Blogger Insight and Circumstance

I hope for peace with my co-bloggers all the time.

Nevertheless, an “expal” might have gotten pissed off owing to my observation from some recent period of a particular propensity, leading to the blogger hitting back with a snide remark that I must be seeking desperately for love and attention. My only response was “Whoa…” (insert an eye roll to boot).

But then I’ve seen many a female blogger with my status get attacked in the same vein by others who never took the time to know those women through their blog posts.

Still, shouldn’t one ponder on the following questions before dispensing judgment to someone like me who has been open about her circumstances and life stories in this ethernet we populate?

• Would I go public as to how broken and flawed I am as a human being if my purpose had been to attract the opposite sex?
• In spite of my being deemed sweet, can anybody stand up and allege that I have initiated a connection beyond mere blog friendship?
• Notwithstanding having received emails from a few amiable readers, did I ever give anyone encouragement to cultivate more than plain camaraderie with me?
• Think about it: How can WP citizens imagine of fanciful relationships blossoming when each and every one of us is –now don’t be offended, please– practically disclosing in our respective blogs (oft unawarely) how much of a loser we are?

The blogworld has been my escape from the blistering events that had taken place in my most recent years: It has turned into an alternate world for me. Alright alright, I also admit to not having a life these days. And neither do most of you. 🙂

A month before, I even set up a dummy blog that would have the central purpose of Liking posts and commenting on the newly-found blogs I wish to follow — in as much as I wouldn’t want to unintentionally end up inviting any more new visitors to this site. You can find its avatar on the right side.

No denying I have held dear a few “buddies” — three or four remarkable characters maybe — within my blogging years. Alas, my affection, not to mention my sense of loyalty could be imprisoning — which renders me oblivious of other worthy bloggers. I had gotten attached to some people’s blogs. I had expressed warmth and admiration to a selected few. I won’t deny I had wished I were one of their most esteemed WPress associates, too. That hardly merits a misinterpretation though, does it?

I might have flirted in the past with my first two email buddies. Ok, I can be a flirt and have been so, especially in my younger days: It could have extended over my online persona spontaneously. Such audacity has probably been fueled by the fact I am so far away from all of you. So so far away.

And the flirting has lain dormant for quite some time.

I’ve a need to engage a Muse to be able to write something romantic, true. A few poems had been written with specific bloggers in mind. One of them a highly popular blogger“boy” from the Bronx; Another was the fantastic MrPoppins who happens to be my former black buddy, and who actually feels more like a younger brother to me. Both have long departed from our sphere.

Seeing that the heavens had forgotten to bless me with scholastic smarts, I wish to continue hanging around the cerebral blogs of good writers. I confess to my ongoing quest for bloggers who possess the finest intellect and wisdom to foster my personal growth as a writer.

Having said that, this blog is basically a memoir, not a gazette. If I had the time to work up an educational piece, I’d love to do so. In the meantime, my heart, my soul, and my background tales are this site’s focal essence. Just to be able to write is my preoccupation and foremost goal.

I haven’t yet pasted the chronicles of my romantic history which I have wanted for so long to do across these pages; what with my apprehensions as to being misunderstood in the aftermath — considering my passionate nature has been a consistent player throughout my life.

Let’s be grounded by the reality everything that presents itself here is supposed to stay in this virtual world; In this realm which prevails separately from our physical world.

Capping things off: my Stats has long stopped showing signs of movement. It only means no one reads my blog anymore. I guess the main boon is it’s safe for me now to write about sex.

Yehey. 🙂

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The song “It’s Impossible” has the lovely original lyrics that tell the sun to leave the sky and ask whether the ocean could keep from rushing to the shore. Its beautiful Spanish version “Somos Novios” below by Andrea Bocelli and Christina Aguilera became my favorite as well.  

“And tomorrow… Should you ask me for the world, somehow I’d get it.
I would sell my very soul, and not regret it. For to live without your love, it’s just impossible.”

A Few Thoughts On Blogging

It’s not easy for me to find blogs that cater to my taste. Only a couple of blogs remain that I confess gladly going to. One of them – the “fun” one — which I hadn’t visited for many weeks unfortunately had closed down which came to my knowledge only last week.

I am not into blogging politics. “You read me, I’ll read you” isn’t my thing, which means I needn’t be poked to go to someone’s blog. Popular blogs, silly, interesting fun ones I can endure yet half-baked responses or replies still make me want to puke. Take note: I’ll remain a reader if I like your blog except if there arise reasons to make me stop dropping by regularly.

Blogging friendship? It’s something I don’t believe in. This is a virtual world. Unless your online pal is a neighbor of yours, none of the camaraderie you establish here is real.

And then there are stuff the Internet offers and allows its users embarrassingly. Need a single example? Ok. I’ve had second thoughts about saying this. It’s been on my mind for quite a while yet it took me this long to say it as I may hit a nerve and truly anger “one or two pals”: There’s something not right about men reaching senior age who hang around blogs of teenage girls. Kind of eerie. Yet I have seen it happen around – practiced by some male bloggers. Ruminate on this: What would somebody think if I (were, for example, an exemplary woman of decent taste and all) kept on hanging around a teenage guy’s site that hardly offers anything special?

An astute female therapist I once followed told me I have power of observation that is unusual. That I can easily discern what others don’t. Her assessment was unfolded right after the time when she closed down her blog, opened another with everything changed – yet the new blog had been inserted on a “buddy’s” blogroll that when I clicked and started reading it, I knew at once who the owner of the blog was. Her unique writing style didn’t escape me. I proceeded to email her to ask permission if I could follow her.

I may not be always right in my instincts yet in the end, I’ve had more people saying to me “you’re right” than those who don’t.

At my age, I’m entitled to have opinions and wish to express them here. You already get I am not highly intellectual, my academic interests are limited, my scribbling style on the floral side. Plus this is just another diary of a woman approaching her middle age.

Yup, there’s nothing interesting here. Do not waste even a minute of your time on my blog. It would be best to stick with the words you had once released. Farewell. Adios. Goodbye.

All Feelings and Nothing Else

In person I’m not a major talker. I never was and I guess I never will be. I’ve no problem being viewed as taciturn anymore. In my younger years, some relatives and acquaintances had even ridiculed me for my innate reticence. Painfully shy since childhood, I concede to being one of those people who have come to live inside their heads with ease.

As the main avenue I can now turn to for consummate expression, the world of blogging has become a saving grace for me; in hopes it’ll constantly be the crucial place where I can strip my soul and be completely ingenuous in narrating the yarns of my existence.

But I don’t want to feel like I need to apologize for things that get uncovered in these pages. Or that I’ve got to prove anything about myself. We live in a world where each one of us is defined either by the material things we possess or by the relationship we should preserve with our fellow beings. I confess to not giving much of a darn to either. And that could mean I will continually have to pay the price for my unconventional perspectives and uncensored prose.

Yet the decision to face up to the consequences is a done deal.

My son is the driving force behind the set up of this blog. Perhaps in his future he’d want to know what his mother was all about, warts and all. He may want to read the things I wrote here someday (or not). If ever that time comes, my hope is that this site will still be around – even after I’m long gone.

You may ask: Why don’t I journalize in the privacy of my notebook instead? Exposing my writing, in contrast to keeping a confidential diary, prompts an effort on my part to check on my syntax and punctuation – a peripheral activity I find pleasurable in the process. It’s not a total win-win all the time, though. The impulse to convey my admiration or add my two cents in recognition of some co-blogger’s outstanding post makes me forget the invariable upshot of drawing attention to my own site – which shamelessly houses the contents of my mind and heart. Never was my intention to invite anyone to become a follower. Being misunderstood plus the misconception of my warmth are among the inevitable ramifications, too. These days it makes me wonder if it would have been wiser had I stayed an undisclosed fan or reader to them all.

My writing boldness is propped up by the fact I am thousands of miles away from all of you. I basically feel safe. A morsel of discomfort pinches me, however, whenever I see the country Philippines on my Stats. Except for one very young female co-blogger, I anticipate of no other reader from this side of my hemisphere.

Conversations with people around me in my physical world are mundane and unfulfilling. Colleagues and family members would seek my attention and companionship just so they could babble to their hearts’ content. They knew I would be listening. Not a tangible spirit in my actual realm has been aware that deep inside, there exists a long-standing discontent for not having enough people close by who are on the same wavelength with me.

In moments when I get tired of my own reflections, the need to dip myself in other people’s words come to me. Trapped by my circumstances, the blogging world arrives to the rescue. It’s a comfort allowing my own thoughts and concerns be buried under the voices and contemplation of others from time to time. Which brings me to mention more than a couple of fellow bloggers I’m fortunate to have known for their enviable psyche and superb skills of expression:

One of them has just written a beautiful piece about his parents who are on the brink of slipping away (his folks are probably the most beautiful elderly couple I’ve seen online). I wish I had the right words to say to him. But all I can reckon with certainty is – compared to me – he’ll be much stronger in dealing with it all when the zero hour comes, and that he’ll be able to carry on in a finer demeanor than I do.

And there’s this other long-time blog buddy whose father has just been confined in the hospital. Thankfully, it was nothing serious. Me and this bro pal of mine: we’ve always been like children in our online conversations; although I haven’t been an awesome friend or elder sis to him lately and most probably had sounded like a jaded twerp during our recent chats. Yet he surprisingly put up with me and has been quite patient. You haven’t lost me, dear brother. That’s all I can assure for now.

There’s also this phenomenal woman from a lovely island in Canada – who currently works in a rehab center – I’ve been itching to send a fan message and at the same time extend my apology to; for the reason I had misjudged her posts, at first impression, on the subject of men and love. In truth, she has been a true source of inspiration to me for her splendid works which are – on the whole – funny, intelligent, enlightening, touching. I still have to figure out how to get through to her without feeling like a bonehead.

My writings have been deemed melodramatic, cynical, and emotional; by individuals who, I realized in the end, hold nary an interest to get to know who I essentially am. The embarrassment I had felt then from their conjectures led to my attempts to alter the manner of my articulation here, until it seems I’ve begun writing like a man. But I’m a woman… which means that, yes, sometimes I am all feelings and nothing else.

This words I penned for my gravatar profile many moons ago:

“Allow me this freedom; that I may find closure to my quest for endless new beginnings.”  It had been true then… It still holds true to this very day.

No, You Watch Out Instead, Mr. Networker: How A Freshly-Pressed God Could Get It Wrong

We can be pulled into the vortex of the online universe, even by the non-concrete sphere of this blogging world. More than a few people, however, will be cunning enough to render this hemisphere tangible; the cleverest of whom will carry the stealthy purpose of making a buck out of you, if not now, hopefully in some near future.

What happens when a Freshly-Pressed God gets wind of your misgivings about him? Panic ensues. After all, Mr. Nice Guy image must be preserved; even though his demeanour in private correspondence compared to his online persona has the difference between night and day. So bullying follows – with it a threat.

I don’t like being bullied nor threatened.

Now it makes me wonder, how does Mr. Freshly-Pressed God plan to pulverize me?

Let me ponder on the possible ways:

• Maybe he’s planning to bring out his bazooka from the basement of his charming house in Canada and aim it at me all the way here. I bet he watched the movie “Wanted” where a bullet could bend and zigzag like crazy before reaching its target miles away.

• Or maybe toughboy aims to knock me out by swinging his arms ala Manny Pacquiao. Ok, c’mon granpa, hit me with your best shot. Surely your 58-year-old fists still pack a wallop. Hoosh  huk  huk. Oouch….that hurts. Happy now, señor?

• Or Maybe he’d ask the WPress office to send hail on my site instead of snowfall right this very minute – to annihilate and bury down all my posts. There goes my blog then. Kaput.

• Or maybe he’s planning to broadcast what a schnook of a writer I am who releases the soggiest, schmaltziest romantic essays. But everybody already knows that, including my cats Coby and Bodie.

• Probably, too, he works for the CIA and would pass on to all the embassies in the world I used to be a visiting showgirl for OBin Laden during his exile in Pakistan. OMG, so I am a suspected terrorist now?! That will surely be a problem as I plan to tour Zimbabwe soon.

• Or, it’s more likely he’d be sending his flying band of die-hard followers who’d each bonk me on the head because I made the “mistake” of questioning their Freshly-Pressed god’s sincerity and real objective. All 13,000 of them! Just imagine.

I guess I’m doomed….

Seriously now, I am simply tired of blogging politics, not to mention how most WPress writers handle the false sense of superiority and superstardom blogging fame accords them. It’s appalling when EGOs that have ballooned as big as CHICAGO cause Freshly Pressed Senior Citizens, I mean Freshly Pressed Gods to turn cockier and grumpier.

I started abstaining from email exchanges with any blogger pals several months ago, after the consecutive demise of my email “friendships” with two highly excellent writers in their late 50s (well, I figured then there’s a lot of wisdom to cull from these older folks – Boy, was I dead wrong). I just lost interest. Three years ago when I kick-started this blog, I was a schlemiel who hardly knew anything about relating with residents of the blogosphere. My lack of writing skills, in addition, resulted to my generation of lame and third-rate posts with the substantial understanding nobody would bother to read them anyway. Unknowingly, zero readership and my inferior blogging facility rendered me an easy target. Male bloggers of a certain age know who to mark on by going over one’s past entries and assessing how malleable, unstable, or vulnerable they are. The first blogger – who instigated an email friendship with me – wrote long, beautiful letters that entertained me for three months. The cyberworld, however, does not inform its inhabitants enough about each other so…. But he has already apologized – and my heart isn’t made of stone.

Mr. Freshly Pressed god, who initiated my 2nd e-mail camaraderie, is a lot cleverer and, in my opinion, more pernicious. At first I was impressed he didn’t badger me that I send him photos wearing my birthday suit. Little did I know he was gunning for something else. The motive would stay carefully hidden; his execution smooth and subtle. The Mr. Clean projection has already been laid out in his blog. Now it’s clearer to me why he usually fixes on old pliable women who make up the majority of his so-called “friends.” He’d insist he sincerely wanted a pure, real blog and email friendship with you; fake a modicum of concern for your welfare; pretend he does read your entries – despite dropping forced, obligatory, lacklustre comments on your blog. You’ll stay on his special networking  list – as long as you don’t make it obvious you are nurturing an ascetic soul and are completely useless to him. He eventually found that out about me and extricated himself swiftly barely five weeks after a personal loss hit me a year ago. Not a single friendly note whatsoever from him for months on end. Then came his surprising missive of “concern” last November – one week before launching his new product of greeting cards. Unbelievable.

I am actually relieved the bogus association with Mr. Freshly Pressed God has finally ended. I want to put that unpleasant episode of my bloglife behind me. There’s really nothing wrong with cultivating a livelihood through blogging means. It’s just that I don’t want to have anything to do mixing this art with money. More emphatically, I’ve no plan to dole out my little hard-earned dough to anyone out here. My November post of 2012 had tried to impart that. https://justmarj.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/november-babe-musings-random-ruminations-about-blogging-and-a-nondescript-existence.  I thought he understood its essence at the time.

My life story has been shamelessly spread out through the pages of this blog. It may seem I’ve lost my halo and wings and have fallen from the sky, but I was never an angel to begin with. I never pretended I was. Still, I don’t think I deserved Mr. Freshly Pressed god’s conduct towards me for the promotion of his own ends.

Perhaps it wouldn’t have come to this sorry ending if he had been upfront about his true intentions in the beginning. He could have forgotten a few bloggers aren’t so dumb as not to know networking is on no account synonymous with the fostering of genuine friendships.

And I guess I just don’t take well to threats and bullying, too. Unless not a whit did I come to care – ever. What a fool I’ve been.