As my dear beleaguered husband will tell you, much of my ranting is of a political bent. When not working, getting my "nerd on," or herding my children and handling the issues and topics related to them, much of my spare time (hah!) is spent reading. A good portion of that reading time is spent on political columns and news, hence the ranting. And occasionally, rather than bend my poor husbands ear or make him sit and discuss issues with me, I'll actually write down what I am thinking and feeling.
I've long felt the need to bring all of my various rants, thoughts, and reactions to one location, in order to better organize and access them, but had not yet done so. Today I met an actual, makes his living that way, political blogger, one who has reached great fame and respect in his field, and while I have no hope of imitating him or his success, it caused me to want to re-read some of my rants and reexamine some of my thoughts. It is there that I ran into a problem though. My thoughts were in a half dozen different places and while many of my rants were notes on Facebook, the new layout made it a ten minute hunt to locate them (though for those who are more Facebook savvy, it may have taken less time). Frustration with this made me decide to go ahead and congregate my posts all in one place.
Now, I hadn't done this before for many reasons, as I had stated. One of those reasons is that I am Lazy, another was that everything was presumed safe and accessible on different places (old blogs, Facebook, etc), and a third was fear of gaining negative reactions from my friends and family, or potentially worse, no reactions at all.
The third, fear of reactions or lack there of, is what has really kept me from this idea for at least a couple of years. After all, who will care about the political leanings, interests, or musings of a poor, sometimes college student, working class, married mother of soon to be four? Assumed ignorance on the subject, poverty, and lack of education would lead it to at best be a laughing stock. What credentials did I have to write on any of this? And then I realized, I would read a blog written by someone like me. I'd be interested in seeing what that person had to say, I cannot be a complete anomaly among my kind. I would read it especially since the middle and working classes are some of the most under represented folks in America. Everyone assumes they know what the guy who changes their oil or who works at the factory is going to think and believe. It's taken as a given that the girl who took your order at the restaurant or cashed you out at the gas station isn't too bright and therefore her views aren't really important.
The truth is, those views ARE important. The working and middle classes are a diverse group, one that is very much ignored unless it is being pandered to by those who assume to know what they believe and what they want, Despite all this, I've decided to go ahead and go forward with this experiment. If nothing else, I'll be able to look at the evolution of my own writing style.
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