The Blogging Beast

Posting a blog is a little bit like going shopping in your pyjamas. You can certainly do it, but should you? It isn’t like final draft writing that is all polished and tidy with each hem all carefully sewn, shirt tucked in and no dangling modifiers nor punctuation that would leave the author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves roiling. Blogs are certainly not the well written, final draft writing that is ready for the world to see.

Emails, on the other hand, are tossed off without a thought because of their essentially more private nature. Do we edit ourselves when we chat? Duh! Misspellings, dropped words, incomplete sentences, all are to be expected in emails. At least in mine.

Blogs are sort of like what Victorians would consider as the bastard child of each. They are neither private, nor meant for posterity. They are neither quite as ragged as an email nor cleaned up in readiness for a visit by the Queen, who I understand now also tweets. What is the world coming to?

When I push the post button on my blog, I often think of my husband, Andreas. He has one of the best editing eyes that I know. I sometimes imagine him reading my posts and his eyeballs rolling like the rollers at a Las Vegas slot machine in consequence. As he reads some of them, his red pen is probably oozing red ink in the shirt pocket that covers his heart. Thankfully, we both care for the well being of each other’s heart, so I do try to edit my blogs – at least just a little bit - with him and his totally good heart in mind.

Sometimes, after I have already posted a blog, I go back and fix up a verb agreement that I have muddled in the initial posting. Not that Andreas is likely to see it by then. The cow is already out of the barn. But at least, I feel a little bit better. It is the self esteem thing.

When I was about four years old, my mother said to me with a tinge of exasperation in her voice, Sharon, your grammar is atrocious. My response to her makes more sense if you know beforehand that my mother’s English accent turned words such as Canada into something that sounded more like Canader. So, I heard what I heard, and responded accordingly. She is not. I said with the absolute certainty of a four year old, She’s a lovely lady.

Well, from time to time, my grammar may be atrocious - and may the Grammar Gods forgive me -  but my Grandma died as she lived, a lovely lady with a wicked sense of humour. And this blog will continue to be what it has been from the start. A mix of somewhat thoughtful, cheek by jowl with the totally impetuous. And some thoughts and sentences will continue to be incomplete. I promise.