The Opposite of Fan Mail

I am a big fan of a blog called Dooce. Anyone else follow her? I stumbled on her blog and was immediately awed by the way she was so willing to let it all hang out. She very candidly writes about her life and everybody in it; whether she is talking about the religion she grew up in (and has since left behind), her (former) employer (she was fired from a job several years ago when her boss found out she was writing about her company and her colleagues), her family, her pregnancies, her struggle with post partum depression, or even just her dogs, she pulls no punches. Sometimes it is hilarious, sometimes painful, sometimes touching, sometimes embarrassing, and sometimes quite a combination. But it is always honest.

I started blogging knowing that was the kind of writer I wanted to be. I’m not interested in telling stories that always make me out to be an angel; I’m more interested in talking about life as I see it, with the kind of candor that grabs a person’s inner self. The part of a person that reads my post about feeding my kid frozen chicken nuggets for three straight meals because I can’t tear myself away from the Real Housewives marathon in order to go to the grocery store and is TOTALLY with me, even though they would never admit it out loud. That’s my audience.

But, if my words are going to ring true to inner selfs across the blogosphere, then I have to be willing to do a few things. First, I have to be willing to embarrass myself. Admit my faults, talk about my insecurities, and share my lessons learned the hard way. And second, I have to figure out a way to include the people around me in a way that they can be comfortable with, too.

That’s not always an easy task. Whether it’s guarding the privacy of my kids, honoring the relationship I share with my husband, respecting the points of view of my amazing friends, or not wanting to say something that might embarrass my parents, there are these influences floating all around me, potentially hindering my ability to tell my story.

Certainly this isn’t a problem unique to me, but it is a problem that I have been sort of tiptoeing around for a while, and it might actually be time to deal with it.

So, Dooce. Every once in a while she shares with us some of the hate mail she receives. And boy, does she get some people riled. There are practicing Mormons that are downright incensed that she is no longer, there are parents that fume because she posts stories about her young daughter, and some people are pissed simply because she drinks bourbon on a regular basis. It’s generally pretty ridiculous, it’s generally full of spelling and grammatical errors, and it’s generally pretty easy to laugh at and laugh off without getting too fired up about it. And from time to time I think to myself Mommy2Joe? When you get some badly worded, horribly narrow minded, name calling hate mail, well, you will have really MADE IT.

It hasn’t exactly happened to me yet, but I recently received something close. And since the opposite of love isn’t hate, I would classify this letter as The Opposite of Fan Mail. I got an email from somebody who had a very strong reaction to one of my blog posts, yet it wasn’t really a negative reaction to what I wrote. This reader totally missed the point of what I wrote, and I say that with some confidence because, aside from understanding my own intent, of all of the notes left on my FB, skirt! comments, or email inbox, only one response could be classified as The Opposite of Fan Mail. So really, I think this response was less a reaction to what I wrote, and more a reaction to the fact that I wrote it at all.  

Anyway, this reader also let me know in no uncertain terms that they would not be reading my blogs ever again.

This isn’t really an email I can poke fun at, because for one, it wasn’t altogether poorly written, crazy hotheaded, or full of typos. It was perhaps carefully constructed and maybe even mulled over – or at least free from the common mistakes that are typical in emotional, ranty responses. Furthermore, the fact that the reader has missed a point that so many others clearly understood and appreciated is more annoying than amusing, because it’s impossible to hash something out when you’re not in agreement on what it is that you’re hashing. So, needless to say, I have no punch line. This isn’t That Comment that announces my arrival as your premiere pop culture blogger.

Here at skirt! I, too, have let it all hang out. I have turned the spotlight on myself and my own experiences, including my (many) mistakes, shortcomings and failures. Our struggles with unemployment. Losing our home in foreclosure. Moving. Getting depressed and fat. Trying to stop being depressed and fat.  Having a person very close to us die. Even getting a very unbecoming haircut. All of it. And so many skirt! ladies (and Facebook friends) have laughed with me, cried with me, encouraged me, handed me a virtual Kleenex or given me a virtual hug.

But, nothing I have written before has elicited the slightest response from this particular reader until now. The first time I learned this person had ever read a word I wrote was the day they let me know they’d never read another.

Being that I am concerned with good customer service, even one negative response is very important to me, and worthy of my analysis. On the one hand I am left to wonder if I did cross a line. When you’re a writer whose subject is basically the life surrounding her, how far is too far? Are there topics that are sort of universally taboo? Is there a Blogger’s Code of Conduct that helps lay this out for me, or is it something that one learns through trial and error? I am very interested to know how other writers strike that balance between honesty in their writing and harmony in their lives.

And, on the other hand, I am left to wonder how much is really lost when you lose something you never knew you had in the first place.