It’s happened three times this week – someone has come up to me and said ‘I really enjoy reading your blog’ – or words to that effect. And so three times I have either mumbled something incomprehensible, or alternatively gone into hyper-mega-thousand-words-a-minute mode, or possibly appeared standoffish and ungrateful for the kind words. All figure in my repertoire of ‘how to behave when someone says something nice about your writing’.
Don’t get me wrong. I love it when something I write makes people smile, or makes them think. Actually, I don’t even need the smiling or the thinking, I’ll settle for the knowledge that someone has read a post beginning to end, without giving up and heading back to facebook, or twitter, or wherever they arrived from. I’m self aware enough to know that this desire for some sort of validation or approval forms at least part of the motivation behind LearnerMother. Yes, I want to create a family memory bank, and yes, I love writing, but I could do both of those in a more private fashion.
So given the fact that I have decided to write a public and non-anonymous blog, why does it feel so weird when I meet people who read it, and more weird, people who like it? I really don’t know. I have never been very good at receiving compliments (not enough practice, ka-boom-tish) and clearly it’s not something I’m getting better at as I grow old and grey. But it’s not just the compliment thing. It’s – well, it kind of feels like if you’ve read my blog, you’ve seen me naked, including the saggy stretchy baby pouch, the thread veins and the bunion. So all the bits that I generally don’t show off. I know, I KNOW, this is a massive over reaction since I don’t write anything very private – I’m saving that for my forthcoming anonymous blog, ha! And so far, I have managed to resist the temptation to post while pissed. Though I’ve just realised that’s probably because I don’t ever get to BE pissed any more. Oh god, I’m rambling again. OK. What I wanted to say in this post, was this:
Thank you so much if you take the time to read, and thank you even more if you like what you read, I take it as a HUGE compliment. And also, this: if you say something nice to me on the yard, or on the street, or in work, and I start behaving like a bit of a muppet, please don’t think I’m being stand-offish or arrogant. I just can’t get my head around the fact that people read my shizzle, and I don’t really know what to say, is all.
*Blushes and backs out*
