{"id":1309,"date":"2006-07-28T13:27:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-28T13:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/07\/blah-blah-blah-ging\/"},"modified":"2006-07-28T13:27:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-28T13:27:00","slug":"blah-blah-blah-ging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/blah-blah-blah-ging\/","title":{"rendered":"Blah, Blah, Blah-ging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/susansenator.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/IMG_1167-797914.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/susansenator.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/IMG_1167-766417.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>Blogs are a strange and wonderful thing. We all like to beat up on them, calling them tools of self-absorbed folk, and outlets for others who have nothing better to do than read other people&#8217;s business. But I don&#8217;t think that. I think blogs are a brilliant new phenomenon, and only years from now will we start to know what are the effects of creating public diaries that are eternally accessible to others. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pepysdiary.com\/\"> In the past, people wrote diaries<\/a> for themselves and intended for the most part to keep them private. Now we have the weblog, which is one&#8217;s private thoughts but which is obviously public. Why do we do this?<\/p>\n<p>I find that blogging satisfies a need I must have had for a long time, that went otherwise unmet. I am forced to organize my thoughts, knowing that people are going to be reading them, and also to think about what I say and don&#8217;t say, because it is, as I said, public and forever (even when you remove the damned thing). I get the joy of seeing my work &#8220;published,&#8221; in the sense that it is in a format that the public can get to. I also hear from others, in a controlled manner, not face-to-face, which can be all kinds of things.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of people have told me that they both love reading this blog and that they feel a little like they are getting illicit snippets of a friend&#8217;s life, which makes them feel like it&#8217;s kind of a guilty pleasure. But read it they do.<\/p>\n<p>To them I say: pleasure is good; guilt, not so much! I am honored and puzzled by the fact that so many people find my self-absorbed soul-searching and worries interesting. Please know that I write this blog because it gives me an easy way to express myself, without paying a shrink or boring my husband and friends too much. It allows me to further raise consciousness about autism as a part of life, and also, to make people aware that just because one is a middle-aged wife and mother of a disabled child and two others, doesn&#8217;t mean she is some kind of lifeless martyr-drudge.<\/p>\n<p>I usually do not put in more than I am comfortable with, knowing as I do that on the Internet, you live forever! And believe me, there is still a whole lot that I leave out, and even keep to myself. I learn from the responses I get, or don&#8217;t get, where I have struck a nerve, who agrees with me, etc. That is a gift. I love that. It makes me feel less alone in this noisy, disturbing world of ours.  Blogging &#8212; and getting your responses &#8212; makes me feel <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">less<\/span> vulnerable, more connected to others.<\/p>\n<p>So if you keep reading, thinking, and commenting, I&#8217;ll keep spewing, venting, fantasizing, and writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blogs are a strange and wonderful thing. We all like to beat up on them, calling them tools of self-absorbed folk, and outlets for others who have nothing better to do than read other people&#8217;s business. But I don&#8217;t think that. I think blogs are a brilliant new phenomenon, and only years from now will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-l7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}