I have been reading ‘feminist’ blogs for a while now. They started out being fairly educational and really made me think. Now it seems like they’ve desintegrated into a whole lot of stretching and reaching for things to be irritated by and trying to convince you as to why you should be outraged by them as well. I slowly began plucking these blogs from my feed reader when I saw the things they expected me to be pissed about getting more and more ridiculous. It was like a competition for who could come up with the most infuriating thing to draw in readers.
You know what? I’m tired of being told I should be angry about everything. I can not live my life constantly on the look out for something offensive, being perpetually agitated. It’s exhausting and depressing. I have enough craziness in my life without having to actively seek it out online. When I get online, sometimes I just want to veg out. I want to read general ramblings about people’s lives and watch a few funny videos. I want to look up recommendations for new music, books or movies to see and to use them to escape my reality. I want to window shop and look longingly at storage containers and projects for my house.
I’ve plucked the weeds from my garden. I’ll continue to pluck them as they pop up. My moods have exponentially improved and stabilized since I dropped those blogs, unfollowed some folks on twitter, and stopped visiting sites that consistently raised my blood pressure.
I’ll admit, at first I was kind of concerned that I wouldn’t have things to write about. People love a good rant. I saw my traffic leveling out instead of spiking every time I posted something. I compared the blog hits to what I published and noticed that the dramatic crap drew in the biggest crowd. Not a surprise. Not at all. I made the choice, at that point, to not worry about it anymore. I would rather have consistent readers who stop by to digest what I have to say without having to force feed them my opinion on controversial topics. I want an audience that gets to know me and can be entertained by the general happenings of my life, rather than some melodramatic charicature of who I really am. Even though I had already made my decision, it was nice to read this and feel some validation. It was nice to know that there are still plenty of people on the internet who don’t only deal in absolutes. It’s unfortunate that those are the least vocal, so they often get talked over by the extremists, but such is life.
How does your garden look? Is it over run with weeds or does it fill you with pride when you take in it’s beauty?
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