I had a revelation!
This is what happens when I spend basically the whole day (all seven hours of it, since waking up) at home being antisocial (which was not quite my choice, by the way, and I am going out tonight, so I'm not a total hermit).
Anyway, I was thinking about facebook fan pages and how way back in the day, the days of my first blog, Watermelon Seeds, I joined a lot of (non-facebook) fan pages so that I could put their 'badge' on my website. I became fans of things like "Pink Polos" and "Blowing Bubbles" and "Rubber Duckies" and Jason Mraz and God knows what else.
And I thought, what was the point of doing that? I didn't even like rubber ducks that much. But I didn't know how to get people to pay attention to my website. And for some reason, this seemed like a viable strategy.
Heaven forbid I say anything about myself. How embarrassing.
It wasn't until later that I realized the best way to draw people in is to give them some kind of content (hence, real blogging).
And I'm thinking now: This is a lot like real life. When I was in sixth grade (the era of Watermelon Seeds) I really had no idea how to express myself at all. I didn't know how to even access things I liked. I only let myself listen to HOT 99.5, even though I knew I preferred Mix 107.3. We all liked Harry Potter and Lindsay Lohan and the Gossip Girl books (and yet maybe quietly we were all reading books off our parents' shelves).
And we did it because we wanted to be liked.
And then there comes a point when you realize that what people want is content. We're interested in the ways that people are unique, not the ways in which they're like everyone else. Everyone likes blowing bubbles. Who cares?
(This is getting cliche.
Damn.)
But anyway, that's the metaphor that came to mind a few minutes ago. And that's content.
My content is sometimes horrendously cliche. Yes. I accept this. But it's real, and I've been on an honesty-kick for the past week or so, so I'm letting it stand.
Clara
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