The After-the-Fact Fretting

Whew, so I was a lot more nervous than I thought I’d be.  Even last night, after I went to bed, I woke up a couple of times being all “Just go delete it and change your name and don’t answer the phone when your mom calls!”  and “You’re so going to be pulled over every time you get in the car.”

But I reread it this morning and laughed at the parts that were supposed to be funny and that’s pretty much all you can ask from a post.

I don’t know.  I know it’s corny, but I want to be heard.  And I know y’all here hear me.  But I also feel like there’s this push in Tennessee to corral the (liberal) bloggers and put us to work at the bottom of the same old system or, failing that, at the bottom of a new system that looks suspiciously like the same old system.  You know, sum us up and represent us, so we don’t have to be really heard.  And the amount of people who seem to think we need and/or are selling themselves as the Pied Piper of Liberal Tennessee Bloggers is kind of ridiculous.

We need zero people who can speak for and to Liberal Tennesse Bloggers in order to put us to work for good.  That’s one of the things about blogging.  You don’t need anyone to speak for you.  You can speak for yourself.

I mean, isn’t this the bullshit of being a liberal, if we can just be honest?  Our power as ordinary people comes from our ability to band together in common cause and look like a force to be reckoned with.  But the second you look like an army, some jackass wants to come along and be the general, so he can sell himself off to other generals as the person who has you under his guidance.  That old “liberal elite” bullshit.

And I don’t know if there’s any other way to play the game, if you want real reform.  Maybe you do have to suck it up and throw in with someone.

So, I don’t know.

Things are changing, rapidly, among Tennessee bloggers.  Finally, we’re seen as a resource.  The trouble with being a resource is that now everyone’s looking for a way to exploit you.  And each blogger is going to have to navigate that on her own.  How do you be a force to be reckoned with and still be an individual voice who gets heard?

Frankly, I don’t want to be ignorable or easily dismissed (though, yeah, of course I’m going to be dismissed.  I just want to be the nagging, dare I say “shrill” voice that haunts you right as you fall asleep.) and this seems like a good way to make sure that’s not the case.

I don’t know how it’s going to go.  But I feel good about trying.