Ocean View Verandah

This journal is now closed. For new entries join me at Narrating kayoz.

I am currently working an essay about online journals as life writing: their ‘phenomenal popularity’ and the social and ethical issues involved in keeping one. So, naturally enough, I am doing a lot of reading about them. There's not as much out there as you might suppose. Oh, there are dozens of articles on blogging - hundreds even - but they are largely unacademic, repetitive, and focused more on filtering style weblogs and weblogs as journalism, than on web journals.

At the same time I am evaluating other blogging software packages, thinking about how they can help me to structure this site in a more useful way. And how an examination of the ethical and social issues of weblogging might impact on that structure.

A while back, as regular readers would know, I segregated posts into two areas - journal styles posts, or posts primarily about me, would remain here, while externally focused/current events posts I moved to a different blog. I did that because I'd been posting a lot of the commentary style at the time, and when I suddenly wanted to switch gears and write about a pregnancy 'scare' we had, it seemed out of place.

But this set up isn't really working for me. There are too many occasions where I am divided about which section to post something to. For instance, if I write about the different styles of weblog - journal/diary, filter-style, current events commentary etc - and then write about how I see them and want to use them, is that externally focused, or is it about me? And then there's the fact that quite frankly my political commentary isn't all that hot. It tends to consist of small rants and links to better commentary. So on it's own I guess I’ve felt it was a little inadequate.

So I started thinking about other setups. I was thinking that what I might do is have a blog as my main site, posting there as a default be it personal or critical writing, but have a separate section for longer, more thought out, journal style essays. But then, sometimes I might want to write longer, thought out, non-journal style essays. One solution is to use a system that allows 'click here to read more' entries, so that longer pieces only have to have the first few paras displayed on the main page.

That still mixes up all different types of posts of course, but if I combine that with category pages maybe it would be OK. That way, if all you are interested in is parenting posts, you can just go read that page and forget the rest -bookmark it instead of the main page.

I confess to being, theoretically, something of a weblog/journal purist. To me, until recently, online journal/diary meant exactly what it sounds like, while blog, or weblog meant a reverse chronologically structured collection of links with commentary. The links were probably based around a theme - politics, for instance, or programming - but the main idea was of a web filtering system. However, all the reading I did for the article I wrote last semester on the use of blogging technology in business (as yet unpublished BTW) showed that most of the mainstream world has decided that the term blog will do for both categories and various others. I assume this at least partly is because of the proliferation of places like Blogger.com which publish both types of sites.

It’s also probably to do with the ‘phenomenal popularity’ of the weblog style, which has resulted in the proliferation of other types of blogs. Sites like John Quiggin's or like Troppo Armadillo. Sites that combine political commentary with semi-academic (or even truly academic) essays, serious discussions in the comment threads, and perhaps the occasional personal essay/journal style post. They simply don't fit into either of the above categories.

Thinking about the ethics involved in online journaling, and in life writing in general, has led to another level of my rethinking this site. Back when I first started ‘Kay’s Journal’ more than four and a half years ago, I didn’t think too carefully about the ethical considerations. Unlike various other people, like Tamar or the author of Daddyzine, who use primarily initials or pseudonyms for their blog’s ‘characters’, I used real first names and had a cast page. This didn’t make me unique – I only copied what I had seen elsewhere. And I told my family and a selection of friends about the site, rather than have them come across it accidentally. But it was at least a little thoughtless.

Well it wasn’t long before someone with a quite distinctive name asked me to remove it from my journal. Not her stories as they intersected mine, just her name. So I changed her name to an initial, and gradually made some other changes.

First I added my real name, having originally just used a nick name. Then I stopped linking to the cast page, and now it’s completely gone, although the broken links to it in early posts remain. And gradually I stopped using most other people’s names, although only in an ad hoc, unconsidered way. Of course I still mention Liam and Chris frequently, but I am rather more careful about revealing personal details about the other people in my life. Still, I haven’t really sat down and thought the issues through and come to any ‘policy decisions’. I’ve just changed what I do on an almost unconscious level.

Now that I am thinking of moving this journal to a different platform and a different host, the obvious question is, what do I do with the archives? Some of them are in Blogger, so I could easily just publish them to a Blogspot site and leave them there for the record. But the older ones – the first maybe two years worth – I did the long suffering way in Dreamweaver. For historical purposes I don’t really want to trash them – or not all of them anyway. My journal has changed quite substantially since those days, and while re-reading some of those early posts may well make me cringe (as reading over some of my old paper journals certainly does) something about honesty[1] makes me want to leave them there. But I also feel I would like to clean them up – take out some of the names, maybe delete an injudicious post or two, and certainly take out any links to a cast of characters.

The obvious conclusion is to do nothing for the present. I have an essay to write. And a whole lot of other writing to do for that class and other projects.

But, I am moving. This will be my last post here at Ocean View Verandah. http://www.kayoz.com/ will still be my domain, but it will soon point to a TypePad site called Narrating kayoz. There will be a link back to Ocean View Verandah for the time being, and eventually I will probably archive most of the last four years either to Blogspot or to another TypePad site (since my money pays for up to three weblogs). Future Liam’s log and Mountain View Commentary posts will be rolled into Narrating kayoz. The beautiful picture of my ocean will be gone, but my dreams of writing in front of my imaginary ocean view or my real mountain view will remain.

Now I just need to get myself a good lap top and a wireless home network. Oh, and a house at the coast.

PS. I will post a link to Narrating kayoz, and move the domain name, at the time I post my first post there. I will also send an email to my notify list.

[1] Of course, talking about honesty and 'truth' in life writing opens up a whole other can of worms, but we won’t go there today.

The upside of being sick is that it is really nice to see how much Liam likes having us both around at once. And not rushing around trying to DO things all the time. I started coming down with this bug on Friday night, so although I still tried to study on the weekend I ended up starting late each day. Then I came home early from work Monday and didn't go in at all yesterday. So Liam's had a lot more time with both parents around for the past four days than he usually gets, and it is really obvious that it makes him very happy. Which makes me happy, even if my eyes and nose are streaming at the same time.

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
and rolls through all things.
(Wordsworth)

This is why I want an ocean view, and preferably an ocean within close walking distance. And maybe it is also why on those glorious spring days when I have one, I can find nothing more appropriate to do than to simply experience it.

(I am indebted to Fiona Capp for the connection between Romain Rolland's 'oceanic feeling' and Wordsworth's sublime. That Oceanic Feeling pp.10-13)

I'm sick at home today, which should theoretically mean I get to relax in bed, or at least mindlessly surf the blogosphere, but instead I am at home looking after Liam while Chris goes to the dentist. He has been in on-again off-again excruciating pain since Friday night with a cracked and probably infected tooth. The dentist put a temporary crown on it two weeks ago, to see if that would help. It didn't - there was no excruciating pain before, just a dull ache. Looks like root canal is on its way.

Anyway, so I'm home with Liam, and Play School is about to end, so I will be back to playing in the 'sand' (lego) at the 'beach' (family room floor) any minute. And feeling suitably sorry for myself of course.

PPS It's a bit weird that the PS comes above the original post (below) isn't it? But I guess not if you already read that one and just came back. You know, in case I had posted a PS in the intervening half hour or so.

I came out of the shower this morning and said to Chris "You know what I really, really want? Something that would help me be a better, more effective writer?"

What I realised in the shower is that I need a microphone in there. One that is connected into some voice activated software that would record my thoughts and transfer them to a word processer, so that I could come out and there they'd be, ready for editing.

"I wrote three emails and two blog entries in the shower," I told Chris.
"What you really need is to be jacked in," Chris said.

Isn't it amazing how routines develop and change so quickly, yet when you're in the thick of them they can seem constant. I was just thinking how, if all goes to exactly to plan, I might not finish this menstrual cycle. Or more correctly, another one might not start for (based on last time) 18 months or so. And that seems odd. I am so used to that cycle governing my life, yet only a little while ago I had 18 months without it. And to have the cycle start up again seemed equally odd. For months I would complete forget about it and be caught unawares when my period came due.

But the same thing happens on a much smaller scale with Liam. When he was only a few weeks old I would find myself recognising a routine, only to have it change the next day. Now we have routines that last for longer periods - he's been having a (roughly) midday nap for five months now, for instance - but still, they feel like permanent fixtures, when in fact they change with startling regularity. Even within what seems like a clear routine there are lots of changes.

For example at the moment, Liam goes to sleep for this nap with me or Chris lying down in bed with him. Sometime he nurses to sleep, sometimes not. It seems like that's how it's always been. But actually, when we first came back from the States, in March, he would fall asleep nursing in the chair in the living room, and I would carry him to bed. If I were at work Chris would sometimes have to take him for a drive, or a walk in the pram, and then carry him into the house asleep. Then there was the phase when Chris could lie down with him and get him to sleep, but it would take 1/2 an hour, whereas I would lie down and nurse him to sleep in five minutes. Now it's different again (and frequently takes a darn sight more than five minutes, but to compensate he slept for over three hours today!).

It's like, we are so set up for adaptation that we don't even realise change happens, as long as it is relatively incremental. And so when it's not, when it's major, it feels like we'll never learn to adjust. But we do, of course.

I love Spring.

After being cooped up in side for most Winter, we've been outside just about every day for the past three weeks. Since the start of August in other words. I know (the Australian) Spring doesn't officially start until 1 September, but I always think August is the nicest month in Canberra. We've been gardening, going for walks (yesterday we had to take Liam's pink pram and 'baby dolly' with us - she's been a constant fixture for the past two days), playing the in sandpit...

Right now Liam and Chris are outside having a picnic lunch (Liam's idea) and I've 'gone to work'. Now I am going to buckle down and do some serious study.

This time next week I could be pregnant. Actually, I could be pregnant sooner than that, given that my last cycle was only 25 days. I could be pregnant within a couple of days, although that's not all that likely. And either way we won't know for at least another week or two.

We haven't decided yet whether this will be our last child. We only ever planned on having two, until Liam was born. But since then we've tossed around the idea of having three quite seriously. It's expensive, this business of having children. Some people say that shouldn't be a consideration in whether to have another, but it is.

But there are other things too.

Age, for instance. If we space them all apart by three+ years, Chris will be forty, or very close to, by the time the third child is born.

Career? Yes, believe it or not, I am starting to get why people feel frustrated by having to put their career 'on hold' during their children's baby years. And I'm not exactly career oriented!

Patience? Yep, that too. I have a friend who has two children and simply says that she loves her children incredibly, but she doesn't think she has the patience to cope with more than two.

But the thing is, I don't feel like this pregnancy - the one I am hoping to embark on very soon - is going to be my last. I feel like if it were, I would need to know that now. I would need to be able to say to myself, this is the last time I will be doing this. Pay attention.

On the other hand, wait till I am in the throes of all day pregnancy sickness and see what I say then.