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Picture above originally presented in -
http://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/03/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-998.html
Hi Mom,
Three years ago today, I started this daily blog feature that I decided to call "Hey Mom, Talking to My Mother" as I felt it was a good way to continue our nearly daily conversations that we had throughout my life, though notably, and as a special event, after I moved out and had to call on the phone more often than not to talk to you.
As for the photo I shared up top, I wanted a happy photo, a picture of me living life, enjoying life, one of my favorite recent photos from earlier this year in March of 2018.
When I closed down my T-shirts Blog and its daily transmissions, I had reflected a great deal on the process of writing the blog and of coming to terms with having prostate cancer. Here, I have spent three years coping off and on with your death, Mom, and trying to fit the loss into my life while continuing to live.
Recently, I told a friend that this blog was "self care" and he was surprised. But why should he have been?
In producing this daily feature for three years, in carrying on for a time with TWICE daily posts after David Bowie died, I have learned a great deal about myself. Here's some background before I circle back to some of these lessons.
Three years ago I decided to do another daily blog feature dedicated to you, Mom, dedicated to talking to you, continuing our talks, remembering you, celebrating my life as a conversation with you, which sometimes also celebrated your life.
It was just two days after you died that I decided to return to daily blogging. I had committed myself to a daily project from 2013-2014 in creating my 365 T-SHIRTS BLOG. From March 21, 2014 until July 6, 2015, I made a few blog posts here on SENSE OF DOUBT -- exactly 33 posts -- but not exactly one a day for the over a year of time that had transpired. I was ready to have a reason to blog daily again.
Much of my purpose was defined in the first ever Hey Mom post (which I have updated a couple of times since). Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains: HEY, MOM #1
When I first conceived the Hey Mom feature, I proclaimed that I would stop after a year, but this decision was arbitrary, simply an extension of what I did with T-shirts. I did that blog daily for a year, and so I thought I should do Hey Mom daily for a year.
But when I neared the one year mark of Hey Mom posts, I did not feel like giving up my daily writing regimen.
ASIDE ON FALLING BEHIND: Okay, fair enough, Mom, I was not always "writing" when I mostly shared other people's content, and it's also true to say that I often fell behind on the production schedule and would have to catch up on several posts at once. I believe my biggest deficit was about ten days, which was when I invented the photo series one category to speed through a bunch of posts and catch up fairly quickly. Actually, now that I look it was thirteen entries but not all of them are photo series one, so I stand corrected. I was thirteen behind. This happened in late 2016, starting with:
ASIDE ON FALLING BEHIND: Okay, fair enough, Mom, I was not always "writing" when I mostly shared other people's content, and it's also true to say that I often fell behind on the production schedule and would have to catch up on several posts at once. I believe my biggest deficit was about ten days, which was when I invented the photo series one category to speed through a bunch of posts and catch up fairly quickly. Actually, now that I look it was thirteen entries but not all of them are photo series one, so I stand corrected. I was thirteen behind. This happened in late 2016, starting with:
through:
Photo series one is named for a photo album my mother put together that starts with my birth.
RETURNING FROM THE ASIDE: So, as I was writing, as I neared the one year mark, I did not feel like giving up the project. I LIKE being a daily blogger, and I found great satisfaction in the accomplishment. The daily blogging regimen feeds many parts of my self and my soul.
After a while, though, I did not want it to seem that I was crying for a pity party all the time, that I was making a public spectacle of grief just because you were the recipient of the blog posts, Mom. I was not "actively grieving" every moment of every day after a while, and though that first year was rough, the blog really helped.
And yet, I didn't think I could quit. Maybe because I had done T-shirts for a year and stopped, I felt that I had to stop Hey Mom after a year. It was my sister who told me that this decision was arbitrary and I did not need to stop. So I gave myself permission to go on, and when I did so, I did not have a clear idea of when I would stop.
As I wrote before in recent days, stopping did not feel right after year one, or after year two, and though I have some angst about ceasing the daily transmission, it feels like now is a good time to stop daily Hey Mom posts.
Even so, it was only about three months into the production of Hey Mom that a friend of mine suggested that I stop and prompted me to write this post:
http://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2015/10/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-88-90-days.html
It remains one of my favorite Hey Mom posts.
Here's core content of that post:
This blog is more than a way for me to work on grief. This blog serves as a vehicle to allow me to exercise my writing muscles on a daily basis. Some days generate more content than others, like today, but the goal is to talk to you, Mom, and by extension to give me a platform to really write about whatever I want.
Like with the T-shirts blog, the daily writing discipline helps me make sense of my life and to like my life rather than to hate it; and so even when work and anxiety and stress try to suck me down the storm drain of life, I have this blog to look forward to doing and it helps me keep going from one day to the next. I made a promise to you, Mom, and thus by extension to myself that I would devote myself to daily posts for another year, like with T-shirts. So far, so good, though there are a few posts on here (there are on t-shirts, too) that I consider unfinished.
It's sort of a misconception that this blog will be a daily reflection on grief in general or even my grief in particular. Surely, the sense of loss pervades the blog as I have a sign off every day about how I love you, Mom, and I want someone to give you a kiss, which is the exact way I used to end every phone call to you (or a goodbye when I saw you in person and could kiss you myself).The grief is here and all around me, but the blog is meant to be about my life. Really, it's about me. My subject matter concerns the things with which I am concerned. Along the way, I will write about you, Mom. I will draw on memories. I will reflect on my feelings and share about grieving. But in the final analysis, I am doing this blog for me, about me, about life, and in that sense, it's a celebration. Because, after all, I am still here, living, loving, crying, and dancing for joy. I am not miserable. I am not sad all the time. I eat sushi and drink cocktails. I play music and sing loudly as I dance around the house. I ride my bike, take the puppy for walks, and play Ultimate. Life is happening. It's hard, sometimes, but I grab it by the horns and wrestle. I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. I live.
If this blog is about me, or even my private conversations with you, Mom, then why share it? (ASIDE: And, yes, dear readers not my Mom, there are private things that I share with Mom that I do not put in writing here.) If it's just writing exercise, then why would anyone want to read it? I don't know. I do not expect readers. Though I mention readers from time to time, the only reader I really imagine is you, Mom, and you are not so much reading it after its publication, like other readers, as accompanying me as I write it. You are here with me. You are seated right next to me or on my shoulder or on my back. I FEEL YOU very strongly in all these locations at once.
So, again, if this is about me but for you, Mom, and you are here, then why share it with the world via social media? Well, gee, isn't that the whole purpose of social media? Isn't my daily blog post like a status update? Writing is meant to be read by other people. I have never been very big on doing writing that I am not planning to show other people at some point in the future, the exception being notes for a novel or piece of short fiction.
Writing is meant to be read, and so I share. I have had a great deal of positive feedback, which I have written about here on this blog on numerous occasions. In fact, I just wrote about the feedback subject nine days ago in Hey Mom #79, though my favorite post on feedback is Hey Mom #31 "forever and ever." The positive feedback I have received has encouraged me.
So, the blog is meant to be read, and yet I am not invested in whether people read it or not. It's out there for people who want to tune in, but I am not expecting any readers other than you, Mom.
Even after just 88 blog posts, I knew that the blog served a role in self care. It has helped me in more ways than I can recount or should recount in this entry (to keep it on the shorter side of long). The greatest takeaway from my three years writing daily Hey Mom posts is that I love being a DAILY blogger and so that will continue. I will continue as I have sharing articles, sharing my study of coding, sharing things that spark my interest, sharing about what I am doing in my life and in my new home. I will continue weekly features, such as Musical Monday, Throwback Thursday, and a weekly reprint on Sunday. Other features will be infrequent, such as xkcd shares, T-shirt reprints, and writing about comic books. Hey, I have three years or lists of comics stored in drafts that I have to do something with. :-)
On the subject of reading, I just finished Stephen King's The Outsider, and this quote near the end really struck a chord.
"Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall though until the very end. We did fall through, but we helped each other out. We're still helping each other." -- Holly Gibney to Ralph Anderson in Stephen King's The Outsider pg. 559
This quote cried out to me, deserving to be featured.
Even though the context of how the characters helped each other out, the meaning is clear, and it pertains to this situation.
We helped each other out, Mom.
We still are.
That's my takeaway from all of this.
I will miss publishing some of our daily talks, Mom. I am likely to continue to talk with you ever day or at least acknowledge your presence in my life.
On the third anniversary of your death, I went out into nature and literally touched it, putting my psyche in touch with the eternal that resides there. I will continue to do things like that, too.
Goodbye for now, goodbye to daily Hey Moms, hello to new modes of production and to a more balanced approach that may not look too much like a crutch.
I love you, Mom. I always will.
If there are nay readers other than you, Mom, who have hung in for many of the 1096 or have tuned in for this one, I thank you from deep in my heart. I appreciate your time. I hope to continue to provide worthwhile content starting tomorrow and for however long I continue to mange to be a daily blogger.
Thanks for reading.
NOTE FOR THE LAST DAILY HEY MOM: This is the last post that will feature the two day gap in numbering. Because I started this blog feature two days after your death, Mom, and because I kept on with daily posts for 1096 days, the number of posts and the number of days since your death were always two apart. Since I am going to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice a week, the numbering will be consistent, so the next post will be #1097, but it will be Sunday, so it will be made 1100 days after your death. The gap between the number of Hey Moms and the number of days since your death will continue to widen. It's inevitable that it should, but this is one of the sources of my angst and my problem with letting go of this feature as a daily broadcast.
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1098 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1807.06 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
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