This does not bode well for my personality, my constant need to complain on my blog on the weekends after listening selflessly to patient complaints at work all week. I am trying to stop, to be more positive, but I think I'm addicted to the negative.
I used to have a friend who was very nice. So nice that she remembered everyone's birthdays. I mean everyone's. I never remember birthdays, except those I gave birth on. She had this system: a giant file box divided by dates, filled with cards she would gradually accrue all year. When the date fell on your birthday, out your card went in the mail. I should have been grateful, being remembered, right? But instead I was incredibly annoyed, took about two months to thank her. It felt like my name was on some junk mailing list. I was in there with everyone she knew. Honestly, I would rather have not gotten a card at all. It made me feel incessantly obligated because I was not a card-giver. I thought they were a cutesy waste of money. A brief remark would have been better. It just seemed so fake. Occasionally she would go on a trip and bring me a little gift. I remember in particular a pair of earrings that must have cost a dollar. It was so cheap it was embarrassing and unwearable. I make my own jewelery. I would never use such cheap materials. Again, I'd prefer to have gotten nothing and not have to pretend gratitude. One of her birthdays I decided I should really get her a gift. I got her a hard-cover book because the plot took place where she is from. I never spend money on hard-cover books for myself. I didn't hear back and a month later finally asked her about it. She said she didn't like it. I never liked a single card or gift she gave me. I never told her. I think that was the beginning of the end of our friendship.
Her birthday cards were a form of mass mailing that I found intolerable. Another type is the highly personal mass e-mail to hundred friends filling them in on your life, ramblings, thoughts, politics. I had a friend who sent those and they made me crazy. The voice of the letter was intimate, but how intimate can a letter to a hundred friends be? How do you respond without feeling like your note will be stuck in a pile of fan mail? I eventually asked her to please take me off the list, we were trying to reduce our e-mail. She seemed taken aback, but did so. I basically stopped hearing from her at all. If it took her any extra effort to write to me, she wasn't going to do it was the message I got. That has fortunately changed recently. I actually now merit my own person e-mails and I'm ecstatic.
And yet I fill post after post with complaints, muses, politics. The difference is, my posts don't land in your mailbox or your e-mail box. You have to deliberately come here to read it. And if my writing has gotten too tedious, ranty, predictable, you simply stop reading halfway through the first line. You decide it's too boring and you don't owe me anything. I don't get insulted. I may not even know you've made contact. It's a completely different animal, much more impersonal, less demanding of your attention. No one's feelings get hurt at all.
So happy birthday to all of you whenever it occurs, and it has to occur sometime. And sorry, no gifts, cheap or expensive. You will have to settle for my words, carved by me as carefully as possible, visit or not.
My husband has a different philosophy. He has mass mailings of his photos, which is his hobby. I've posted some of them on my blog for Occupy Boston. People love his photos. The few who don't can delete them. But they aren't personal in the sense of photos of him and our family. They are photos of his world, and events that interest others. It would be perfect for a photo blog which is what I think he should do, because it amounts to that.
Emerson once said that because gifts make people feel obligated, you should only give flowers and fruit. To me, spontaneous, generous comments on my blog posts are the best gifts I can get.
5 comments:
I send cards once a year, for Christmas. And I send out a letter for the family and friends who are like me, running crazy and don't always have time to sit down for a phone call. My grandmother is like your friend, with an index box with everyone's birthdays and anniversaries. I send birthday cards to the people closest to me.
As to gifts, I feel the same about jewelry. And, my friend, your words are the best gift you could hope to offer myself or anyone else who reads your blog.
We do a yearly New Years letter which is mostly pictures. We've sent out a couple of humorous letters mocking the yearly bragging fest. I think yearly Christmas letters can be delightful surprises, even the bragging ones, which, reflecting the personality of the sender, can be very funny. What I object to it Christmas letter after Christmas letter the whole year through, with no personal letters in between. It feels like a one-sided faux friendship: how am I and who cares about you? Thanks about the blog. There, too, I've had issues with lack of reciprocity when someone constantly reads, knows about my life and never comments about her own. I've been forced to accept that that's just the way some people are. They claim to be too busy to comment (i.e. you don't really mean that much) and when you blog, you put yourself out there and have absolutely no control over what you get back so you just have to let it go and not let it matter.
I have no illusions about my Christmas letters. I imagine they're skimmed over with a couple of "Oh that's nice," sort of comments and subsequently dumped in the trash and forgotten. But I also know there are a few friends and family who are genuinely interested in how I'm progressing since the divorce, and so I try to keep it to a brief recap of the year. For a personal touch I may add a hand-written note at the end or inside the card. I never thought of doing something a little more humorous, though the mischeivous little pixie deep within is wringing her hands and sporting a mischievous glint in her eye.
And on the blogging thing I hear you. Sometimes the most painful thing as a writer is not to be privy to, or to actually have your intended audience withold their reaction to your words. For me is an assumption that they just couldn't at all relate to it, because when I read something, I can hardly deny the compulsion to respond in some way if I found the piece meaningful.
I wear your words.
Storm: Oh, I can quite imagine a humorous Christmas letter on your part. Too bad you have to wait a whole year.
Shelly: You've made T-Shirts?
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