Tag Archives: why I moved

communication, musings

Reposts, random messages, and reasons why…

Actually… some messages are useful and some are entertaining.

Regular readers may have noticed that lately, I’ve been reposting a lot of old book reviews and articles from my original Blogspot version of The Overeducated Housewife, which I discontinued in 2019. Those who also follow my travel adventures might remember that last year, I spent several months updating old posts from Blogger. The travel blog wasn’t so huge that I couldn’t migrate it to WordPress. Unfortunately, doing so led to massive formatting problems. I spent a lot of time updating and reformatting posts that were years old. That process is mostly finished now, save for the odd hiccup. I did have to edit a couple of old posts yesterday, which I only noticed because someone hit them on Statcounter.

I was not able to migrate the Blogspot version of this blog to WordPress. I think it’s because the file was simply too large. I started my blog in March 2010, so that was a lot of material to move. The system just flat refused to do it for me. I’m actually kind of glad, too. Some of it was stuff that doesn’t need to be reposted… non-sensical drivel I posted while bored or uninspired, or posts about time sensitive issues that aren’t relevant now. There were a few other posts that I didn’t repost because I wrote them when I was angry and they are potentially hurtful to others.

After spending months reformatting the travel blog, I decided I didn’t want to have to do that with the original OH blog. That thing had over 3000 posts over a span of almost nine years! By contrast, the travel blog had maybe a third as many. Reformatting is very tedious and thankless work. I think it’s better to just repost the stuff that I think might be interesting.

Some people might wonder why I would repost anything, especially book reviews that are very old. It’s mainly because I’ve discovered that people get nostalgic and look for information about things that may no longer be covered online. I’ve found myself listed in bibliographies, often by Internet handles. I get a kick out of that. But really, the book reviews of titles that are now out of print can be valuable to some users. In some cases, what I (or others) have written in book reviews may be all the information that can be found of books that have gone out of print. Book reviews are pretty evergreen and, as you’ll see below, some of the better articles, especially about true crime, are legitimately useful to readers. My angry rants about very personal or insignificant issues, or people no longer in my life, are much less so. 😉

I also like to preserve my own thoughts and memories, especially when there’s a news story involved. For example, on my travel blog, I reposted an article I wrote several years ago about a trip to the Eastern Shore that I took with my parents in the early 80s. On the way home, we stopped in Chincoteague, and I ended up visiting a water slide that was owned by a guy who, years later, made the news for being a sex offender who castrated himself while he was in jail. That true crime case is now many years old, but I guarantee there are people out there who remember it and want to read about it. I could have put it on this blog, but when it comes down to it, that story is ultimately a travel tale, and the travel blog needs some love. I do mostly try to keep the mood light on that blog, but not every travel story is delightful. I like to keep things real, if I can.

In the wake of all of the reposts I’ve been doing, I’ve been getting some strange comments and messages from people. Sometimes, I get communications through the contact form. I mostly appreciate the ones that aren’t spam, since most people who contact me are respectful. Sometimes the spam messages are hilarious, like the one I got today. Check this out…

Um… I wasn’t aware that I had any “drug addict criminals” to send anywhere…

Sometimes, I’m left scratching my head as to why someone would contact me about something. The other day, I got a message from a very decorated academic. I looked him up on LinkedIn, per his suggestion. He invited me to contact him if I ever wanted to know about Title IX and suicide on college campuses. I was puzzled, since I don’t think I’ve ever written about that subject. I consulted Statcounter to see which article the guy had accessed me through, looking for a clue as to why he’d written to me. The article he hit had nothing to do with the topic he was proposing. It was something I’d written about an advice column about divorce. But maybe the guy thought I could cover that subject or would be interested in it? I’m not sure, because he didn’t explain.

I probably would enjoy talking to this man. Maybe I should try interviewing willing subjects. I mostly write about stuff in my head, but two heads are better than one, right?

I got another recent communication from someone who wants to know more about a true crime story I wrote about years ago and had reposted. I didn’t actually know that much about the crime itself; I just happen to know someone who knows the perpetrator because they grew up in the same town. In fact, my friend had once brought him to our college and I actually met the guy. But at the time that I met him, I didn’t know he had killed someone, and I am not from the small town where the murder happened. I just know someone who knows him. Somehow, the commenter thought I knew more than I do, so she was hoping to glean insight from me. I ended up directing her to my friend, who is more in the know. I thought our exchange was over until this morning, when I got this message…

I have never done a podcast. Maybe someday I will do one, but at this writing, that is not in my bag of tricks.

I might be good at podcasts. Once upon a time, I did radio, and I was relatively good at it. I’ve been told I have a good voice for the airwaves, although I don’t like listening to it myself. Maybe someday I’ll try it, just for fun. We’ll see if my ego can take it if no one wants to listen to me.

One thing I would like to mention to those who do send me a message– bear in mind that unless you explicitly tell me, I won’t necessarily know what you’re referring to when you make a comment on the contact form. Those messages aren’t linked to any specific posts, so unless you are clear about which one you’re referencing, I am left to guess. Sometimes, it’s obvious, but other times it’s not. The message from the academic was a head scratcher. The one below was easier to figure out, but still not 100 percent obvious.

This guy was referencing a repost about strange crimes that happened in the small town where I went to college. But I had to clarify it, because it wasn’t necessarily plain.

The WordPress version of my blog is about 2.5 years old now. I’m glad I changed formats from Google Blogspot. I’d been wanting to do it for awhile, since the Blogspot format feels kind of limited and dated. I hesitated for a long time because I was enjoying a pretty good presence on Blogspot. When I discovered that someone was deliberately stirring up trouble for me offline, I decided that it was finally time to move the blog somewhere else and use a platform that would allow me more control over my content. WordPress allows me to password protect certain posts, so that invited readers can access them, but the general public can’t. On Blogspot, I could either make posts open to everyone or make them open to just me. Or, I could make the blog open only to invited readers, which I didn’t really want to do. Not every interested reader wants to be a member of an invite only blog.

I know Blogspot has been revamped a lot since 2019, and maybe what I’ve observed about its shortcomings is no longer true. I do keep my Dungeon of the Past blog on Blogspot, but I seldom update that blog and may discontinue it once my AdSense finally hits $100. I’m getting close.

It was painful to move this blog. Moving from Blogspot meant losing the somewhat robust readership I had, as well as earnings from Google AdSense and Amazon. The money wasn’t a necessity, but it was a nice perk. I would like to be able to earn some money on my own, you know. It’s a point of pride… even if all I earn in a year is enough to buy me a six pack of beer. I’m lucky enough to have a husband who supports me in all ways. He certainly doesn’t have to do that, but it’s nice for me that he does, given our lifestyle.

Since I moved the blog, it’s steadily been getting more readers. I have found that, by and large, I like the people reading now more than I did a lot of the readers of my original blog. People who are reading now tend to actually care more about the content. I don’t get nearly as many rude or abusive comments on this blog. Of course, I also moderate comments here, while for the longest time, I didn’t do that on Blogspot. I’ve found that moderating comments cuts down on hostile drivebys. I require people to identify themselves, so they must really want to say something to me if they comment. When I didn’t moderate, people would be more willing to comment, but many of the comments were mean spirited. I have feelings because I’m a person, too. Also, comment moderation cuts down on spam, although as you can see from the first screenshot, I still get spammers via the contact form! I still would like to know where Wilton gets the idea that I have drug addict criminals to send to his rehab. How strange!

Anyway… I do have a few current events in my mind that I might write some fresh content about today. Or I might repost more stuff from the past. I hope those of you who are annoyed with the reposts will continue to have some patience. People are interested in some of that old content, and sometimes I get inspired to make fresh content based on the comments I get on the throwback stuff. This post, for example, is one of those that wouldn’t have been written without reposts. Some might find it a boring read… but I know I have at least one regular reader who was amused by Wilton’s offer to host my drug addict criminals. You see? People are interested in all kinds of stuff. Luckily, so am I.

Standard
musings

My blog is now more like Muzak…

A few years ago, when I was still writing on my Blogspot version of The Overeducated Housewife, I wrote a post called “The blog equivalent to Muzak… on seeking a return to obscurity”. I was tired of the drama that often erupted on my old blog and wanted to go back to a less stressful outlet for my posts. Too many unfriendly people were reading the old blog and stirring up shit. The shit stirring was making it a lot harder to do what I love. When I first started writing my blog, I didn’t even share my posts with friends. I was pretty anonymous, mainly because my husband’s younger daughter was still a minor. I wanted to stay somewhat clandestine for that reason. I became more open once she turned 18; and that was fine, until we moved back to Stuttgart– which is a microcosm of American military types. That’s when all the drama ramped up.

In my initial “Muzak” piece, I lamented the drama that had erupted. I was so mindfucked at that time that I was apologizing to people who were offended by my writing. I now think I was wrong to do that. I can’t control how people react to what I write. It’s never my intention to be hurtful when I write. I mostly try to be honest, even though sometimes I dip into rants. Rants are fun to write and are probably entertaining for some people to read. But there’s often someone who gets offended. Sometimes, they leave me comments. I think of my blog as my “home”. People visit it because it’s open. But they can only do that because I paid for the space and left it open. Ultimately, it’s my “house”… and I shouldn’t have to apologize for what’s at my house, as long as nothing I’ve written is libelous.

At the time I wrote that post about blog “Muzak”, it was October 2018. We were about to move, and I was pretty stressed out about a lot of things. I’d say about 75% of the reason I was stressed out was because of our former landlady. I dreaded having to deal with her as we prepared to leave Stuttgart. She had gone from being somewhat annoying and intrusive in the earliest months of our time in her house, to being full on passive aggressive and hostile. She was trying to force us to pay for an awning that she’d neglected to have properly fixed by a repairperson. She blamed me for “negligence” when the wind blew it over, and added on a lot of insulting comments about my character for good measure. She didn’t seem to realize that she was negligent for not having the awning fixed by someone more qualified than her husband. She is damned lucky no one was hurt or killed when it fell. I resented the hell out of the disrespectful way she treated Bill and me. But I soon found myself unable to process those feelings on my blog, because a spy was sticking her nose in our business. I guess that’s an occupational hazard of blogging, especially when the writing is honest.

One of the people who had lived in the house before us was monitoring my writing. Now, I’m not that naive. I had a feeling she might be gossiping about me with her “friend”, the ex landlady. But then, months later after we moved, she later came right out and told me, quite brazenly, what she was doing, apparently expecting me to apologize to her. Then she tried to shame me for the content of my blog. She basically said I was being mean and cruel– having made totally wrong assumptions about some fiction content I’d written– and she put it all on me that Bill and I were leaving our former home on bad terms. I was both horrified and angry that this person felt the need to monitor and harass me– especially since I really hadn’t written anything that was that earth shattering. She was probably hoping we’d take the blame for damages done when she lived at the house. I also think I was correct when I suspected that she and her husband had moved out of that house early because ex landlady was driving them crazy, too. She once left me an indignant comment, claiming that my suspicions were way off base. She later deleted the comment. Why? Because she was being dishonest and didn’t want to leave the proof in plain view.

I hadn’t written anything directly accusatory; she’d objected to two sentences in which I wondered if they’d been completely truthful about their sudden mid tour move. In a comment she later deleted, she’d insisted that she’d told us the truth and that I shouldn’t assume anything about what happened. I think the real issue was that I’d actually hit the nail on the head. If she and ex landlady were that close, she shouldn’t have been worried about what I wrote. Rather than leveling with me about her bullshit, she decided to try to censor me and bully us into letting ex landlady illegally withhold our deposit. She made things so much worse than they needed to be by meddling. If she had just minded her own business and not tried to make trouble for me, it’s possible that we never would have ended up going the lawsuit route.

Add in the fact that a lot of other Americans in Stuttgart were reading my blogs. Granted, I had openly shared the travel blog, because I had lived in Stuttgart before and I enjoy writing. The travel blog is pretty benign, but it was connected to my mainstream blog. Sharing the travel blog ultimately led to unwanted attention from people reading the other blog. So, by October 2018, I had determined that I wanted to go back into obscurity. I just wanted to be able to write in peace. I determined that there’s a downside to being “famous”. I wasn’t really famous, per se, but I did become somewhat known in the Stuttgart military community, and that led to notoriety that I didn’t enjoy.

A few months after we moved to Wiesbaden, the flying monkey from our former house sent me a private message that led to my final decision to move the blog to where it is now. The funny thing is, I had blocked her the night before I saw her message. She must have sent it before I had her blocked, and I didn’t notice it for a couple of days. That’s unusual for me, but when I saw her message, it really offended me. She’d made accusations about some content I’d written that were flat out false, and decided to interfere in my personal business.

The truth was, I had been wanting to move the blog anyway, for several reasons. I had noticed that the more professional blogs weren’t on Blogspot, which seemed to get wonkier by the year. The WordPress platform has more functionality. I can make some posts open to certain people. I can make some private. There are also themes I can choose from with different features. Yes, it costs money, where Blogspot didn’t. But it has a nicer look and it somewhat easier to use.

I didn’t like having Google as a landlord. I own the domain for this blog, so I can write whatever I want without getting a nastygram from Google about “inappropriate” content. I once got dinged on Blogspot because I had a picture of a used pink dildo on a post about a woman who had decided to try to sell it on a yard sale page as a joke. I was informed that the photo of the pink dildo, which looked like a chewed up dog toy (and probably was used as one) was pornographic, even if there was nothing at all inappropriate in the story that accompanied it. It was a funny post about people getting uptight about the sale item.

I get fewer rude comments by drive by readers on this blog. Part of the reason for that is because I moderate all comments from new commenters on this blog. The other part is because this blog is only now picking up steam. It took some time for it to attract readers, which made writing here kind of painful at first. But now I’ve got more people reading… a totally different audience, actually, which is a nice thing. I have fewer immature people from the military community reading and more people who are actually interested in what I write and/or me as a person.

So… all in all, the move to this platform was a good thing. I buried a lot of toxic waste, too. The old blog has a lot of rants about personal issues Bill and I went through earlier in our marriage. While I found the writing kind of therapeutic and totally justifiable, strangers who don’t know us would think I was crazy or toxic and leave comments to that effect. Granted… I have my moments of toxicity, but I am nothing compared to my husband’s ex wife. She has done some truly diabolical things over the years… terribly hurtful things that have affected a lot of people besides Bill and me. I needed a place to put that stuff. Maybe I should have kept it private, but I felt that some people might be comforted that they aren’t the only ones dealing with a crazy ex… and some of what we went through was truly incredible.

Before I met Bill, I had never known anyone whose children were completely and unfairly turned against them the way Bill’s kids were. Bill is definitely not someone who deserves that treatment. I know some people don’t believe that, but it’s the truth. He doesn’t have a mean or irresponsible bone in his body. However, he is mild mannered and empathic, so he attracts bullies and people who think they can steamroll him. He’s come a long way in the years I’ve known him in being more assertive. For instance, I’m pretty sure our ex landlady thought she could take advantage of Bill because he was always nice and conciliatory toward her. He never raised his voice to her or got obviously angry. I think she assumed he’s a wimp. I also think she’s taken advantage of a lot of Americans. She found out the hard way that his being kind and nice isn’t akin to his being a chump. Also… while I’m not a mean person by nature, I am not as nice as Bill is… and he has to share a bed with me. Another important lesson she should have learned is that it’s not wise to wage war with someone who plans war for a living. And that is literally what Bill does.

For all of her complaints about me, one thing ex landlady can never say I did is sabotage her ability to get new tenants. I have noticed on Bookoo that landlords are starting to advertise their places and disgruntled former tenants are running warning ads. I’ve seen two of them so far. Both places were also blacklisted by the military housing office. We didn’t have ex landlady blacklisted before she got her most recent tenant. She’s probably blacklisted now, though, and for good reason. We got a judgment against her.

I guess I like the quieter, more Muzak, less drama oriented version of my blog. I don’t like dealing with people getting pissed off at me for expressing myself. I can assure anyone who reads my blog that I don’t deliberately try to upset people. I don’t wake up with the express intention of causing anyone problems. But if I can’t write freely, I can’t be authentic. And if I can’t be authentic, I really might as well be writing something as bland as Muzak. The truth is, I am not the kind of person who writes about hearts and flowers. If I tried to write that way, it would not be interesting or successful. I liken it to wearing shoes on the wrong feet. Maybe I could make it work, but it wouldn’t be comfortable for me or anyone reading. Besides, there are plenty of chirpy mommy bloggers out there. I’m not a mommy, nor am I “chirpy”. But I’m also not evil, irresponsible, or all that mean and cruel. I just don’t suffer fools or foolishness.

Standard
musings

Not so new anymore…

So… it’s been about a year since I took the WordPress plunge. How time flies!

I won’t lie. The change to WordPress was difficult. It was a necessary change, to be sure, but moving platforms definitely created a pain in the ass for me. My original blog, which started almost ten years ago on the Blogger platform, got a slow start. For the first few years of its existence, I didn’t really share it with friends, so it wasn’t read by many and got very few comments. I never thought I’d ever get to the point at which I’d need the extra features offered by WordPress. My blog was just a place for me to record my thoughts.

It was my husband’s younger daughter who initially prompted me to start blogging. Back in 2010, she was sixteen years old and extremely alienated from Bill. Her mother raised her in the LDS religion and she had swallowed the whole thing with gusto. Back then, blogging was popular pastime for Mormons and Bill’s daughter had embraced the hobby. Bill found her blog by accident; it was full of religion and sanctimony, and her tone was offensively arrogant. She wrote a lot like her mother does, which greatly distressed Bill, because his ex wife is very narcissistic and toxic. He didn’t want his daughter to be the same way. Still, Bill had been kept completely in the dark about his daughters since Christmas 2004. He missed his girls and wanted to know how they were doing. As their father, he felt he had the right to know, especially since his younger daughter was still a minor. So he kept reading his daughter’s blog, and he told me about what he’d read. I chose not to read the blog myself, because I knew it would upset me.

Then, in March 2010, when I started the original incarnation of this blog, I was making some money writing online. I had been doing it for years, was good at it, and I enjoyed the process. Since I had a lot of free time and writing is something I like doing, I decided to start a blog of my own. I figured if Bill’s daughter could blog, so could I. My blog started off kind of boring, but as time passed, I started finding more things to write about. I also found it a good place for venting, especially since no one really read the blog in those days.

Four years after I started blogging, the places where I wrote for money all went *poof* pretty much simultaneously. Then, a few months after that, we moved back to Germany, where my travel blog became somewhat popular. Although I mostly just advertised the travel blog, people in the military community eventually found my main blog, although not as many as I would have expected.

Some people seemed to like the blogs. A vocal few hated my blogs, and told me so. I think most of them were either threatened or jealous, since they mostly complained about the name of the blog and not the content. Most of the haters eventually moved on, but there’s always at least one asshole in every crowd. A few of the assholes felt the need to invade my privacy. A year ago, we left that community, and I finally got sick of the intrusions. So, since we had just moved house, I decided my blog would be moving, too. It was definitely time.

I had been thinking about moving the blog for awhile. Blogger is a great platform for starting out, but it has limited functionality. Quite a lot of the functions Blogger did offer were consistently wonky. For instance, regular commenters were having trouble using their screen names and were coming up as “Unknown” when they’d leave feedback. Comments couldn’t be edited easily; I’d make a typo and have to copy and paste, edit, then repost. The search function was terrible; it would only go back a couple of years, when I had almost nine years worth of content.

I didn’t like having Google as my “landlord”, either, since I cherish the ability to be free to write as I like. WordPress is great for that, since I can password protect posts that are “troublesome”, and I paid for the domain, so I don’t have to worry about offending Google advertisers. I also like that there are more options for controlling comments, which means I get a whole lot less spam and/or inappropriate comments.

Still, the old blog was easy to find, free to use, and had regular readers. It was helpful for many people, with book reviews, commentary on current events, and discussions about mental health and other topics. More people liked the blog than disliked it, as far as I could tell. It made me some money, and I had been there for years. There was a lot of history there. Some of the history wasn’t pretty, but it was still important.

I didn’t like the idea of moving my blog just because of a couple of intrusive, dishonest, bullying snakes in the grass who wanted to silence me and refused to mind their own business. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for being less popular. I missed the peace and anonymity I enjoyed before people cared about my writing. I missed feeling free to express myself without a bunch of backlash from people who weren’t interested in my side of the story and just wanted to be shitty. I knew resetting the blog would make it easier to go back to basics.

Ultimately, the positives of changing venues outweighed the negatives, and I made the move. I think I’m better off for it, because most of the people who now read regularly have gotten to know me and don’t seem to think I’m the devil simply because I speak my mind. A few of them have even become friends, of sorts. I still don’t feel free to write the way I’d like to, but it’s getting better. I don’t care that this blog doesn’t make money. I don’t write for money or popularity. I write for my sanity. Some people don’t understand that and judge me, but I guess everyone judges, and everyone gets judged. That’s life. You don’t approve of me or my lifestyle? Build a bridge and get over it.

There are days when I don’t even get ten hits on this blog. When I was on my old platform, I’d get a whole lot more traffic. Sometimes, the hits were gratifying, but after awhile, they made me feel kind of paranoid, particularly when it became clear that some people simply wanted to paint me as someone I’m not and use my writing against me. Hang around narcissistic people and you’ll soon find out what a smear campaign is. I could tell one was brewing because I refused to be silent and tolerate their bullying.

2020 is going to be a better year. I already feel a lot better this year than I did a year ago, which is typically what happens when one leaves a destructive environment. It takes awhile to “detox”, but then things are better. That’s how I feel now. I’d like to write about last year in more detail, and I probably will at some point, although obviously I can’t make it public. At least not until some more time has passed.

I don’t think the people who prompted my “move” understand or care about the damage that was done to me by them. As far as I can tell, they are squarely focused on themselves, putting all the blame on me, and are completely unwilling to take any responsibility. Clearly, they don’t care about my perspective because, as usual, I make a convenient scapegoat– just like I once did to my husband’s ex wife and daughters. To them, harassing me was about safeguarding dishonest, unscrupulous, abusive people who seemed determined to make my life hell. Story of my life. Well, at least one of my husband’s daughters has discovered the truth. The truth always comes out. I’m optimistic that this is the year it will happen on several levels. 2020 is the year of clarity, after all.

So I’m going to keep writing, and although I won’t be reopening my old blog, I will keep reposting some of the better content to this one. I don’t know how long I’ll keep writing here… maybe I’ll move on at some point. Maybe I’ll even rejoin the work force at some point. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and be struck by lightening so I can escape this existence. All I ever really wanted was to be left alone, anyway.

Standard
musings

My new address… there’s no HOA here.

It’s been two weeks since I changed blog addresses. I’ve had some time to reflect on the move. In many ways, moving my blog is kind of like moving from a former residence. Having been an Army wife, I’ve had the experience of moving many times over the past sixteen years. Every time we change addresses, there’s a price to be paid. Usually, we have to pay money, and we lose access to friends and familiarity. But with every move, we gain new experiences. The same can be said for this new blog.

I totally get that to some people, I’m like the crazy cat lady who is holed up in her house, shaking her rolling pin at people who walk on her lawn. Actually, I’m more of a crazy dog lady… and, if I’m honest, I’m not even much of a lady. I swear like a sailor, belch and fart like a truck driver, and drink like I’m Irish (which I apparently am, to some extent). But even though I’m not much of a lady, I like to have dominion over my “home”. My blog is like my home. I don’t invite troublemakers over for pie and punch in my physical home, so why would I invite them over on my blog? When I made my blog searchable, it was like opening the door to the world. Most people are nice and understanding, but some people don’t get it. Life is short, and I don’t want to have the clueless folks over for tea.

This morning, as Bill and I were having coffee and fruit, I reflected on the circumstances that caused me to change my blog. Had my old blog survived until this month, it would have turned nine years old. It saw me through our time in Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Jettingen, Germany. It mostly served me well. I had many friendly visitors, and I had some not so friendly visitors. But the not so friendly visitors mostly moved on after a couple of random “eggings” and “TP’ings” in the comments section. I mostly felt safe enough there.

A couple of weeks ago, it felt a bit like my former “home” was being invaded. One of people who lived in the house we used to live in was surveilling me in my blog home. And, much like a pesky homeowner’s association officer, she kept “ringing the doorbell”, complaining about the “noise” and the loud colors. I have mentioned before that I don’t like to be fucked with. So, much like I would if I were living in a home where people were harassing me and I had poor security, I decided I wanted to move. It’s not so easy to move actual homes, but it’s somewhat easier to move blog homes. The only bad thing is that I had to leave all my “furniture” behind.

For some reason, when I tried to move my content from the old blog to this blog, it didn’t work. I tried a few times to upload my old posts, but WordPress wasn’t having it. I eventually decided that maybe it was for the best. Some of the “furniture” in my old blog home no longer goes with the new decor. For instance, at my old “home” there is post after post about how angry I was with my stepdaughters and their mother. Those pieces were useful at one time, but they’re not anymore. They would be out of place on this blog. Much like the yucky 70s bedroom furniture we donated to a battered women’s shelter in Texas, that stuff no longer served a purpose and had become downright tacky. So I got rid of it.

On the other hand, my old address has a lot of posts I’m very proud of. Some of the posts make me proud because they were popular and funny. Some, I’m proud of because I think they’re well-written and even somewhat profound, even if no one else agrees with me. I’ve written some posts that I think are legitimately helpful and interesting, too. I would have liked to have taken them with me to my new “home”. Unfortunately, they were too heavy to move.

It’s a bit lonely at the new address. I don’t have many people reading my posts here, although a few people did follow from my old blog. I haven’t made this blog searchable on Google yet. I don’t know if I ever will. It took me years to do it with the old blog. I remember when I finally decided to allow my old blog to be searchable, I got a lot more attention, and that led to poisonous comments from people who don’t know or understand me or my situation.

The blog HOA lady has probably read my posts about Bill’s ex wife and his kids. She probably assumes that I was the “problem” in that situation. Many people like to project their problems, particularly on “stepmothers”. For all I know, HOA lady was a stepdaughter who hated her stepmom. Or maybe she is one of those people who thinks there’s always enough blame to go around. For the record, I happen to agree with that sentiment most of the time. You’d have to know my husband, though, to understand why that doesn’t really apply in his case or mine.

Nothing I ever wrote in my blog actually affected the ex or her kids, unless she read the posts and had “hurt feelings”. I never contacted them, harassed them, messed with their employment or other relationships, or interfered with them in any way. I simply wrote down my feelings and made them visible to the public. I did that because I know there are other people like me, in similar or much worse situations. I wanted them to know they aren’t alone.

I have written before that I don’t go looking for things people might have written about me. No good can come from it. It will only lead to hurt feelings and anger. According to stepdaughter, ex did find my blog and mentioned it to her. Apparently, stepdaughter wisely steered clear. She and Bill are now talking regularly. She even sent him a picture of her latest sonogram, as well as a video of her gender reveal party for her latest baby. Unfortunately, the video wouldn’t run, so we don’t know yet if she’s having another boy or a girl. Either way, I have changed my mind about Bill’s younger daughter. In the face of evidence, I’m still capable of doing that. So how crazy am I, really?

The blog HOA lady also knows my former landlady. Evidently, they’ve had a fantastic relationship. I’m happy for them, although I have lingering doubts that blog HOA lady was entirely truthful regarding the circumstances of her choice to move. But maybe she was… I really don’t know, and it doesn’t matter anyway. What I do know is that we didn’t have the same experience with the ex landlady, for whatever reason. It may have simply been a case of us not meshing, which happens to the best of people. Or maybe blog HOA lady had a very different experience than everyone else who has lived in that house. There’s no way to tell.

The point is, again, I was voicing my thoughts about that in my “home”– on my own blog. I did not name the landlady, nor did I do anything to harass her. I did not write about her in other places where her reputation might have been affected. I simply vented. For that, I got chastising comments, along with preventive chastising comments for things I hadn’t even done yet. Blog HOA lady assumed she knew what I was going to do and tried to stop me before I started. Or, at least that’s how it seems to me. Was she really expecting me to allow her to dictate what I do in my “home”? Would she stand for that if she were in my shoes?

Maybe she anticipated that I would move my blog. My guess is that this was a surprise to her, though. Maybe she’s glad I moved it, since she was compelled to keep coming around to write up complaints. Or maybe she’s sorry I didn’t stick around so she could keep spying. The lovely thing about my new address is that this “house” has better security. I can simply make individual posts available to invited readers rather than shutting down the whole blog whenever problems arise. I can speak my piece in relative privacy among people who get it, rather than open up the house to everyone and allowing them all to chime in.

In a lot of ways, this move reminds me of when I started my first blog. For many months, no one read it. I never got comments. I don’t even think I got any spam. I was in what amounted to blogging wasteland, out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but wild animals and tumbleweeds to keep me company. It was kind of lonely and, in some ways, it felt kind of futile. Why write something no one will read? Well… I’ve been doing that all my life. I got my first diary when I was seven years old. It was lockable and lavender and had a picture of a Catholic priest on it with the word “Confessions” over his head. I think that’s pretty funny, since I’m not Catholic and didn’t even get the context of that until the diary was worn with age.

I didn’t write regularly in my diary until I was about seventeen, but I still had it and occasionally wrote in it. No one read it, but I still have it in storage somewhere. It’s got value because it offers a glimpse of me at a different time. I lost the key to it many years ago, so it hasn’t been locked since I was a child. When I was sixteen, I bought a new diary that had a combination lock. I wrote in it every day, although that diary lacks the charm of my first one. It’s teal, and hopelessly 90s looking.

I’m sure blog HOA lady thinks I’m a bit crazy. She might think I’m mean-spirited and cruel because of things I write. Maybe I am… although I think it’s better to write those thoughts than act on them. All I’ve done offline, so far, is support my husband in his bid to get our security deposit back. But yes, I’ve written about how aggravating I’ve found both our former landlady and my husband’s ex wife. Yes, sometimes I sound bitter, petty, and “mean”. Is it worse to write down these thoughts and feelings, or simply act on them? I mean, I would like to find Bill’s ex wife and knock the hell out of her for the awful things she’s done, but she’s not worth getting arrested for. And that truly would be a “crazy”, destructive, and ultimately stupid thing to do.

Likewise, it might be fun to publicly smear the ex landlady, as angry as I was at her… (my temper has cooled in the past week, since Bill sent his letter) But I have no desire to be sued for defamation of character or have to deal with the potential legal consequences of losing control and going off half-cocked. So I write about her instead… I even tried to put a story in fiction, but blog HOA lady felt the need to intervene. She was happy to silently read all the other stuff I wrote about people, but not the ex landlady, whom she apparently holds dear. It evidently didn’t occur to her that she could simply stop visiting my “house”. Instead, she tried to tell me what to do in my house, and that is not acceptable.

I don’t want to live in a house where other people control what I do. If I want to paint the walls purple or magenta, I think that’s my right, especially if I own the place. I “own the place” on this blog, so I can do what I want. I will not allow blog HOA ladies to come over for tea and complain about my noise or loud colors. My new home is in blogging wasteland again, although I did tell a few friends where I’m “living”. Maybe someday, this blog will feel more like it’s in a suburb, although I hate suburbs. I don’t know. I don’t do this for money or fame. I do it to stay sane. I spend a lot of time alone, and writing helps me feel connected. And most people offline would rather not hear me spew… so I write it, now in a place where there’s no “homeowner’s association” for my blog. For now, anyway.

I hope this makes sense. It’s fun to write in metaphors.

Standard