photo by me

I was visiting daisies’ blog (as I try to do each day) and I noticed a few links on her site.

The first was Indie Bloggers, which I promptly joined. It seems like it will become an interesting community of bloggers. And I’m always up for a good social networking site. The founder of the site writes:

We’re writers not necessarily by profession but by passion. We love the act of writing and that is why we write every day, no matter how many visitors or comments we get. We write because it’s impossible for us not to.

We don’t fit into a neat little category. We write about life, not about one topic. Because we’re “un-nicheable,” we can’t network as easily. We can’t find each other on our own – though we may have our core readers, we don’t want to limit our communities. And because we can’t network as easily, we tend to feel a little lost.

I started Indie Bloggers because I am a “personal” blogger and I’m sick of feeling like my writing is frivolous, that I’m “just a personal blogger.” If you don’t write in a niche people tend to write you off, scoffing that “it’s just a blog.” It’s not just a blog. We’re not “just” bloggers. We write and we want to keep writing, keep growing, keep learning. We’ll probably never get published. And yet we still write.

Indie Bloggers is dedicated to us. It’s not about exclusion, it’s about including those who feel excluded. It’s for networking, meeting fellow non-professional writers. Communicating. Gathering ideas. Growing. It may sound cheesy, but I want to change the way people view “personal” blogs, how they view us and lump us into a category of “I had cereal today and am wearing blue socks!” bloggers. WE. ARE. MORE THAN THAT.

We’re not “personal” bloggers. We’re Independent Bloggers. Indies.

The second was kind blog. It is a pledge:

By posting this badge, I’m declaring that in addition to humour, intelligence, wit, sadness, snarkiness, passion, exuberance, peace, stillness, excitability, anger or any other emotion you may witness on my site:

1) I will never intentionally hurt other people, whether I know them or not, whether they blog or not, whether they’re celebrities or not, either through my words or my images. It’s just not my style; and

2) I hope that by the time you’ve clicked away from my site, I’ve helped in some way to make your day just a little bit better.

So this all got me to thinking. I wonder if I intentionally hurt people.

When I write about dating and my lack of success in doing so, am I being mean to the men that I’ve gone out with or will potentially go out with?

Was my discussion of the firefighter not calling, not visiting, not emailing unkind or was it just a sharing of things that are going on in my life right now? Would he like to read that post or would it embarrass or hurt him?

I don’t know.

I try not to be mean even when I’m hurt or disappointed or irritated or frustrated. But I don’t know if I succeed.

I think that sometimes (okay, most of the time) I wear my emotions on my sleeve and when I’m feeling disrupted (happily or not so happily) that maybe it comes out in a snarky, almost mean way — even if that’s not how I mean it.

I want to be considered kind. I want to consider myself kind.

I’m just not sure if I’ve evolved that much yet — no matter how much I want it.