Velveteen Mind

Enter Your Cave

{Audioblog} Download 'Enter Your Cave' read by the author

The air in my cave is cool, damp, clean.  It reminds me of my grandmother’s basement.  I enter and take my breath for granted, then catch its smell in my periphery and stop myself.  Breathe deeply.  Close my eyes and exist in the air.

The walls in my cave sparkle.  Leave a light residue on my fingers that feels like  powdered marble.  I can hear water dripping leisurely down the walls.  I want to cover my arms but I don’t want to lose the sensation of floating. 

Clothing would anchor me to the earth.  

From a safe distance, I hear my great-uncle’s voice in the quarries, carved deep into the sides of the Southern Illinois earth in Prairie du Rocher, reminding me to watch for sudden drops into nothingness.

I have yet to discover a cave in South Mississippi.  Two blocks from my house is the bayou.  Drive two minutes south and you are in the Gulf of Mexico.  Nary a cave in sight.

My velveteen mind is covered in threadworn plush, resonating with noise and prodding questions, but deep in its center, toward the back, away from the vibrations of every day, is a cavern of quiet.

You ask me how I avoid becoming consumed by the static of social media.  How the balance and juggle of mother, wife, writer, editor, procrastinator, friend doesn’t destroy my equilibrium.  We all ask each other this question.  We all compare the green through our fences.

I enter my cave.  That’s how I do it.

I become overwhelmed and begin to feel a rumbling deep to my core.  Something begins to shift, sending tremors to a part of my mind that signal a need to go dark.  Go deep.  Enter your cave.

Can you hear it?  You have to be quiet.  You have to be mindful.  Can you hear?  Place your hands on your chest.  Can you feel the rumble?

A few weeks ago, I felt something shifting inside.  I began spending my Saturday and Sunday mornings in my room, with Olive, focusing on the deep-water blue of my bedroom walls.  My husband would ask if I was okay, why wasn’t I out in the noise factory of our living room.  I grasped at thin air as I attempted to explain that I could feel a change coming and I needed to quiet down and make room.  Clean up my edges so I wouldn’t miss it.  I was fine, but I wanted to be ready.

Sounds mildly crazy.  I swear I didn’t pronounce this while lounging in a flowing white dressing gown as I stared blindly out of our window.  Picture me in four year old yoga pants, with a pile of laundry in front of me, Olive lolling about on the bed, and my saying this very much offhandedly as I watched Food Network or CBS Sunday Morning.

I have a patient husband.  He’s learned to trust my instincts.

I’m only now beginning to trust my own instincts.  Never have I regretted following my gut.  Only not following it.

The other day, I dropped the boys off at school and wandered out to the Annunciation Church in Kiln.  It’s the closest thing to a tangible cave that I’ve found, an old white washed building in the middle of what feels like nowhere, where every name on every mailbox is Favre. 

After sharing a pleasant conversation with the last parishioner leaving for the morning, whose curiosity about my baby daughter and me got the best of her, I entered the church with Olive and delved deep into its quiet, cool solitude.  She was mesmerized by the stained glass windows and sounds our voices made in the empty space, leaving me free to ask, “What am I looking for?  What is shifting?”

This is not leading up to a big announcement today.  But the answers did come to me.  On the drive home that day, I began to identify a shift in direction.  I began to recognize a growing desire to live boldly.  Stop hesitating.  Trust my instincts and step forward with a firm foot.

And encourage those around me to do the same.  

On a phone call with Deb on the Rocks last week, I mentioned some changes that will culminate in some big announcements to share with you.  She made an audible sigh of relief and admitted that she was wondering if I was getting fed up with social media or if I was simply stepping back.  Reassessing.  I told her a little about my feeling a shift coming and feeling a need to prepare myself so I could recognize it, at the same time admitting that I was a little burnt out online.  She shared a reference to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  I asked her to repeat herself via email so I could share it with you in this post.  I was going to paraphrase her email, but she says it so well:    

My Rx for you:  Clarissa Pinkola Estes, really all of her work, especially
The Creative Fire and Women Who Run with the Wolves . 

In Women Who Run, she tells the myth of Demeter and Persephone, about the need to go dark, sometimes literally to go to hell, to be regenerated.  Especially as creative women, we must allow the creative cycles of our words, poetry and thoughts to have their dormant stage, or we will burnout, very literally, just like a brittle match.

Deb has a thread on the creative process unlike anyone I know.  She makes me feel like an artist and I selfishly treasure her for that.  I begrudgingly share her with you.  Tell her I sent you, so I can remain selfish and still share.

Tell me about your cave.  Is it a cave?  Is it a real place?  Show me its resonance.

Changes are coming.  I can feel their independent momentum and I can also make them happen.  If I only would. 

It’s exhilarating, this feeling of anticipation and impetus.

You don’t have to know exactly what I’m talking about to understand this feeling.  The details are irrelevant.

It’s our willingness to enter the cave that matters. 

The air in my cave is cool and damp.  I breathe deeply.  The walls beg to be touched and hint at something rich and ancient.  I soak it in.  I look for myself in its elements.

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Raising Kids on the Heels of the MTV Reality Generation

My arms are covered in bruises from blown IVs.  My back hurts from too much time in bed.  My brain is slight mush from hours of dehydration and television.

One by one, our family was taken down by Norovirus.  It wasn’t pretty.  My hands and forearms are red and swollen from bleach burns.  Don’t get Norovirus, kids.

I have been a mom for five and a half years now and I’m still surprised when I discover that we don’t get sick days.  There should really be a stunt mom we can call in.

But that’s the job.  No amount of “I’m sicker than all of you!” gets us out of it.

As the bleach-filled days swirled around me, I spent a lot of time thinking about this parenting gig.  Right up until I was carted off to the hospital, I was amazed at my ability to hang onto just enough consciousness to take care of our two boys and baby girl.

You just find the strength.  Regardless of circumstances, you do the job.  You train your focus on your children.  You don’t drop the ball.

Or at least I don’t.  You don’t.  But some parents do.

MTV reminded me of that during this fiasco.

I ingested hours of MTV reality programming while I recovered.  Curiously, as VH1 seems to be moving into more dumbed-down territory, MTV is growing up.  It’s subtle, but it’s there.

Shows like Teen Mom and The Buried Life draw me in.  Whereas I used to watch The Real World as a 16 year old in order to, on some level, figure out how I stacked up with other kids of my generation, I watch MTV today for a different reason:  I watch MTV as a parent, trying to pin down how these kids turned out the way they have.

Crib notes: 
Teen Mom is a reality show on MTV that follows the lives of several teen mothers whom the audience first met on the show 16 and Pregnant. 

The Buried Life documents the efforts of a group of four boys as they methodically tick off their list of answers to the question:

“What do you want to do before you die?”

For every item they accomplish on their list, they help a stranger check off an item on theirs.

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Nature vs. nurture comes into play here, but at the end of the day, I aim my glad hand and stink eye at the parents.  What makes the boys on The Buried Life turn their ambition into philanthropic reality yet a girl like Farrah on Teen Mom think that having a baby in high school should not hinder her freedom to go out until 3 a.m.?

While we don’t see the parents of The Buried Life’s boys, we do see Farrah’s mom quite a bit.  She lost me when she dissuaded Farrah from breastfeeding because, according to her, it gives you floppy boobs.

My heart sinks.

Is it ignorance? 

I don’t pretend to have all of the answers, but I sure as hell try as I go.  As parents, how much of what we do counts?  Where is the line between the helicopter and the high speed train?  My own parenting style lands along the middle as more Hang Glider Parenting; while I don’t hover, I glide through at a slow enough pace that I can recognize when I’m needed, but otherwise try to let my kids find their own bootstraps. 

I’m willing to let my children fail. 

The pervasive sense of entitlement is the bane of my existence.  Teach a man to fish.  Not everyone gets a trophy.  Red ink is not the equivalent of calling a kid “stupid.”

So I watch MTV and try to figure these kids out.  I’m not interested in judging young girls for becoming pregnant.  I’m not focused on what makes the kids on Jersey Shore think that “gorilla” physiques that imply steroid use are attractive.  No, I’m enthralled by how their thought processes developed.

Culture.  Economics.  Education.  Environment.  Heredity.  Self.

So I keep watching.

Does Farrah really think that her teenage desire to stay out late with friends sets her apart from the other teen moms?  Farrah, becoming a mom hasn’t made the other teen moms stop wanting to go out.  What sets you apart is the fact that you continue to feel that your teen age entitles you to continue to go out.

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Of all the teen parents, Catelynn and Tyler would have probably made the best parents, yet they were the couple that made the painful decision to give their baby up for adoption.  “Painful” is a sad little word to describe it, as I cried deep-body tears when Tyler covered Catelynn’s face with his own as their daughter was born, to shield them both from seeing her.  From where does that strength originate?  Their parents surely don’t seem to be the source.

I keep watching.

My arms fill with goosebumps at the end of every episode of The Buried Life.  Not due to whether or not the boys managed to cross off an item from their list, but because they invariably help a stranger realize an item on their own list.  It’s the end segment where the audience watches a montage of strangers identifying things they would like to do before they die that steals my breath.

The Buried Life boys are living a self-awareness that I honestly want to smack into the heads of their generation.  They take “living in the moment” to a place their peers can’t seem to grasp.  Their “now” is informed by their future.  Foresight is invaluable and seems to me, as a parent, a foreboding mountain to teach.

The broad view can be dizzying.  Our children’s futures stretch out before us and make me feel faint. 

Focus down.

I focus down to their “now.”  I err on the side of caution and parent as though it all counts.  Who knows what sticks.  Who knows what Catelynn and Tyler picked up on along the way that made them selfless and strong and simultaneously stunningly irresponsible in the short term and beautifully responsible in the long?

Who knows what sticks.  So I focus down.  Our children are under six years old.  We keep it simple.  We play games together.  We eat dinner together. 

In fact, it's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends. Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.

"If it were just about food, we would squirt it into their mouths with a tube," says Robin Fox, an anthropologist who teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey, about the mysterious way that family dinner engraves our souls. "A meal is about civilizing children. It's about teaching them to be a member of their culture."

Read more: The Magic of the Family Meal

We get on their level and look them in the eye.  One of the games we play is from one of the sponsors of Velveteen Mind, a board game called Blurt!  It’s not necessarily for kids under 7, but we effortlessly make it work for us by making up questions that fit our age range and learn so much about our boys every time.  One of those great rapid word games where you offer prompts like “Dirt that is wet and sticky” and they yell “Mud!”  The belly laughs come when we prompt “What you eat after dinner” and one of the boys yells “Chicken!” with such conviction that it takes even him off guard with the absurdity.

We don’t care who wins.  The boys ask to play it before bed at night and we rarely make it a quarter of the way around the board.  It just feels good to sit “criss cross applesauce” on the floor together and laugh.  Hint:  The best laughs and reveals come when you take it a step further and ask, “Why do you think…?” or “Oh my gosh, can you imagine if…?!”

Blog Nosh Magazine will be giving away a copy this week, but I’m going to cheat and say that everyone that comments on this post is entered to win, too.  I meant to mention this game months ago but never found a relevant place to fit it in.  There’s a reason I’m not a review blogger.  Just now, I started telling you about it without even thinking about a “review.”  It’s simply become something we do.  When I think of the game, I think of my boys’ eyes.

Look them in the eye.  Listen to what they are saying and what they are not saying.  That’s all I can figure out to do right now.  The most I can offer them is to be present and really try.

Parenting can be inconvenient.  Dinner at the table together doesn’t always fit our schedules.  Half the time, our table is covered in clean clothes waiting to be folded.  The last thing I want to do is move that stuff onto yet another surface to be ignored.  “Let’s play Blurt!” is not always my favorite thing to hear when I’m tired and just want to toss everyone in bed.  Ten minutes can seem like a lifetime when you are exhausted and no amount of smiling eyes can change that.

But we have to try.

MTV has become my homework.  I watch Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, My Life as Liz, and The Buried Life every time I catch it on.  If I had a DVR, I would record them all.

I received an email a while back asking if I would like to interview one of the moms from Teen Mom.  I never responded because my first reaction was, “Oh my God, this is a horrible idea!”  Unleashing bloggers on these teenagers seemed not only irresponsible but slightly reckless. 

My instinct was to talk to Catelynn, but my competing instinct is that she would be much further along in her post-adoption recovery if it weren’t being actively analyzed even more than she would naturally be doing herself.  When she wrote her worst regret as “Maybe I could of done it.” my heart broke.  A single sentence so loaded.

  Subscribers click through for video.

I’ll have to email the rep that contacted me and show her this post.  I want people to watch these shows, but there’s a chance I want people to watch them for different reasons than the company had in mind.  They are a valuable research resource for parents if you focus down and lift the numbing veil of reality programming.  

But letting me talk to Farrah didn’t seem like a good idea, either.

I know there’s a small Google-able chance that Farrah might see this post.  Which sucks because I’d like to make my point to you without hurting her feelings.  So what would I say to Farrah?  Good God, girl, keep trying.  Don’t give up.  Just keep trying.

That’s the point of this, isn’t it? 

Nature vs. nurture.  Maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to how our kids end up the way they do.  But what if there is?  What if we are their key?  We owe it to them to never quit on them.  Never give up on ourselves as their parents.  Never give up on them.

That’s my reality as a parent.  What’s yours?

***   

Check out MTV.com for informative links, including resources about pregnancy prevention and birthparent support.  Catch the season finales of My Life As Liz and The Buried Life Monday night at 9ct on MTV.  And no, I wasn’t paid to tell you that.

Teen Mom

16 and Pregnant

My Life As Liz

The Buried Life

The Buried Life non-MTV site (for you Damn the Man! types)

***

* portions of this post cross-published at BlogHer.com where a new redesign has me diving back into the conversation

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Internalizing the Statistics: I Bet You Think This Song Is About You

Updated below, February 26

VelveteenMind.com welcomes an average of 250 visitors a day.

I acknowledge I receive more than that when I publish a new post and particularly when I write something cause-related, but my schedule is my own so the average works out to 250.

More than you thought?  Less?  Never considered it because who cares, just write?

I’m telling you my “stats” because, quite frankly, you asked.  After I retweeted this:

Immediately after that, I received emails and direct messages asking, “Ditto to coming to your house or ditto to the number?”

Ah.  The number.

As I write this, a big fancy shmancy company is monitoring my blog, under consideration for a campaign.  Hi, Big Fancy Company!  Looking for numbers?  You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.  And I’m confident that you’ll wanna getchoo summa this. (insert salacious wink)

While speaking at BlissDom recently, I referred to blog statistics (how many visitors your site receives) as an “insatiable monster.”  A comment I’ve made before.  I offhandedly mentioned a number in reference to the evolution of my blog subscriptions and a few hands went up, asking for me to repeat the number.

Ah.  The number.

The number was not the point of the statement.  Some of the numbers I was using to illustrate the point were pulled from thin air.  The number was beside the point.  Sitting right beside the point, shielding its eyes from the glare of the sudden spotlight.  And yet these damn numbers trip us up.  We internalize them, take them personally, get riled up about them when we feel misrepresented.

Hellfire rained down on me on twitter today when I tweeted, “Hi, my name is Megan and I JUST installed Google Analytics. When I tell you I don't focus on stats, I'm not joking.”  A lot of people responded, echoing each other in the fact that they either did not have Google Analytics (a statistics program that measures site activity) installed on their sites or that they do and never look at them.

A few of those people were bloggers that are widely considered “successful” or “popular,” however you want to measure those terms.  I responded, “That's it. I'm writing ab this. Again. ‘Big’ names @schmutzie @redneckmommy @herbadmother et al confirm. Newbies, don't buy the stat hype.”

Point being that you don’t have to install and monitor fancy analytics on your blog for it to find its audience and be “successful.”  A lot of personal bloggers don’t know and don’t want to know all of that technical back-end stuff.

I’m tempted to put “personal” in quotes, in addition to “successful,” because part of that hellfire reception included analysis of what every. single. word. I used meant. 

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Needless to say, the conversation rapidly turned to a broader discussion of the value of installing, checking, utilizing, and interpreting stats.  Unfortunately, it’s difficult to keep a conversation in context on twitter with everyone jumping in and out of the stream, so I was hit with variations on “Having big stats and saying they don’t matter is like making the softball team and saying that not making the cut shouldn’t hurt.”

Why yes, that would be true.  Good thing I didn’t do that.  What I did was use some established blogs as examples of how you don’t have to install and monitor your stats in order to make your blog work for you. 

Though that would depend on your definition of the word “work.”

Side-scream point: 

Is this really the kind of blog you want me to write?  Where I am constantly covering my tracks and anticipating the lowest common denominator?  Would you have me qualify every word into oblivion?  Because that’s exactly where this blog would be:  lost in oblivion because who wants to read such wishy washy drivel?

So I return to my point.

Going into BlissDom this month, I was aware of my words because I’m aware of the tendency of newer bloggers to try to identify the “right” way of doing things.  I wasn’t there to speak to the “right” way.  I throw my incorrectly manicured hands up on that one.  I spoke on the Writing Track (versus the Business Track), so I didn’t have to bother with a lot of “how to”  and Blogging 101 explanations.  We focused more on the craft and passion of writing, as well as the “why.”  A lot on the “For the love of God, why?!”

When you start analyzing the craft of writing as it pertains to blogging, though, it is near impossible to extricate it from discussion of audience.  If we were writing solely for the private joy of it, we would write in paper journals and stash them under our beds.

Audience is part of the blogging experience.  Frequently, lack of audience is part of it, too.

So we talk about stats.  What do they mean?  Are they necessary to track?  How can we use them?  How should we use them?  How much do they matter to us?  How much do they matter to companies that want to work with us?  And why, for the love of God, can’t we just write well and that be enough for our audience to find us and adore us?

Exhale because I don’t have those answers.  I do have one strong opinion, though:

You are not your stats.

You are not your little stats.  You are not your big stats.  You are not your ignorance of stats. 

I once wrote that I am a Have but I Happen to Have Not, pertaining to money.  I wrote that as much as I don’t let my lack of money right now define me, I intend to not let a future plethora of money define me, either.

Swap “stats” for “money” and the point remains.

Listen, I’m not writing this post for the pro blogger who relies on money earned from impression-based ad networks to help support her family or the niche blogger who needs to value SEO and Google traffic because her content is useful to strangers out of context.  Trust me, very little of my content is useful to the random Googler.  You can’t Google feelings and philosophical shotgunning.

Most of my Google traffic comes from “squeeze b**bs” and I assure you, they are always disappointed.

Still think I’m the softball player patronizing the bench?  Fine. 
Your call.

I’m writing this post for the mom blogger in Minnesota that has 10 readers and lets her awareness of other people’s stats make her feel like crap.  The one that writes about her kids and their days together.  The one that doesn’t fall into a niche and worries that she should.  The one that lets this stats stuff get her down.

I can’t explicitly make this post work for everyone that reads it.  It can’t work for frugal bloggers and special needs bloggers and humor bloggers and political bloggers and recipe bloggers and personal essay bloggers alike. 

You have to find yourself in the broader strokes.  Look a little closer.  Work a little closer.  Disarm.  I promise that you are here. 

I know several of you asked via twitter for me to write a “how to” post regarding improving stats.  I respectfully decline your request because my “how to” posts are usually much more tongue-in-cheek and, honestly, there are whole blogs dedicated to improving blog stats and they cover topics like SEO far better.

Coming to Velveteen Mind to learn how to improve your stats is like shelling out $1,000 for a blog conference in order to learn how to hyperlink.  Save your resources and Google it, babe.

Wow.  We’re just now reaching what this post was originally going to be about.

In the Memoir Writing panel at BlissDom, I referenced a Fortune magazine piece titled Why Business Loves Charlie Rose.  I emphatically quote that here:

When folks in the financial district say, "Did you hear what was on Charlie last night?" everybody knows what they mean.

The show's modest numbers belie its true reach. TV ratings over the past year, calculated city by city by Nielsen for Fortune, indicate his nightly viewership is probably well under a million. Over the past year in Washington, for example, his audience averaged but 7,000 a day.
In New York City it was roughly 67,000 (compared, say, with Nightline's 338,000 or Larry King Live's 308,000).

Nonetheless, few would dispute that it's Rose's show that carries the most influence. Nobody watches Charlie Rose except everybody you know.

Do statistics matter?  Yes.  For a lot of reasons.  And no.  For a lot of reasons.  All of which I have written about before.  And yet I keep on writing about it.  Mrs. Flinger, Scribbit and I even pitched a BlogHer Room of Your Own about this subject a while back, which may come to fruition for New York 2010 if you log in and vote for it.  We refer to it as “a cage match between your personal, independent writing goals and your professional blogging ambitions.”  Because why not get riled up?

Social media is messy (personal) business. 

Statistics represent reach and influence and they simultaneously can “belie true reach.”  Statistics represent a path to monetization for some and represent voices in a community for others.  There is no definitive answer.  I’m not writing this to provide answers.

Look closer.  Find the answer for yourself. 

Oh yeah, one more number for you:

The 250 readers that visit VelveteenMind.com on a daily average spend close to 4 minutes each on this site.  The average blog reader (including those that open multiple tabs at once) spends 5-30 seconds on a blog before moving on. 

That’s the sole statistic I internalize.  Interpret that as you please.

click photos for sources

Related posts:

The one about promoting your writing because you damn well better.
The one about why ambition does not have to mean enlisting in the army of compromise.
The one about gagging on your own social media fairy dust.

Update February 26, 2010 --  A few quick points brought up in comments and messages:

1)  To clarify, this post is about how to not let your stats define or discourage you WHILE you use them.  It is not a recommendation to not install or monitor stats at all.  Although I did just install Google Analytics, I've had some form of monitoring installed since day one.  Everything has a place and I prefer to keep stats in my back pocket rather than on my heart or mind.  It's hard and yes, I do check them.  One of the criticisms of this post is that you wanted a "how to not let it bother you."  I'll work on that again another time.

2)  A mash-up of a recurring technical question that I need to make clear I can't help you with [it helps to know that the following "ranks" are tools businesses use to gauge the "value" of a site and are interpreted as that the lower the Alexa number (1 is best) and higher the Google Page Rank number (10 is best), the better]:

"Hey, I get 600+ visitors a day and my Alexa Rank is 2,400,000 and my Google Page Rank is 2.  How do you get 250 visitors but your Alexa Rank is 165,000 and PR is 4?"  Yeah, I don't know how that stuff works.  Another reason not to define yourself by constantly changing rank and stats.  I'd say Google it.  Or maybe someone can answer it in comments.  I swear I'm not ignoring your questions, though, because...

3)  Where have I been since I published this?  Our whole family was hit by Norovirus.  Two blown IV's later and this is the first time I've sat down and coherently looked at a computer screen.  I swear I'm not ignoring your thoughtful discussion in comments, I'm just pretty sure I'm imploding or turning into a supermodel.  Neither bodes well for blogging.  Blech. 

Back soon and thank you for all of this gorgeous discussion.  It's fascinating and generous.  Even my half-functioning brain can tell that.  I'll catch up.

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