I’m in my studio today, brainstorming for a new writing project that I hope to tell you about soon. Managing the Blog Nosh Magazine editors list, preparing to launch a couple of new channels. Food and Race & Ethnicity, two of those channels whose links have been dead-ends since the relaunch so many months ago.
My studio is in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Just blocks from the water, but just far enough away from the waves that it suffered minimal damage in Hurricane Katrina. I am on the same block as seafood restaurants and gritty little Southern bars. At night, Lynard Skynard bleeds through the walls and the smell of poboys tempts me into unscheduled breaks.
Thanks to some tumultuous decision making I had to finish this afternoon, I decided to treat myself to one of those very same poboys for lunch. Fully dressed shrimp poboy on crunchy-yet-chewy French bread, a side of crab balls, and a towering cup of sweet tea.
Rather than mindlessly watch my twitter stream or daydream while I ate, I decided to watch a DVD of Into the Wild, starring Emile Hirsch. I’ve had this DVD for possibly years now, but never have gotten around to watching it.
Now, less than a quarter of the way in, it leaves me feeling much the same way the book Revolutionary Road
This life of a suburban mom can sometimes be hard to swallow.
I have always wanted to be a mom. I have always wanted to stay at home and raise the kids. Though, to be clear, I don’t think I ever kidded myself or any potential suitors into thinking that I would be a reasonable housekeeper of said home.
But now I’m here. And sometimes I can’t help but want to be there.
We all struggle with where we belong. Who we are. Who we want to be. Who we once were. Who we could have been.
We struggle with the ties that bind and simultaneously long for the ties that bond.
At the risk of BlogHer stripping me of their offer, I will be speaking at the opening Mommyblogging track panel in Chicago this year on the topic of “Have you found your Mommyblogging tribe?” and will most definitely touch on some of these feelings of dissonance.
Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right? Well, I promise you, it will be. But yes, of course I’ll be throwing in a bit of the “threadbare.”
Identity, knowing where we belong, feeling distinctly as though we don’t… it’s all part of it. BlogHer said they selected me for the topic because I have more or less created my own tribe. To that, I say “Amen.” and “Hell yes.”
And I also say, “You should, too.”
Join me at BlogHer in Chicago July 24-25, 2009. Early bird pricing ends February 28, so hop to it, sister.
You might even want to get there early. I bet there are some fun parties the night before…
In the meantime, tell me your thoughts on belonging and tribes. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with blogging. My feelings today on Into the Wild had nothing, I assure you, to do with blogging.
“It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom.” -Wallace Stegner
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people that are not me. Or, even better, because although I am too tired to type, I'm not too tired to read... 
Writer. Mother.
