Jo Ind

PLEASURE.

That’s it, I’ve said it.

I was leading a workshop for Birmingham Book Festival last weekend called Finding Your Blogging Voice. One of the first things we did was brainstorm our reasons for blogging. Between us we said:

• to have a voice
• to showcase work
• to create an archive of material
• to explain a business
• to connect with people
• to improve SEO.

I was leading the workshop and so I forgot to say that, though I do indeed get all those benefits from blogging, my number one reason for going tap, tap, tap at my lap top as I am right now is because I enjoy it.

There are all sorts of different pleasures, of course.

The pleasure of blogging isn’t like that of sex or swimming or lying on the sofa with a glass of wine. It’s  more like the pleasure of making a photo album – but using word-pictures rather than images.

And, as I said when I created this website, it’s like the pleasure of having my own room and getting it just how I want – my own little bit of cyberpace where I can play and muse and hang out with my friends.

In her seminal post What We’re Doing When We Blog, Meg Hourian talks about the anatomy of a post and the communication evolution etc.  It’s all good stuff.

But she doesn’t say: “Having fun.”  That’s what I’m doing when I blog and the day it stops being enjoyable, is the day I’ll stop blogging.

Are you still a feminist?’ – that was a question asked of me last week by a young woman who had read one of my books.

‘Now there’s a question,’ I thought as I stood at the bus stop tapping a reply into my Blackberry.  ‘I was a feminist when I last thought about it – about four years ago – but I don’t know if I still am because what would involve thinking and I haven’t got time for that.’

Since I’ve had a child and endeavoured to look after my family, earn a living, be a good friend, go to the gym, sing with my jazz band and play the organ (oh, and then there’s the cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing, bill paying, gardening etc), life has been about immediacy – how to get Arch’s shoes on without a fuss so we both get out of the house on time.

My only time for reflection is when I’m waiting for a bus. I use those moments to strategise: ‘If Arch is going to Oscar’s party on Saturday, I’ve got to buy a present. The only window I  have for doing that is before work on Monday, which means I won’t be able to go to the gym, which means I’ll have to go on Sunday night, which means I can’t take him to see Sheila.’

All the time this is going on, some part of my brain is building up a backlog or things I would like to reflect upon – how has being a mum affected my feminism? If giving birth is both so horrific and so natural what does that say about the nature of nature? If my brain is no longer what it was, does that mean I am no longer the person I was or is there more to me than my cognitive functions?

I feel as though I’m living on borrowed thinking. It’s as though I’m using Internet Explorer 6 and keep seeing the prompts to update my browser but don’t have time to press the button.

Can you be a feminist if you can’t think? That’s one to add to my list. Right – must load that washing machine.

When Virginia Woolf famously said a room of one’s own was necessary for a woman to write, she could not have envisaged a room that looked like this:

But for me, having my own space on the web in which to doodle my thoughts and write my life feels every bit as important as the hut at the bottom of the garden, for which so many women yearn. (more…)