Dear Sad and Insecure on Facebook,

I don’t know you beyond the name and profile you put up on facebook and I don’t mean to judge you or call you out. It’s just that ever since I found out about you, my perverse curiosity has been piqued to the point that I look forward to your occasional and pathetic post on facebook.

No, we’re not friends on facebook so you don’t come up on my feed. I have actually gone to the extent of searching your name just so I can have my nefarious need to feel superior satisfied. I give a little snicker when you talk about how beautiful your wife is and how grateful you are to have married her. My eyes roll when you dedicate love songs to the goddess that she is. When you thank her for being mother to your brilliant children and thank your lucky stars for delivering her to you when you needed her the most, I feel incredulous sadness.

It sounds so totally horrible and petty of me to think of you this way and I do feel terribly guilty. But it is like watching a train wreck, you know? I want to turn away but I can’t. That detestable gossip in me can’t turn away as I check every so often what new status update you’ve come up with. You know, that ones that no one comments on because they are probably too embarassed to or too confused. Assuming of course that you do have friends on facebook. Like I said, we’re not friends so I can’t see how many you’ve got.

I wonder which one of us is more sad and insecure? You who created an account in your husband’s name then proceed to extol your own virtues, or I who actually takes the time to search you out just so I have my wicked pleasure for the day? It is really pathetic, don’t you think? No, not you… me!

I mean, yes, part of me feels sorry that there are people like you out there, sad and needing attention. But even more pitiful are the wretched people like me who converge on disasters and cannot turn away. We clog up the highways during accidents, we make a nuisance of ourselves standing around rubber necking. We couldn’t even be bothered to move out of the way so the ambulance can get to you.

So which one of us is more pitiful? And who is more sad and more insecure? You tell me.

Your stalker friend,
Morbid and Perverse

I love blogging! And now I’m loving facebook too and of course the network or all blogger networks, BlogHer. But lately, I haven’t been blogging much. I have been inconsistent about visiting BlogHer and only on Facebook do I carry on a semi regular schedule. The motivation to blog or rather to just write hasn’t been around in a while. I have been wondering if maybe I have taken on too much on my plate that’s why the motivation has waned. That could be partially it, but the more I read other bloggers, I see now what or where our ‘slacking off’ is coming from.

This article on BlogHer about being “intimidated to write on my own blog” caught my attention today because it said everything that I had been feeling and thinking. I do remember the early days of blogging when we just wrote about what came to mind or what we happened to step on that morning. No one cared about grammar or spelling much less image and brand. We didn’t even know what those were. We just wanted to document the mundane happenings in our life that only we would probably care about. We didn’t think about attracting anyone much less an audience. And we certainly didn’t think we could make money writing about poop and laundry.

But it happened. The mommy bloggers were born and so was blog monetization. Everyone realized there is money to be had in blogging and we all jumped on the wagon. We spruced up our blogs, bought our own domains and started hosting our own blogs rather be on the free platforms. All so we can make money. And we did. Everyone made money; some more than others, but we all made money and we wanted to make more. I wanted to be like the super bloggers who quit their day jobs to just stay home and blog. Now wouldn’t that have been heaven?

As much as I need the extra money though, I just never found the motivation to spend as much time as they did to write copy, promote my blogs and all the other things they tell you to do so you can make more money. Worst of all, I started feeling intimidated to write in my own blog too! I started second guessing myself whether what I’m writing about is worthy of being on my blog. I was now pandering to sponsors and advertisers and I didn’t like the way it made me feel.

So maybe that’s why I haven’t had the heart to blog too much lately. Maybe it’s not that I’m inundated with work and my daughters suck up the rest of my free time with their activities. So maybe it’s not just sheer exhaustion and laziness that if keeping me from updating my blogs. Maybe it’s because I just didn’t think my life is worth writing about anymore. Now if that was the case, that would be truly pathetic because I do love my life and I do love to write.

The solution? I have been thinking about this even before I read the article on BlogHer. Actually, I had already started down the road before I read the article. The road is the one that leads back to the early days of blogging when I simply blogged for my own pleasure. When I blogged to unload some of the junk taking space in my head. When I blogged just to relax and not to work for money. When I blogged for myself and no one else. And if I am too lazy to update or decide to go on vacation for a while, I don’t have to excuse myself or apologize for being absent. I know where I’m going and that’s all that matters. I’m going back.

Yesterday, I posted on facebook: Pet peeve for the day: ‘reeking havok’ and ‘nerve wrecking’

I’m not one, but for you grammar fanatics out there, I’m sure a shudder goes through you when you see these idioms stated like this:

“The weather has been reeking havok again” and “What a nerve wrecking experience!”

It doesn’t exactly give me the hives, but it does make me cringe when I see the misspelling and misuse. So for the record, and because my daughters asked what then, is the correct way to say it? If you have teens, then you know how they’ve learned to turn the table on you by asking to clarify everything you say… just to be clear that you know what you’re talking about, you know? So here are a few facts:

HAVOK is spelled HAVOC (look it up in the dictionary)

‘reeking havok’ should be WREAKING HAVOC (I originally wrote wrecking… my bad although, I think you can use either way because they essentially mean the same thing but wreaking with the a is the proper term – thank to my cuz for catching it.)

and

‘nerve wrecking’ should be NERVE-WRACKING

When you mean to say (or write) wrecking havoc, just remember that it usually means that something is destroyed or ‘wrecked’.

While something can actually wreck or break your nerves, the correct word to use is ‘wrack’. It is derived from the word wreck and they pretty much mean the same thing, but when you’re using it in the context of putting stress on your nerves, then the proper term is ‘nerve-wracking’ with the hyphen in between. I’ve seen it without the hyphen too, and either way is ok.

wrack n.
1. Destruction or ruin.
2. A remnant or vestige of something destroyed.

The Pinoy Moms Network had just been made over and it is now an emagazine! PMN, for short, still aggregates blogs of Filipino moms but now it also features original articles about parenting, lifestyle and fashion, food and cooking, home and garden, bringing up mom, and travel.

If you are a Filipino mom and are interested in joining this community, or even better yet, are interested in writing original articles for the ezine, sign up at Pinoy Moms Network.

The new ezine format just started this week, and I have two contributions to the launch:
Under Food and Cooking – Kitchen Basics: Knives and Boards
Under Bringing Up Mom – Expectations, High and Low