New school year, new leaf

By Ktsquare from Canada (Autumn canadian maple in Ontario Canada, own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. I picked it because I like maple trees, I like red leaves, and I like Canada.

An hour ago, I sent my big kid off to his first day of fifth grade.  As I type this, my newly-minted third-grader is playing brain games on the computer, gearing up to start school at home.  She’s already had her first dance class of the season (big brother’s is today).  In less than a week, Girl Scouts and piano lessons begin, followed by music lessons and band practice.  I’m already two weeks into orchestra rehearsals.  Yes, I can tell it’s a new school year.

Which brings me to my blog post for today.  I had in mind how I was going to roll this week.  Today is my first official day back on the job–blogging, editing, and keeping up with life in general.  That was blown out of the water when I posted yesterday and nearly 17,000 people viewed, shared, and commented on my post.  I honestly wasn’t expecting that.  I am in awe, and I want to say thank you to everyone who was part of that.  I even received several personal messages and emails.  You, readers, amaze me in all the best ways.

There’s no way to follow that up with anything nearly so brilliant–at least, not immediately.  Stay tuned, though, because I might say something awesome and snarky and intelligent at any moment.  I’m stealthy that way.  I’m sure I learned that from having kids and from having to tuck that part away for so long in conservative religious circles.

Anyway, the big thing I’m doing is cleaning things up a bit.  Not here–I plan to be my regular old self on my blog.  I want to be more authentic, though, and to do that, I’ve needed to clean up my social media.  Over my vacation, I discovered that a big source of my distress whenever going on social sites (Twitter in particular) was my fear that I was going to say something and piss off the Royal Gatekeepers of Activism.  I’m not honestly sure what I thought they could do to me, other than possibly make me cry (they’ve done that to others) or gossip about me (yep, done that too).  I couldn’t place what it was, though, that kept me trying to fit in there.

And then it hit me.

I grew up with a parent who had unpredictable mood swings.  I have always been drawn to unpredictable people and situations, because it feels familiar.  On vacation, I learned that such vacillation isn’t actually normal.  Huh.  Go figure, right?  So I’ve now excised the scary, unpredictable people from my life.  I stood up for myself.  I pushed back on another blog.

It felt great.

My next order of business is going to be to message several people who I’ve hurt deeply in my quest to stay on the good side of the Pretentious Activist Brigade.  I don’t actually expect forgiveness, but I hope for reconciliation and a future of mutual respect.  Caring for people who I’ve personally hurt is a lot more important than trying not to offend total strangers on the Internet.

I hope all my lovely new followers will stick with me.  In case you’re new and didn’t know, I like to shred the Fifty Shades series on Mondays (once a week is all I can handle of that trash).  I link to my favorite posts of the week on Fridays, and I try not to link to already-thriving blogs (unless I know the blogger; I do enjoy posting my favorite Naked Pastor cartoons, particularly since I consider David a friend).  If you are a blogger, feel free to shoot me an email or a comment with your blog link and tell me which post you’re most proud of this week.  Similarly, if you’ve read something you liked, let me know so I can read it too and link up.  Between Monday and Friday, it’s a hodge-podge, but I mostly post about issues of gender, sexuality, and faith.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for making yesterday so fabulous.   Now, go make it fabulous for each other!