THE STORY OF 2013 / A STATE OF THE BLOG ADDRESS

I spent a good chunk of some unexpected free time today answering some of the emails I've gotten in the past few months from readers, including emails of support from the ladies of this one online forum I try not to go to after I went there anyway one day to answer a few questions (because I figured, why not?). Reading them all together, pretty quickly a few themes started to emerge in these emails, a few questions repeated once and then twice and then again and again. I wondered if maybe it was time to write about these things I'd been feeling like I definitely shouldn't write about but still had a nagging feeling like maybe I should write about them anyway. Consider it an updated FAQ, if you want.

So here we go. Answers. This is the story of 2013. It's a long one, you might want some chocolate.

Before we start, a quick note: the below are all issues and situations that are long since dead and buried at the Holbrook house. All of this happened last year and the ramifications or ripple effects or what have you have been completely calm and smooth for a while. I didn't feel comfortable writing about them at the time, but they definitely had an impact on my blog and whatever else, so I understand the frequency of the questions and curiosity, and I'm certainly happy to address them. Here we go.

ON WAY TOO MANY SPONSORED POSTS, YOU SELL OUT ;) : Last year I was pursued by a "talent agency." For bloggers. Lest you think this sounds silly, well, yes. It kind of is. Blogging.... ahh I don't know what to make of it. The truth is, I would blog in a vacuum (not, like, the appliance) because I love blogging. As far as the "professional" aspect of it, well, that I try to take on a case by case basis. I know I haven't always made the best decisions, and I know I'll continue to make dumb ones pretty regularly. Every time this medium has changed on me (i.e. in 2003 when Google bought Blogger and we stopped using hosts like Diaryland, or in 2004 when photos became a thing (which at the time felt sooo narcissistic, hahaha, crap), or in 2009 when blogs were suddenly becoming businesses), I've watched it happen and thought it over and I usually decide, "Well, what the hell. Why not?!" Basically, that's been my blogging career in a nutshell. I'm just a wave rider, I'm not over here making the tides come in or whatever. So when bloggers were suddenly signing to agencies I thought... Well... Okay? And so I did. I signed with a lovely little agency last summer, and hoo boy do I wish I could take that back. Yee-iikes. I was promised one thing but delivered something else entirely, which I was then contractually obliged to fulfill via millions and billions of sponsored posts. (It felt like that at the time.) (Maybe it felt that way to you, too.) That was no bueno. And super eye opening. And really, really frustrating. I was eventually released from my contract, thankfully. But the damage, as they say, was done. I will continue to take on sponsored posts, but now that the last of my contracts are finished I am going to try so, so hard to keep a better balance. 

ON HANDLING CRITICISM POORLY: Last summer my sister asked me to blog about her break up with her fiancee. It was a bad idea though neither of us realized it at the time, and I just wanted to be helpful, so I did it. That set into motion a very bizarre situation involving a short-term family member using the appearance of our various social media accounts (appearances being deceiving) to further his own ambitions. Of course, I fell right into it and sincerely have no one to blame but myself, but that was a weird time. And it put a kink in things. Criticism started to feel especially intrusive and worrisome, since it was now impacting my family. I'm sure I was overreacting, and I wish I hadn't been so sensitive, but I generally felt pretty crummy about things and it took me a while to recover. I've got a better handle on this stuff now. Experience is the best teacher, am I right? ;)

ON SEEMING A LITTLE ... OFF BALANCE: Aha, yes. Writing that book took more out of me than I expected it to. Once it was time to write it, all the years of things I'd read about myself online, even things that hadn't bothered me at the time, suddenly came rushing back. I'd try to write a sentence and feel physically ill, anticipating the criticisms I'd get, telling myself I wasn't any good, feeling like I was offering myself up on a platter and that I was nothing but a worthless idiot. The obligations to my agency kept on coming all the while, plus my usual duties as a mom and wife and daughter and human being, and at times it was more than I could handle with grace. Sometimes it felt like I was letting everyone down. It was a short, but intense little blip. I'm sure I handled a lot of things poorly. There's a lot I could have done better. But I'm grateful for the education it provided, and I'm a much stronger person for it. 

AND THE MOST ASKED QUESTION OF ALL TIME: Well, let's put it this way. I've been a part of a mom's group for a few years that suddenly got... kind of cutthroat. I'd never dealt with this kind of thing before--no weird politics among the choir / drama club nerds I hung out with in High School--and facing it at 30 made absolutely no sense to me. I thought for sure I was being paranoid. And can you believe it? I wasn't. It's still odd to me. Why women do this to each other I'll never understand. It's not been an issue for a good long while, but do you know what I wish? I wish I would have had the guts to walk away sooner, even if it did mean appearing "rude." I wish I had stood up for myself. I wish I had cared more about my dignity than I did about being kind. And I hope if you ever find yourself in a similar situation that you stand up tall and don't take any crap. That was a rough time, and I'm sure it reflected in my... everything, haha.

THIS PART IS A DISCLAIMER: These are all situations that I still feel conflicted about addressing online. My only hope here is that if enough people are asking it, maybe some answers are appropriate. I don't like the idea of blame, or accusations, or gossip swirling around because of anything I did or said. So please know I'm not trying to stir things up, or paint things one way or another. There are always many sides to a story, and I certainly don't consider myself a victim in any scenario. 

THE CONCLUSION: The good news is, there is a happy ending. These things eventually resolved themselves, as things often do, and as a bonus, it pushed me to finally figure out a few important things about myself. Like why I think these illogical thoughts that often cause me to react emotionally and feel responsibility or fault where I may not really have any. You know, we all need an emotional tune up from time to time, and I'm a much better, calmer person for it. Hey thanks, Universe! ;) When you learn to be kinder to yourself, your whole world opens up. So be nice to yourselves, kids. (PS-I recommend this book, and the accompanying handbook. Way good stuff.)

(SPEAKING OF: There's an exercise you do in the handbook, where you address your anxious thinking by imagining the worst thing a person could possibly say to you, and then talk back to it. "No one would ever say these things to you in real life," the workbook assures you, which of course made me laugh. I don't know what the world was like the year old David Burns wrote this stuff, but guess what. It don't work that way no more. The things I've read online are things I never could have come up with on my own. Things like this, for example, which I found just last week: "Nat has a huge nose, distended anus lips, and absolutely no body." L-O-L. Truly, the real issue here is... can you imagine having enough exposure to distended anuses to be able to draw such a comparison? That must suck.)

I hope that in answering these questions I've accomplished more good than not, and I also hope that you know that however things may appear online, on a blog or on an Instagram feed or on Facebook, that they're only ever tiny slivers of what's happening beneath, and that in the end, we're all pretty much the same, flawed but hopeful, going through the very same things and making it all up as we go along. I have so appreciated the emails I've gotten. So, so, very much, I'm so lucky. Thank you! And I hope that you all know how grateful I am for the opportunities I've been given. I hope too that you know that while I might not take myself or this blog all that seriously, I definitely do not take you or your readership lightly. I'm honored and humbled by every stinking one of you. :)

xo
Your Ratness of Fatness