Monday, August 16, 2010

Be The Change.


The closing breakfast keynote at Blogher was a group of women activists. Some of whom literally risk their lives to blog.
That kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.
They risk their lives.

They are:
MidEast Youth
Mujeres Libres
Aww Project
humanityashore

I am not that person.
I do however thrive on motivation and a goal.
I have been missing that goal.

The goal was to be the best parent I could be. A worthy challenge.
What I didn't realize was how easy it would be to lose 'me' in that.
To focus so completely on them that I would feel 'me' slipping away.

I have written about how important 'me time' is. How a happy fulfilled parent makes a good parent.
I thought by getting babysitters regularly and leaving the house - I was achieving that. I was mistaken.

For me, committing to the those first years, full time, was important.
Now it is time for me to move on a little.

In yet another Blogher session, I learned about activist bloggers.
This was where my lightbulb moment happened.
I want to be active.

But how? I am interested in politics and keep up to date but it's not my soapbox.
I think that being green is important and we work hard to be but again - not my arena.

So what could I do? I can be very evangelical and I know it can turn people off so maybe I'm not ideal to be an activist blogger.
Sitting in that session with my body tingling - I knew there was something there for me to hear.
Then came this sentence;

"You can be an activist by posting your post about whatever you want and including information for say, a local farmers market.
Shopping locally, eating organically are ways to tell GMO using, pesticide liberal and nutrition low food manufacturers that you want better options. You can still blog about fashion, art, pets or parenting while you do it."

Simple.

I can find new purpose in blogging by adding information and links that do a little good in the world.
If you are interested you can click the link - if you are not - keep scrolling.

I was reminded at Blogher that this is a powerful, intelligent and generous community.
I am also often aware that we live in very self centered times.
So my goal is this - a little less me, a little more we.

Beats the prior focus on wee.

3 comments:

  1. Oh my god you're so intelligent, and hysterical! So glad we met. Weeeeeee....

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  2. Good for you! I'm so exhausted that I haven't even blogged about New York yet. ;-)

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  3. Love this love this love this. I have been having such similar thoughts lately. On my blog I write mostly about personal stuff and frustration with weird zombie-mommy scene I've found in NYC. But I keep wanting to be able to do something good, and I feel like you, that coming on too strong would be unpleasant, possibly backfire. This morning reading about a movement to eat locally (I'll get link and post it back here tomorrow, too tired now to go searching through my papers) I thought -- there's something. I could even just post this and encourage readers to join, even just for a day. That would be something positive to contribute.

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