:: Unarticulatably: Use It In A Sentence Today ::

I’m contemplating some big changes around here. When I started this blog, I only posted occasionally and mostly to keep my family up-to-date on my dissertation progress, what I was up to, etc. Then I got pregnant. Then I had a baby. Then I started writing a lot and more, and more people started reading.

This blog has become very important to me. It’s a creative outlet, but it’s also a way for me to participate in a community of (mostly) women who are both like and unlike me. Women who have advice for me when I need it and who inspire me when I read their own words. Women who believe in approaching their lives with thought, insight, and a sense of humor. Women who are, by and large, a heckuvalot more intellectual than many of the folks I spend my Ph.D.-seeking days with.

My husband reads my blog and tells me he is proud of what I write, of the fact that I write. And I’m proud, too. More proud of this than anything else I’ve done in awhile, which I hope doesn’t sound too sad. I’ve received emails from friends – and from strangers who are becoming friends – thanking me for writing, telling me that I am putting things into words for them that they weren’t able to articulate themselves, expressing gratitude for various posts here and there. All I’m really doing is trying to be honest about my life and it makes me unarticulatably proud (not the same as inarticulate, but dangerously close) and just plain happy that people appreciate my words.

But then I sit here and look at my blog and think of all the things I’ve wanted to say but have censored. My students potentially read this. And Brian’s co-workers. My advisors at school. I work hard to balance my desire to speak honestly with my need for discretion.

And then there’s the fact that I sometimes wish I had some focus or purpose other than simply writing about parenting, mothering, and family life. I mean yes, I write about all kinds of things. But I feel on the one hand too focused and on the other hand not focused enough. Try to ignore it though many of us bloggers may, every word we write instantiates our writing selves – our blogging personas. Bubandpie wrote recently about blog gossip and tested her readers by essentially naming blog persona traits and asking them to "name that blogger." The answers were astoundingly similar – people knew who she was referring to based on what I felt were fairly open-ended descriptors.

So of course I keep wondering: how would someone describe my own writing persona? How would I describe myself? My bio (at top left on this page) is about as generic as generic gets. So fact-driven and so little of me. But if I were to rewrite it, what would I write? I have tried and tried in the last few weeks but I feel stuck. I don’t know how to write that bio.

This is, of course, not an issue that is limited to my blogging life. I am equally unable to describe myself interestingly in person. I absolutely delight in having friends describe other people they know because I am enthralled by the act of describing someone. I have always wanted to know how people describe me. Once, my sister told me that she described me to her boyfriend as “so jumpy it seems fake, but it isn’t.” I startle easily. I just thought this was the most interesting way to describe me. Hearing it was like getting a small taste of crack – I wanted more.

So anyway, changes are around the bend, I think, dear readers. New bio, new look, new purpose. Maybe a new name. New location, even, I think. I’m feeling fettered and I think the best way to loosen the shackles is to start fresh someplace where my students – and others – won’t be able to find me.

But then of course I am preoccupied by trying to figure out how you will find me. Hmm.

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P.S. Anyone have thoughts on Typepad or Wordpress versus Blogger? I've read some interesting comparisons online but I'd like to know what YOU think.