About blogging and being a noticed blogger

A little while ago I congratulated the Mood bloggers.

Coincidentally, I heard from a few folks who were not happy they were not chosen.

Listen, it's a great fabric store. 

I am quite happy to be a private citizen who can go there as this is allowing me to disguise my visits to a much missed son as fabric buying trips. I love Mood, and whole lot of other places in the garment district, and I have been thinking of them all there in NYC increasingly as the fabric store at the bottom of my hill becomes increasingly depressing.

That's where I am. Frankly my sewing is more about experimentation/stress relief/fooling around than distinguishing myself at this stage of the game when there is so much going on.

But I do understand. A long time ago I wrote a lot for Threads and had a good time doing it. Everything I thought was interesting they thought was interesting and that was just great.

However somewhere a long the line the editorial direction changed and I started to be sent ideas and fabric, and what I was doing for fun became an assignment. I remember being asked to do a piece on stripes and was sent some high stretch silk (try matching stripes in something really stretchy, under pressure) in a colour that I would never wear and more or less hated.

So I decided to give it a pass unless the project was what I wanted to do, and let's face it what I want to do is pretty erratic.

I admit however feeling slightly disgruntled when I saw other names in that magazine, even though the simpatico editors I had worked with had moved on, even though I had moved on.

It was no longer my turn.

I also had to remember that just because someone else was doing a great job didn't mean I wasn't.

This is a lesson I seem to keep learning and re-learning in my life.

In the family I am no longer the big cheese, although it causes me great pain to admit that. I thought around the table last night that I no longer am the one telling the funniest stories, I am more the listener, and more the person who packs up the leftovers, and does the dishes in a quiet house.

Of course I would give everything to have one of those meals we used to have, everyone at home, everyone on the verge of a food fight, but that stuff is happening more often than not at other tables.

But I like to think I was the one who taught them to make people laugh.

I just checked and there are 7 billion people in the world. Being a really deep thinker I have figured out that means I am not always the one chosen and that the high points are just going to come and go in my life.

I stopped doing radio when I was introduced as someone who used to be as a political operator and I don't want to be known as a "used to be."

Which sort of brings me to blogging, although not really.

Why do any of us blog?

To be famous, discovered, appreciated?

Well some bloggers are, and good for them because there is a lot of work in excellent blogging.

Sometimes I am slack about it and I am well aware that the garments I show are not as wonderful as the clothes I was sewing when I had more time, and maybe when I took it all more seriously too.

Sometimes I wonder if it is worth it, particularly when someone emails me and tells me off, but then I read a comment and someone tells me that they spit out their coffee when they read something I wrote because it seemed true or funny to them that morning and I kind of find it reassuring to know I am not alone in the world.

Don't we all?