AngryBrownButch

So, as evidenced by the date of my last post, I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for quite a while, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I needed retreat in order to focus on my work. I’m a freelance Drupal/web developer and general techie working with non-profit organizations, and both the freelance and the non-profit aspects of that mean I need to bust ass and stay very, very focused to make a living, make progress, make deadlines, just make it. I wasn’t focusing like I needed to and found myself struggling to keep up with my work, do justice by my clients, and make enough money to pay taxes and the bills and the rent. So I necessarily stepped back from many time-consuming things in my life, including blogging. When I get really into the blogosphere, especially when I get wrapped up in the more heated discussions, debates, and arguments, it drains a whole lot of my time, and since I’m a freelancer, it’s easy to eat into work hours, promise myself I’ll make up that time later – and never really make it up. But I’m happy to report that I’ve made tons of progress, am more financially stable, and have been making exciting moves towards expanding my work and increasing my collaboration with other folks. I’m still trying to stay primarily focused on work – expansion takes a lot of time and energy – but I’m in a much better place.

The other reason I’ve been gone is that blogging itself was getting away from me – at least, blogging right was. See, it started with commenting on other blogs. I realized that while I was reading amazing stuff from amazing bloggers, I wasn’t really engaging in the conversations or expressing my appreciation, agreement, disagreements, whatever my reactions were to their words. And as a blogger myself, I know how important it is to get that feedback and to take part in the conversations; blogging in a vacuum isn’t very good blogging at all, in my opinion. Then I started slipping on reading other blogs at all; hell, I was barely even reading what my co-bloggers on Feministe were writing. That felt pretty crappy and made me feel even more disconnected from the larger conversations. And finally, I started having trouble responding to comments on my own blog posts. I still can’t believe it took me more than 2 months to respond to Denise Oliver-Velez’s comment on my Young Lords post (she was a leader and member of both the Young Lords and Black Panthers). When I can’t even respond to the people who are taking the time to read and respond to my work, then I’m not doing my duty as a blogger, punto.

So – all that is to say that yes, I’ve been gone, but I’m not gone for good. I’m starting to get the itch to blog again, and that itch got soooo much itchier since I got to the Women, Action and Media conference yesterday. And though I do have to stay on top of my work stuff and can’t let blogging bleed into those hours too much, I do want to come back to this. But I want to do it right, so I’ve set some rules for myself: first, I start reading other folks’ blogs; then, I start commenting on those blogs and get involved in the conversation; then, I start really getting back to blogging again, as long as I can keep up with my comments. I may post here and there before I can really start reading the blogs (including posts about WAM, which I hope to start writing soon). But if I’m gonna do this right, I need to be a part of the blogging communities that are important to me, I need to listen to them and contribute to them and be aware of what’s going on. It’s the only responsible way I can do it, and it’s the only way I can do this blogging thing right.

So yes – hopefully you’ll be seeing more of me soon!