or What Do You Care What Other People Think?*
There’s been lots of talk in this wonderful world of knitblogs about inclusion, exclusion, friendships, tensions – it’s palpable. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was thinking about it the whole time I was in Maryland.
Who did I want to meet? Who wanted to meet me? What if those lists didn’t match? What if I wanted to meet someone that my companion didn’t want to meet – was I obligated to stay with her? Would she ditch me for someone better? (Thank god for Jen – she’s a confident as she is generous – she could’ve cared less that we split up here and there – now that’s someone I want to spend time with! 😉 )
In the past four months I’ve been fortunate to have met a significant number of knitbloggers – in person – between my trip to Boston, The Yarn Harlot’s visit to New York, Maryland – and every time it was exciting, and I believe I forged, or cemented, real, lasting TRUE LIFE, friendships. What more could I ask for in this blog world?
On the other hand, in every instance I had a nagging feeling of what am I doing here? That wallflower feeling so prevalent in high school – maybe you don’t know it? Where everyone is talking to someone else and your stuck in the middle of a large room, club soda in hand, trying to look like you’re thinking some great earth-shattering thought when really I’m just standing there alone feeling left out? How about those nagging thoughts like I KNOW everyone’s going out afterwards – where’s my invitation? They don’t want me to come – they don’t like me – blah, blah, blah.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for people to stop in and leave me comments – we love you, we wanted you, you’re the greatest girl in the world. I don’t need it. Really. I don’t want it this way either. I’m actually very confident and know exactly what my life is about. It’s about loving and caring for my husband, my family. It’s about being a generous and sympathetic friend. I’m a perfectionist in the worst way. I panic. I have anxiety. I am extremely goofy. I’ve lived for a long time thinking that if I’ve been hugged, laughed, and told that someone loves me, it’s a good day – no matter how horrible it was otherwise. I love knitting and writing and taking pictures – sometimes in that order, and sometimes not. All in all, I’m a human being and human beings, no matter how much we endure, are emotionally frail. There’s a reason we stop believing our mothers when they’ve told us eight million times how beautiful and wonderful we are.
I’ve also recently found out that I love my blog. It’s given me something, frankly, I never really thought about. A community.
I’m a solitary person by nature. I’m a writer, and a loner and there’s nothing I like better than sitting in my house and knitting. With Georgie in the next room – and if it wasn’t for my niece and nephews – I’d never have to leave the house. When I started knitting it was in a void. My grandmother taught me one rainy afternoon – she gave me shiny metal needles and some day-glo orange Red Heart yarn. Three weeks later I had a baby blanket. Occasionally I’d go to a knitting shop to ask for advice, or I’d look on the Internet, but really, I was going it alone. I met Jen online in a completely non-knitting capacity – and because of our proximity, we became real-life friends – we’ve never had an online relationship really – but she was the one who introduced me to the blogs. I’d been wanting to document my projects for awhile – and that was really the main reason for starting my blog. The blog has single handedly gotten me writing again. Not necessarily what I’m meant to write, but writing nonetheless. And that can’t be BAD.
Along with my perfectionism comes obsession (and really – find me a knitter who isn’t obsessed) and it wasn’t long before I was reading every knitting blog that I could find. Slowly I became a regular reader of many, and they started reading back and then I made friends. Real friends. Some I’ve met in real life, some I may never meet, but they are a comfort to me, they bring humor and fun into my life, and they support my knitting. This last one is really important because there is no one in my “real” life that knits. When I first met Jen, it was crazy. I’d call my sister and tell her – “She knits. And she doesn’t mind going to every yarn store within a 25 mile radius. All in one day! I’m in love!” My sister is VERY grateful for you Jen.
Knitting and knit-bloggers by extension have opened up my life for me. I’m not one who likes to travel – as I said – I’d rather stay home. But lately, whenever Georgie brings up a place he’d like us to visit, my first thought is that there will be yarn stores there, and no doubt – knit bloggers. And that thought makes me feel like I could be comfortable anywhere.
Back to the whole tension thing: I’ve now met a good number of “famous” bloggers – and let me tell you they’ve seemed as uncomfortable with their “fame” as the people approaching them. Blogging is a dichotomy – in many instances it’s an intensely private journal that just so happens to have a very public face. At least it is for me. I shouldn’t presume to talk for others. But I can say this, for the bloggers I’ve met in person it’s been true for me that if I like your blog, I can pretty much say that I like you as well.
What was especially nice about Maryland was that I met bloggers whose blogs I’d never really read before. It was because I got to spend time with them that I will now follow their blogs – they are friends. There were also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people at the festival. It was impossible to meet everyone you wanted to meet – it was overwhelming in so many ways. I’m honestly worried about Rhinebeck. There are too many people I’d like to spend time with – and not all of these people will overlap, I’m afraid. You’ve all had this experience, I’m sure. Friends from different walks of life, different ages, different backgrounds, different sensibilities. The dinner party where you bring everyone together and after five minutes you want to crawl in a corner. Chemistry is like lightning – you can’t control where it strikes. I’m afraid that the only thing that really connects these groups is me. And knitting. Narcissistic and tenuous at the same time. How’s that for being bold? I’m feeling pressure already to please all of the people all of the time. What to do? I don’t know. I’ll figure it out later. Inevitably, someone will be hurt (I’m talking generally here.) And to that I say tough. That’s life. I try to keep in mind always – there’s always going to be someone better off than me, and someone worse off than me. Perspective is necessary.
This is a long rambling post and it’s late and I’m tired running around with the kids all day. But I wanted to get this stuff off my chest because I’ve been thinking a lot about it. And after all – it’s my blog. I can do what I want with it. You don’t have to read it. Heck, I don’t have to read it.
I will end with this: I am the same no matter where I am, or who I’m with. I’m one of those people incapable of lying, so I can’t put on a persona to save my life. If I’m enthusiastic, it’s true. If I’m sad, it’s true. If I don’t like you, well, I’ll become very polite and end the conversation as soon as possible. If I’m your friend, I’m like the loyalest of dogs. You will not get rid of me unless you beat me over the nose with a wet newspaper too many times to count. I mate for life. I’m a swan. This is me. This blog is me, and if you’ve met me in person I can tell you that what you see is what you get. Take it or leave it.
Self-Portrait, November 2002
* Richard Feynman never cared a stitch what other people thought of him. He’s a personal hero.
I had that wallflower moment at MDS$W, where people are sort of talking to you, but sort of not and you wonder if they’re just being nice and humoring you and if you should totally sense this and walk away, or if they DO like you, but they’re overwhelmed by the situation and number of people around or just caught up in their own thing. There’s too much going on all at once at these things and you just have to take it with a grain of salt, I guess. They like me. It’s just CRAZY there. And if they don’t? Who cares?!!? There were OTHER people I met that the INSTANT I saw them, it was like I’d found my long lost sister or some shit and THAT is priceless and THAT is all because of blogging!!
The internet and blogs have a good deal to do with how I came to LOVE knitting! Before I found blogs, I was knitting in a vacuum and not really loving it. Now I’m part of a COMMUNITY and I’ve learned so much and gained so much and given so much and I’m so greatful for how it’s enriched my life in the last year. If people want to get all immature and high school about it, let them. It’s really their problem and insecurity to deal with. In the meantime, I’mma keep reading blogs and making friends 🙂
So like, when it’s time to throw it down and get our party on at Rhinebeck, you’re so coming, right?
Like my mother always said “If all the kids jump off the cliff, are you gonna join them?” Only if it looks like fun, Mom! 😉 One of my personal traits that has gotten me in some trouble here in blogland (or so I’m picking up through intuition) is that I don’t really care what people think of me. If I really cared what people were thinking, could I have written half the posts I’ve published? But recently I’ve had to start caring if only because there’s been a whole lot of yip yapping by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. Which then brings us to the “tyanny of niceness” that I’ve seen mentioned in a few places. What is so wrong about saying “gee, I don’t think this friendship is gonna work?”
Cara, you write: “Inevitably, someone will be hurt (I’m talking generally here.)” True. And that’s the price for standing up for yourself as I learned recently. What gets me is that the people whose feelings are inadvertently hurt don’t even really know you. But they think they do and, boy, can they cause damage.
As far as worrying about walking around with someone at the fiber festivals? Sheesh, I regularly split off from the big group to get lost by myself for a couple of hours. I mean, its just not practical to walk around “en masse,” plus I need bouts of solitude to keep me sane.
Very nice pic. So that’s what you look like! And how nice you can post a close-up. I’m broken out worse than I was at 16. Must be all this talk around the blogs about high school!
P.S. Club soda in hand? Wow, you knew how to have gooooood time. 😉
Beautifully written. I am incapable of lying too…except to save my life–my mom says that is the only time it is okay. Thank goodness I haven’t had to do that…
I understood what you were saying about what direction would your companion want to go. As I have said several times, it is much safer to me to bring my family. I think I am a bit anti-social. Afterall, I appear to be the gene carrier for autism in our family.
I am sorry I didn’t meet you. I did got to the 12.30 meetup but I didn’t really recognize anyone. I walked around the outskirts and found my mom and Gracie. Darn, I am getting long here. Thanks for writing such a thoughtful post.
Well said, Cara! I think many of us spent some time thinking this through this week. Funny, I think, that it seems we all came to a similar conclusion – I love my blog, I love my friends, I LOVE my knitting. I would love to meet you…you remind me of me.
Whilst not wishing to be sychophantic I have to tell you that’s a fantastic self portrait !
The knitblogger thing : meeting people is fun ! I live in a knitting deprived area,I need to mix with people who share my passions.I do it mostly on-line within the knitblog community.When I get a chance to meet up with fellow knitters,bloggers or not,I leap at the opportunity.We all have anxieties about whether people will like us.We’d be very arrogant if we didn’t.
I’ve read quite a few blogs recently that have been full of angst over this.Some of what’s been written has been extremely whiny and immature [and no,I’m not going to specify who I’m thinking of here !].I find the need some people have to belong to the perceived ”in crowd” strange.As a non-U.S. blogger it can sometimes seem a bit silly.Who’s popular,who’s not…who cares.Do your thing,’chat’ with those you identify with or like reading.If you meet people that’s fab.
I,from a great distance,have very much enjoyed reading about people’s fun times at Maryland.The people,the yarn,the fibre,the excitement.It’s been great.I haven’t felt the least bit excluded !
:0)
Kerstin – it’s called Photoshop – great for those meddling zits! Honestly, I’m more broken out than high school as well. My dermatologist keeps trying to convince me that it means I won’t be getting any pimples.
I’m fatter now, but essentially the same as the picture.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I woke up this morning with all those thoughts of the things I wanted to say and didn’t remember at the time.
I don’t have any problem NOT pursuing friendships. As I mentioned, I take friendship very seriously – I don’t enter into it lightly at all since it takes up a lot of my mental, emotional and physical time. One of my favorite parts of being an adult is that I get to truly make my own choices (I’m forever an existentialist at heart!) What’s nice about blogging is that I can be part of a larger community – but I don’t have to necessarily commit (in my own personal way) to a friendship. That doesn’t mean that I don’t meet people online that touch me in a dramatic way – not all encounters need to be lasting.
I saw your comments on Knitty Gritty, and it got me a’ thinking. Not that I wasn’t a’ thinking before then, but…
I’ve been thinking about all the whole post-MD wrap-ups I’ve read. I won’t say whose I’ve read or haven’t. Glad to read that others had the same reactions that I would have had if I had gone to MD, but a little disappointed to think that those reactions had any place at a sheep-and-wool festival.
C, You’re a good egg. And frankly, one of the reasons why I had so much fun with you was I didn’t have to WORRY about you. Is she having a good time, is she bored, is she scared out of her wits because we’ve walked 800 miles in scary places? I knew if you were – you would say something. The best kind of friend if you ask me! xo,w.
Great post, Cara. And like everyone else said, great self-portrait.
I’m thinking that the way you describe yourself is very similar to how I would describe myself. Funny, isn’t it?!?
Let’s hear it for Richard Feynman. He’s a personal hero of mine, too. He’s the sole reason I spent several years convinced I wanted to go into physics. Then I realized that just because Richard Feynman could make any subject seem cool didn’t mean I wanted to dedicate my life to physics.
You are awesome. Seriously. I’m so glad I got to hang out with you in person, and that I get to read your blog.
And everything you said was right on the money. I’m totally sitting at my desk at work, smiling about this post. thank you!
Wow. Beautiful. I, too, had my moments in Maryland. Moments where I was homesick and missed people who truly know me for me and who I don’t have to worry about impressing. However, by Saturday afternoon, I gave up on impressing people. That’s when the fun really began for me.
The funny thing about high school is that nobody truly feels like they’re “popular” all the time…everyone is insecure about something. And, that is life.
I started to write you about this last night, and couldn’t get my thoughts ordered and put it aside. But you said here pretty much what I was thinking and said it well.
I think the trick is to know yourself and cultivate an interior life. There will inevitably be moments of feeling like you are standing alone, of feeling isolated or uncool, of wondering if someone likes you – but everyone feels that, no matter how externally confident they seem. If I get to feeling that way in a crowd, I people watch, or say hello the the person standing next to me…and it is fine, the moment turns and goes on and all is well.
The benefits of meeting people in this fashion far outweigh the negatives, I think. I hope that, as human beings, we can all aim for kind and polite and see what devlops out of it and understand that not all meetings are destined for life long friendship. That would be imposssible, overwhelming. And that even if a connection doesn’t immediately spark into something greater, the experience still has value.
Most people are just trying to find what feels comfortable for their own selves.
Well, ditto what everyone else said (what a sheep I am – baah). I think these thoughts about community and cliquishness are really pervasive in these post-MSW days. Maybe one of the craziest things is that we all have our blogs, our private inner thought places, to talk about how insecure we really are, and how we thought no one truly wanted to hang out with us. ‘Cause I wouldn’t have believed it from looking at you!
You and your blog is one of the best new discoveries I made resulting from Sheep & Wool (even above Socks that Rock), so I’ll be visiting your blog often (but in a friendly, non-stalker way, so don’t worry). Take care.
Wow. That was really powerful. I feel like you’ve taken a little peak into my brain and articulated a lot of my own thoughts and feelings. Keep at the writing, because you obviously have a talent for it.
Wow. I loved this post. This is my first visit to your blog, which I found from Stitchmarker which I got hooked on after reading one of Larissa’s articles in Knitty. I love the knitting blog community and long to be a part of it. I’m a new blogger, and relatively new knitter, and totally paranoid that I have nothing interesting to say. But yet I have this compulsive need to document, to share what I’ve been working on, what I’m learning about knitting with a community outside my husband and my cat who are getting way sick of my ramblings about the various ways to increase and decrease.
I started my own blog a few months ago, but didn’t give anyone I know the address (or even tell them I started it) out of naked fear of rejection. Which is really weird. I’m a features writer at a newspaper and stuff I write — with my name on it even — gets read by thousands of people every day. I didn’t realize how much more personal the blogging space could be…
Anyway. A really long comment to your well-thought out entry. What an awesome writer you are (and, I’m guessing, awesome person). I look forward to following your blog in the future.
Thanks for bringing this up. I think a lot of us feel this way–I know I can relate to almost everything you’ve said so far.
Your post is very positive about the subject of knit blogging. Your attitude is great, too. If you put out positive energy, I believe that’s what you get back. We get what we give when making friends and being a part of a community. It is impossible to be with or even meet all those we come in contact with when blogging. Very nice post, Cara.
beatifully stated – thank you for saying what I had been feeling!
Cara,
I know that the post was not written for you to receive kudos, but I must say that I find you to be such an eloquent writter.
It is so funny that you wrote about the Maryland Sheep thing because, notwithstanding I am a million miles away from Maryland in Calgary and know nothing about it, I was thinking of it too. You see, I am new to this whole blogging thing having started up in February. I don’t usually get an excited response from my husband when I talk knitting (ok, I don’t get any response) and I love all the knitting blogs out there, so I thought I would start my own.
Little did I know how anxiety ridden I would become about the whole blog thing. Do I come across in my writting as I am in real life? Does anyone read my blog? Is it worth it? Oh my gawd, I am totally envious of the community of bloggers out there who are actually a community? Will they accept me? Will I fit in? Is my knitting good enough?
As you can see, my neurosis is at an all time high. And to be honest, it is not like me at all. Like you, I am really happy with my life. I do not want for anything – I have a wonderful family, they have their health, I have amazing friends, I have a little money to buy the things I love (purses and yarn come to mind)and on and on.
So I am following your lead. I am keeping on because I like blogging. I am going to write what I want in the way that I want to because it is me. I hope to meet many of the bloggers that I read because they seem like really great people … but this isn’t high school and if you land up with a bunch of new friends, great. If not, still great.
Thanks for your post (as you can read, it really hit home). Oh, and as for your picture … gorgeous.
cara, thank you for that post. (^_^)
Great post. Great picture.
Everyone has said in the comments what I wanted to say…and you’ve said in your post what I panicked about, starting a blog. I was a wallflower too, or late bloomer, or something like that, but I’m also a writer, which means I put myself out there in a public way with sometimes very private stuff. The balance is something I struggle with.
But not for too long, because it’s so much fun to be able to have a community like this in my life, and it’s been a real pleasure to have people like you in it, Cara. You’re a gem. 🙂
Good post, Cara. I think you said it all.
Thank you for putting into words some of the issues I think about as a newbie blogger. Especially where you said in your comment that “What’s nice about blogging is that I can be part of a larger community – but I don’t have to necessarily commit (in my own personal way) to a friendship”. Communities are wonderful, and if a few good friendships spring up because of them, those are just an extra bonus.