigger picture than was even remotely possible just a few short years ago.

I was just getting ready to publish this an clicked the box to send the new post to my Twitter feed. Ah, the infinite ever-imploding meta-ness of it all.

You're not going to blog about this, are you?

In the last week, two different people asked me fearfully if a conversation we were having was going to end up on my blog. One was a virtual stranger and the other a close friend.

I've read about this phenomenon before, mostly trepidation among the children of mommy bloggers. But it's not unique to them. In fact, my vet mentioned to me once that she hoped when people read some of my negative comments about something a veterinarian said or did that people didn't always assume it was her. I just never extrapolated it out to, you know... the entire world.

I don't share personal information about other people on my blog -- names, addresses, what kind of pajamas they wear. Well, sometimes names, if the person is well-known to my readers, like my friend/editor/Pet Connection colleague Gina Spadafori. But yeah, my blogging, here and everywhere else, is full of snippets of conversations, ideas sparked by someone else's experience, and other examples of me turning life into blog fodder.

In some ways, that's my highest compliment: you made me think. You crawled into my brain. You inspired me.

Some of you don't see it that way, especially if you think there's the tiniest chance that you'll be identifiable in what I write, either because I named you or, more usually, because I gave just enough information that mutual friends can figure it out.

It's not that I don't have a life, that I don't experience it independent of its blog-worthiness. It's more about how I see the world, and always have. I remember walking home from school or sitting bored in classes or at church, telling myself stories in my head. Sometimes it was a simple running narrative of what was happening at the moment, and at other times it a form of commentary. Yes, I editorialized at a very young age. 

People who don't do this might think it distances you from life, but I don't find that to be true. It makes me pay sharper attention, notice more details, and at the same time lets me perceive things more organically, more as a whole moment, place, or incident.

In fact, I've long thought this way of perceiving the world is exactly what made me a writer.

Which isn't to say I don't care how those of you feel who don't like seeing yourselves turn up in my blog posts, columns, or articles. Of course I care. Why else would I be blogging about it now?

The Warrior Princess Effect

I used to suffer terribly from pre-interview nerves. I could be talking to a local family vet about flea control, and for the hours leading up to the interview I was restless, anxious, and sick to my stomach. If I was interviewing someone fairly well known or someone with serious academic credentials, like a scientist or head of a department at a vet school, it was even worse. Sometimes I couldn't even sleep the night before.

You can see the problem.

Fortunately that all went away after a while, and now I pretty much feel completely calm before all my interviews, no matter who they're with (other than a slight relapse this summer when I got to interview Rep. Barney Frank).  I've interviewed very famous people like Sean Penn and very smart people like Dr. Marion Nestle, and while I certainly prepared for those interviews, I wasn't at all nervous beforehand. (And for the record, Sean Penn, who I'd been warned was a very difficult interview, was genuinely lovely. Go figure.)

There is one huge, glaring exception to this new-found calm, though. Whenever I interview "Xena: Warrior Princess" stars Lucy Lawless (Xena) or Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle), it's like I'm back in journalism school and suddenly had the chance to interview the President.

I mean, I've interviewed Sharon Stone, Alan Cumming, Josh Brolin, James Franco, Gus Van Sant, Gale Harold, Karen Black, and dozens of other actors, filmmakers, and reality TV "stars" including Christian Siriano from Project Runway. I've talked to politicians, scientists, and other reporters. I've even interviewed A-list bloggers -- who believe me, in my world are celebrities. I've interviewed people I idolize, and people who've made films about people I idolize.

And no one affects me the way Lucy and Renee do.

Yes, I love "Xena" in all its crazy, campy, lovable splendor. Yes, it had a powerful impact on me at a formative age. And yes, they have teh pretty, both of them.

But they're also remarkably down-to-earth people, politically admirable, with relationships with their fans and the media that are at the same time friendly and unaffected and also very professional.

Is it just fangirlitis that has me nearly unable to eat my breakfast the morning before I talk to one of them? Tell me, oh readers; indulge me with some two-bit psychoanalysis: what's up with that?

Okay, readers... can you help me with this book search?

I usually don't have trouble figuring out how to research things, but I'm stumped.

I'm trying to find books similar to "A Year in Provence" but about Italy (pretty much anywhere) or London. They don't have to be really good or really well-known -- just give a feeling for living in those places, even just for a few months.

I've Googled endlessly, been to the library AND searched on Amazon.com and so far, I can't even find the category of book I want. I see that "Year in Provence" is treated more or less as a literary travel book or travelogue, but when I search those categories they're all, well... travel books, or stuff like the memoirs of Marco Polo. I need contemporary books, non-fiction or barely fiction, about an American living abroad in London or Italy.

Even if you can't suggest a book, can you tell me what the heck I'm doing wrong in my searches?

More on the glamorous life of the freelance writer

The next time someone tells me they want to quit their job and become a freelance writer because their job is too stressful... or better yet, they want to become a writer after they "retire"... I'm going to kill them.

And no jury of my peers will convict me. As long as my peers are freelance writers.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

That is all.

Just me on the pity pot

I just realized that I'm never going to have a true day off, ever. I will never have a paid vacation, and I'll never have a day off that isn't really just a few hours "borrowed" from another day.

I haven't got the words to express how exhausted I am.

Oh the carefree life of the freelancer.

Interview and other kinds of mojo

My interview mojo has been just toxic lately.

First, I had a big problem getting an interview on one particular subject, period. No one I contacted would talk to me, and it wasn't even anything controversial! It was like I was cursed. Finally someone agreed, only to keep rescheduling until it was literally too late for me to use the interview in my article.

Then I actually had to cancel an article due to problems lining up an important interview.

Then I had to spend a week getting a freaking comment from one person, this time having to reschedule the article.

Then I spent the last week and a half trying to get someone who had agreed to talk to me, again about something totally non-controversial, to actually spend ten minutes on the phone with me.

Well, I just did two of those much-delayed interviews, and am having them transcribed by the good folks over at escriptionist.com, and I feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders.

Now I have to interview the two gay contestants on the next Design Star, so if that goes okay, perhaps it means the curse has lifted.

Speaking of mojo, I wrote a diary over at Daily Kos about Barack Obama being adopted as a member of the Crow Nation... that is the top-recommended diary over there for the last 24 hours! I've been on the rec list there a few times with pet food recall pieces, but this is the first time with general political blogging.  I even got asked to cross post it at Native American Netroots, where it got front paged.

*iz proud*

Also, my coverage of the lesbian side of the GLAAD Media Awards in San Francisco is up over at AfterEllen.com... with lots of photos of Sharon Stone, Jennifer Beals, and more.

Slow down you move too fast

This has been an odd week.

When I was sick, I told myself on an hourly basis that I had to slow down a little when I got better. Ever since February I've been going full throttle, burning myself out on the pet food recall and never really ramping back down to even something like my previous already-workaholic baseline.

Unfortunately, I had a few assignments I'd pushed back while I was whooping my lungs out, and they were sitting there waiting for me Monday. I took a deep breath and like the idiot that I apparently am, determined I'd do them and slow down, you know... later.

The next day Michael Jensen, my editor at AfterElton.com,  bumped one of the articles out two weeks. He was all worried that I would mind, and I pretended it was a huge imposition but I'd suffer through it for his sake. And then I hung up the phone and thanked any and all lurking deities for the respite.

I blogged a bit, worked on an article due next Wednesday for AfterEllen.com, caught up on a lot of email, blogged a bit more, cleared some backlog at Club Kingsnake, played with the new video embedding system at PetHobbyist, read a really brilliant book I'm reviewing for Pet Connection, blogged a bit more, and had a relatively easy first week back.

I realized yesterday that Monday is a holiday, and called Amy Moon, my editor at SFGate.com and asked if my pet column, which I usually file on the Monday before it runs, needed to be filed today. "Oh yeah," she said. So I stayed up a bit too late last night working on it, and got up this morning to do a final draft. I was struggling with a tough part -- it's a sciencey thing and I have a tendency to assume my readers have PhDs -- when the phone rang again. It was Amy.

"Er, Christie? Your column's actually running on Wednesday this week. You don't need to file until Tuesday. Is that okay?"

I heaved a big sigh and told her I'd try to live with it.

Okay that' s a lie. I had the file shut before I'd hung up the phone.

Usually the universe sends lessons in a negative form, things like chaining you to your bed with pneumonia to teach you that you need to take better care of yourself and intermix a little rest and relaxation with the compulsive workaholic thing.

I'm actually starting to wonder if I might be able to learn something even when the universe tries a kinder, gentler approach. Ya think?