Over a Candle

I can’t believe it’s almost November again. And we all know what that means… (You may have noticed the shiny new badge off to the right.)

It’s time once more for National Blog Posting Month.

For the third year in a row, I will once again be posting at least once a day for the whole month of November. I can’t guarantee quality posts, but barring some catastrophe or serious illness, I will be posting.

I wanted to get this introductory post out of the way before the month begins. It would seem a cheap way to begin the month of wall-to-wall posts. I’m still open to suggestions for posts (you know, for those days when I can’t come up with something to complain about).

Otherwise, check back often, or you might miss something.

My sock zombie arrived yesterday!!!

It’s the large purple toehawk throwing sock zombie. Yes, that’s blood around its mouth. And yes, that’s a skull bead on the side of its head (ear?).

You can see the “toehawk” (like a mohawk, only for the toes of the sock) in the side picture:

It’s a little bit bigger than my hand (I could hold it in my palm, but bits would be hanging off of each side).

Again, I don’t blog for prizes or money. I blog for myself and whoever wants to read the crazy things that go on in my head. But it’s still pretty cool to have gotten something for my blogging.

I now officially have to change the badge in my sidebar, as I have more than just a sense of accomplishment from last month’s blogging marathon.

If you must have a sock zombie, go to the Sock Zombie website. (I’m happy to give free advertising to people who give me prizes!) Besides, you know you want a sock zombie!

Apparently, I won a prize for NaBloPoMo. I won, it seems, a random prize of a sock zombie. While I don’t blog for prizes, I never say no to free stuff. (Well, not to most free stuff.) I guess I’ll have to change my NaBloPoMo badge (to the right). It looks like I might be getting more than just a sense of accomplishment for blogging every day last month. A picture of my sock zombie will be posted whenever I get it. For now, I’m just amused that I actually won something this year.

Today is the final day of NaBloPoMo. The last day for me to sit on my couch, after eight o’clock at night, and wonder what I’m going to write about on my blog. The last day for me to look at Ronni for a suggestion. The last day for me feel guilty for not having a “substantial” post, instead of a throw-away post.

That’s the funny thing about this month. Every other day of the year, if I want to post something, I do. If it’s a short little blurb, I don’t feel bad about it. If it’s a goofy thought, or a meaningless quiz, I put it up and hope others find it funny and take it themselves. This month, though, I feel like the posts should matter. If they don’t, it’s cheating, somehow.

But why should that be? This blog is about whatever enters my head and I decide to share. Often it’s about politics. Sometimes it’s about entertainment. And then there are days it’s just about my cats. And that’s okay. (Incidentally, if I could have gotten a picture of the way Shamatha was looking out the window earlier today… He was standing on his back paws, swaying a little, almost like a cobra… Very weird.)

I know that now the pressure is off, I will probably post here for the next several days or weeks without much trouble at all. I mean, when I don’t have to post, it’s usually quite easy.

But I think I got out of this month what I hoped to. I needed to recommit to my writing and my blogging. And this helped with that. I still enjoy doing this, and it’s good to have that confirmed by pushing yourself to keep doing it. So I’ll wear my NaBloPoMo badge with pride.

And meet me here tomorrow to see what happens when I don’t make myself post.

There’s a week to go. Then my third NaBloPoMo will be finished. Will I have accomplished anything? I don’t know. I will have proven to myself that I still both can and want to do this blog thing.

But I also feel like I’m learning some lessons.

* Running NaBloPoMo on two blogs during the same month is really taxing.

* Friends doing NaNoWriMo can make you feel inadequate. (Purely unintentionally. I’m so happy for my friends doing it. I’m just jealous. And feel like my accomplishments here pale in comparison.)

* Drinking more red wine after the first glass doesn’t suddenly inspire you to write on your blog.

* No matter how long you stare at a computer screen, blogs don’t post to themselves.

* Having a category called “Random Thoughts” seems like a waste of time. Almost all of my thoughts seem to fit in other categories.

* Drinking even more red wine can make you not care what you write on your blog.

* Listening to music, after drinking red wine, is not conducive to writing a quick list of random thoughts.

* If everyone keeps staring at me, I might have to run off to the corner to hide.

* Writing blog posts in the wake of the most historic election of my life seems almost pointless. It’s at least an emotional let down.

* Everything seems funnier on little sleep. (Okay, I knew this one already. But I still relearned it this month.)

* Not writing a novel this month has given me more ideas for novels than any month in the last ten years.

* Random thoughts lists should be shorter.

As the badge on the top of the sidebar should have made clear by now, today is the first day of the third annual National Blog Posting Month. I still don’t have the time or drive to do the National Novel Writing Month (maybe next year?). But I fully intend to keep up my streak of NaBloPoMo. And I felt like I was beginning to slack off a bit on the blog, with several two-day breaks between posts lately. (The last week doesn’t count, because of all the stupid political stuff I feel compelled to write.)

So this is my opportunity to rededicate myself to this odd obsession of mine. (Y’all do realize I’d be posting here even if no one read it, right? Indeed, I rarely, if ever, check my statistics on this site. I have no idea how many people are reading this thing.)

It’s bad timing, of course. Since today, the first day of this marathon, I’m in the middle of trying to grade around 100 papers. But I still plan on posting every day this month. Including today. And this post doesn’t feel like it should count.

So give me a couple of hours. I’m going to grade a bit more. Then I’ll be back with a real post. Probably something about the stupid election.

This has been a long month. Lots of difficult events and many distractions. Friends and family close to me have been going through their own crises, as I feel mostly useless in helping them. Then there have been my own little issues that I’ve been struggling with. November, even though it flew right by, has been piling it on a bit, I think. (I’m avoiding rehashing all the gory little details here. Despite some of the silliness that’s gone on, I’ve tried to keep it out of my blog for the most part.)

For all of those reasons and more, I really struggled with National Blog Posting Month this year. Several days, I barely got my post in on time. Some days, I just didn’t feel like posting at all.

And yet, I’m glad that it was going on this month. I think I might have failed to blog altogether for weeks at a time if this challenge I voluntarily took on hadn’t been here. I might have gotten out of the habit of posting at all. And, whatever else I deal with, I really do enjoy this outlet. And I think it would be a shame if I didn’t keep doing it.

This blog has always been, first and foremost, for me. I wanted, even needed, a place to have a voice all my own. And this blog has been that. I don’t want to lose it, even if I do sometimes feel tired doing it.

So despite my own struggles this month, I’m glad I did this again. My own month of months is coming to a close. I’m not sorry to National Adoption Month end. But I’m glad to have had NaBloPoMo to keep me on track.

One last thing to do. I just need to add the official completion badge to my sidebar. (No. I don’t know why the Pillsbury Dough Boy is on the badge.) Then I’ll be ready for December.

And so it begins… Today is the first day of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). My solemn vow to all of you is to post, meaningfully, every day this month. I’ll try to do it in the morning, but I will certainly do it before midnight. (Remember, I’m on Central time in the U.S., so my midnight might not be your midnight.)

I’ve thought long and hard about what this first post should be about. I’m sick of politics right now. (Though that could change tomorrow.) Nobody wants to listen to me talk about what television I’m currently watching. (Even I would feel like a dork just talking about Heroes and Bionic Woman every day.) And I’m not feeling particularly creative right now. So what to talk about?

Well, there is one thing that’s been on my mind a lot lately. And so it seems like the thing to write about today. Indeed, since today is also the first day of National Adoption Month, it seems particularly appropriate.

And I was thinking about this topic… It seemed to me, the one time I brought up Open Records a few days ago, the discussion got heated (myself included). I respect you guys. Even when I disagree with you, I respect you. Even when I don’t act like it, I respect you. And talking about adoption again seemed likely to lead to more bad feelings. And I don’t want that.

I also remember, however, why I started this blog in the first place. I started it to raise difficult questions about life, politics, and everything. I’m supposed to be playing with fire, and sometimes people get burned, myself included. (Everyone wave to my internet stalker!) I’m not looking to upset people. But I also cannot censor myself on my own blog. (I should say, too, that no one has asked me to censor myself. This is all an internal struggle for me.)

So now that I’ve wasted a good chunk of this post talking about blogging, rather than adoption, I should at least say a few things about that.

Those of you who don’t know me in real life won’t know all of this. Those who do know that I was adopted by two loving parents. They have both given me a lot of love and support. I don’t need to reassure them that I love them, and vice versa. But that doesn’t stop me from wondering about my birth family. And four months ago, I found my birth mother. We have since developed a good relationship. Given some of the stories I’ve heard, I think I’ve been pretty lucky.

And yet, my records were sealed. Because of that seal, does that mean I shouldn’t have looked for my birth mother? I didn’t know that she wanted to be found. I didn’t know the circumstances leading to my adoption. I had no idea if she would be horrified for me to show up in her life the way that I did. In short, I had no idea if I was going to be accepted or rejected.

And yet, I had to do it. And if a note had been left for me 30-some years ago that I shouldn’t look for her, I still would have. Because I had to know. And I couldn’t know whether she would have changed in her mind in more than three decades.

Does that make me a bad person? I don’t think so. Does it mean I did something wrong? I don’t think so. (And, happily, she agrees with me on this.) Does it say anything about the parents that loved me, cared for me, and raised me? Of course not. The fact of the matter was, and is, that I needed to know about my past, my history. These form part of my identity. Mundane facts about medical history are important to me and decisions I make affecting my life. But there are also, more ephemeral, questions about who I am and where I came from. I couldn’t not at least take the chance to try to find some answers here.

If sealed records are meant to protect birth mothers, then shouldn’t searching for them, the way that I and others have done, also be illegal? I have no idea what I’m going to discover or disrupt. If birth mothers have the right to privacy the way that some claim, my search is, itself, a violation of my birth mother’s right. (That she doesn’t see it that way is immaterial, proponents of sealed records might claim. Others would see it as a violation of their rights.)

The thing I always come back to is this: Adoption is supposed to be about helping children. The birth mother’s needs and the adoptive parents’ needs are secondary. The child being adopted (usually when it is far too young to stand up for itself) is the one that needs to be protected and supported. Thus, the rights of the adoptees should take precedence over the interests (even legitimate interests) of the adults involved.

Adoptees have a right to know where they came from. They may not have a right to have a relationship with their birth family (that is up to the birth family, at least in part). What other people do, or how they react, is not up to the adoptee. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a chance to know important (both practically and emotionally) information about their origins.

That, for me, is what open records are about. It’s about protecting the rights of individuals to know their origins. Rights that every other U.S. citizen has. And rights that were sealed away when they were infants or young children.

* * * * * * * * *

Okay, enough for now. I’ll try to come up with something a little lighter for Day Two.

I haven’t posted much about adoption here. A few things, to be sure, but not much. In preparation for NaBloPoMo, which starts in just over a week, I was looking around the NaBloPoMo site (the link is the badge on the right). Many groups have formed, and I found one to join. The Adoption Affected group seemed like a good place to hang out while coming up with blog posts every day. (I don’t expect this to be too, too difficult, since I almost do it now.)

The founder of the group had posted a video in our area, and I thought I would share it with you, my lovely readers.

I remember when I lived in Atlanta, oh so many years ago. I was driving to school when I heard a news story about Washington state. It seems the state had passed a law giving access to birth certificates to adult adoptees. People were lined up to get their records. At the last minute, a judge issued a stay. That has to be one of the most frustrating, even infuriating, news stories I have ever heard that did not directly affect me. I believe that, later, the stay was rescinded but I’m uncertain of the details.

I could start ranting here, but I won’t for fear I won’t stop. I’ll let the video do the talking.

Long-time readers (or fellow bloggers) may remember that last November was the first annual National Blog Posting Month. It was started by Fussy, and you can read about that first kick off in this original NaBloPoMo post. It is the blogosphere’s answer to National Novel Writing Month.

I would love to participate in NaNoWriMo, but November is one of those bad months for me. If they did it in June, I would be there. But November just isn’t happening. So NaBloPoMo gives me an excuse to write every day, even though I can’t write a novel. And the added benefit is that you all have guaranteed posts every day of November. (Because, when I sign on for something like this, I will post every day. And it won’t be mere gibberish, either!)

Anyway, yesterday seems to have been the first day for signing up for NaBloPoMo (I feel compelled to over-use that acronym now. I think I’ve succeeded, don’t you?) If you’ll notice the spanky new badge off to the right…? Clicking on that will take you to the new community for signing up for this very amusing month. Fussy has set up a brand new space, so don’t go to the old post looking for sign up info.

I got in at the very last possible second last year. This year, I’ve got a month to ramp up. I wanted to mention it early, in case other bloggers want to participate. It’s fun. Everybody’s doing it!