Saturday, December 06, 2008

Bravo Boundaries

I received a few blog comments lately that I feel need to be addressed.

I got one yesterday complaining that I didn’t publish their previous blog comments. The person asked if I pick and choose which comments to publish.

Of course I do.

It’s my blog, I can do whatever I want.

In regard to another unpublished blog comment, I need you to know that I am so sorry about your depressed friend but I am utterly unqualified to help anyone with their personal problems. It sounds like your friend needs professional help ASAP. I feel great compassion and sadness for anyone who is suffering, but I can’t take on any new people’s baggage right now since my own and that of my loved ones is fairly hefty. I’m not convinced that I wouldn’t add fuel to the fire anyway.

Finally, the few of you gentlemen who are seriously projecting romantic fantasies on me, please keep them to yourself. If you read this blog and watch my shows you don’t really know me and your courtship doesn’t flatter me, it makes me feel invisible.

Mostly, I want to say that this blog is for me and for my closest friends and family. If someone else gets something from it I’m really happy. I’ve been enriched by meeting Pat, Jay, the Irish sisters and so many of you I don’t have the finger strength to list, but I’m ultimately doing this out of enlightened self-interest. I make no apologies for what I write or don’t write, publish or don’t publish. I have my reasons but I don’t feel any obligation to share them here. I also make no claims to being anything other than an unlucky gal who writes good. I am moved and flattered by the kind words on this blog but I do what I do in order to have a great life, not to be good. I don’t want to be good.

In fact sometimes I want to be bad.

My mother recently told me a story about me as a 4 or 5 year old. I apparently said “Mom, I’m very special - there’s no one else that is like me in the whole world- but everyone else in the world is also very special in the same way, so I guess that makes me not so special after all.”

I haven’t learned much since then I guess cuz that makes perfect sense to me.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Makes perfect sense to me as well. You're wise and witty and I second your right to pick and choose at will, to respond or not, to express whatever the hell you feel whenever you feel it. So you gonna publish this? :) J

Anonymous said...

Well said. Love, E

CT said...

I'm reminded of that time I made a string of jokes that you said came as close to breaking your decency boundary a I had ever come. Sofia was a big fan, as I remember...

Anonymous said...

people were upset? That's funnier than that time when (reference to Chris' inside joke above).

Anonymous said...

Amen sister!

love,
maggie

Anonymous said...

A chorus of Amens here.

You deserve those boundaries. We all do.

Thank you, thank you for writing this.

Inspired,

stephanie

Anonymous said...

You go girl!!!!!

Love, Pat H.

Anonymous said...

I sooo agree with you!! I am so touched that my blog comments have been appreciated...not nearly as much as your writings have been to me and my heart, thank you for your honesty...Maureen

Anonymous said...

Good on ya! Let people know there are boundries even in the mask of being anonymous!!!!

And your thought as a little girl makes sense to me too.

What I am having falling over curiosity about is the blog comments that have been removed! Did they have unacceptable language?

What do you have to do to get your comment removed by a blog monitor??

Carla Zilbersmith said...

To get a blog comment removed it had to a) turn out to be a hoax b) be upsetting to someone else or c) be a comment that was never meant to be published in the first place.

There are too many reasons why a comment would not be published but mainly I don't publish what the internet community call "trolls" which basically means douche bags who write anonymous comments in the hopes of getting a rise out of someone. Trolls want attention - even if it means annoying someone with a fatal illness with faulty logic and bullshit assumptions - so if you ignore them long enough they'll bother some other dying woman.

It's a dick move but after ALS it takes more than a few dickwads to get to me. Clearly some people need a hobby.