Vaguebook to a writer’s rescue

Been struggling a bit with the writing. My writing. To do or not to do. Not with content, this is not writer’s block. I’ve got content believe me: everywhere I look life is screaming to be heard, stories aching to be told. Laughed at. Exposed. Teased, tormented, loved, shared. Told.

There are stories everywhere, it’s just hard to be funny when Texas is drowning. Hard to push gun safety when we are literally shooting ourselves to death every single day and Sandy Hook is turning into a “where? oh, there” afterthought for those outside our very fragile yet beautiful bubble.

Black folks are being trivialized and beaten and killed, and cops are being shot or ignored of their good work or acquitted of their bad and there’s no accountability and how can I just be funny when Kid3 is going to college and I’m left with a Boy who grunts his disgust and that’s if-and-only-if I somehow entice him into my presence. But he’s 15 now and this is all totally normal – I know that, it’s not my first teenage circus – and what am I complaining about when he’s a white boy protected by his skin from a life of injustice he can only experience on the news and lives here, in quiet, safe, secure Newtown with good schools and safe streets and cops are our friends and saviors when they’re not selling drugs from the privacy of their cubicle.

Sigh. That’s the inside of my brain. Today.

So I don’t know whether to post or not to post. To submit my writing elsewhere and if so, how, when, to whom? And after how many rejections is it time to say Uncle? Do people even say uncle anymore?

So on my Facebook writer’s page, I vague-booked my lament with a oh-so-brief, woe-is-me pity post. Nothing like this which mirrors a diary-under-a-pillow-with-heart-shaped-lock-and-key circa middle school mayhem, but I can’t stop myself.

It was quick: just a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am quickie (see below). I posted without fear of being discovered because Facebook has an algorithm so “professional pages or writer pages or business pages” get seen by few to no one, unless I pay to “boost” it. Which I don’t because well, the vast majority of “likes” recruited will most likely be at family reunion correcting my spelling and ridiculing my ungodly obsession with restricting their godgiven right to bear arms.
So I put I had my vaguebook pity party of one on the Kathryn Mayer facebook page: why bother? Any of it? The funny? The family? The activism? Why keep laughing-shouting-crying in an empty room? I hit post then signed off. Here’s how it went:

So imagine my surprise when I found out the room is not so empty after all. Notice the reach of 737 people. Those are real people. Facebook says so. And you can’t see the comments here, but they’re ingrained in my heart and soul. For real. (And I’m only related to one of them. Maybe two.)

The comments, support, laughs, kudos were more than my heart could hold; all so very kind, so very positive, reminding me, like the whos in Whoville, “we’re here, we’re here!” Just keep writing, making us laugh, blush, cry and think.

Nothing vague about that.

I can’t even begin to tell you, oh invisible readers, friends, neighbors, strangers, and writing mentors, how much this means to me, because there’s hundreds of me. Thousands upon thousands of writers writing and wondering if we do indeed matter.

Thanks for letting this one know she does.

xo