How Blogging Fits Into My Life

Blogging isn't something for the weak of heart.  I'm not talking about people who blog privately for their family and friends.  It's a fantastic way to keep people updated, but it's not quite the same thing as blogging publicly when your readers probably don't know you in real life.  It's not something that you can take on without being willing to put yourself out there.  I have strangers reading about some of the most personal things about me.  And they have the all powerful choice of commenting.  And they can say whatever they want about my very personal thoughts.  I've been very lucky that my readers have been kind to me in the comments thus far.  But that doesn't mean it will always be that way...

I've had a few discussions lately about blogging and how it fits into my life.  For me, this is a blog about my life as an adopted person.  The adopted part is what I write about most frequently, but that doesn't mean that I never blog about other things in my life.  Or the people in it.  That being said, I do my best to keep things private as much as I can. I'm somewhat anonymous here and I don't use real names.  Yes, I use nicknames but unless you know me in real life, you'd have no way of knowing who those people are.  It's just a lot easier to write "Rudy" than "my boyfriend" (and so on and so forth).

As in any adoption blog, I'm going to blog about my family.  My adoption is surrounded by family.  One family gave me away and another family took me in (in one manner of speaking).  So that means that my first parents are going to be a frequent topic, you know, because they are the ones who put me up for adoption.  Just like my adoptive parents are going to be frequent topics of discussion, you know, being the ones who took me in and all.  As for the rest of my family, yes, they are going to come up.  They play a part in my adoption story.  My sister is the one who gave me the information I needed to complete my search.  My aunts have been super supportive when I've needed to talk about my adoption issues.  My first uncle and I share a profession (how random is that?), which is probably going to come up.  Otherwise, what would I write about?

I'm not just about adoption.  I have other things going on with my life.  I have a boyfriend.  I have friends.  I have a job.  All of these things may or may not come up in my blog.  I'm human.  I'm a person.  I have a life.  That's the thing about adoption.  It's always there.  It's always present.  And adoptees have to live with that each and every single day.

Rudy knows that I blog here.  He picked his own nickname.  He sometimes reads here.  I have two friends that I gave this blog address too.  One from my hometown (the only one from my hometown with the URL other than me) and one from college.  That's it.  Three people from my "real" life.  I haven't passed out the URL because I don't like the idea of writing thinking that my entire family is reading over my shoulder.  I don't think I could be as personal.  It's too intense for me to think about that.  And honestly?  I don't think I could handle having such intense conversations about adoption with my adoptive family (or my first family for that matter).  They don't know how painful my adoption has been for me, and it would hurt them to find out.  So I keep my happy adoptee face on when I'm around them, and write about my pain here.

I've been debating going private lately.  I'm still debating, but I'm airing on the side of keeping this public after I read something on Facebook last week about not letting one person ruin your day if there are almost 7 billion other people out there.  I just don't want to deal with drama.  I'll probably keep it public.  We'll see.

Thanks for reading,

Reunion Fun

My high school reunion was this past weekend.  It was... interesting to say the least.  I surprisingly had a great time.  I went with my friends (who I didn't hang out with in high school - we became friends after we graduated) and Rudy made the trip up for the weekend (and blew off his own reunion).  A few surprises from the night:

1) Senior year, my prom date treated me like crap.  He ignored me, failed to tell me I looked nice (this is a big no-no!  ALWAYS compliment your date no matter what!), and waved at me from the car when he dropped me off.  Not even a hug goodbye or anything.  We hung out once after graduation, and I was invited to dinner with his family via text message after he graduated college, but declined.  He texted me last week to see if I wanted to go to the reunion together.  I politely explained I was going with friends.  I also made sure that he knew when it was because the whole thing was planned and advertised via Facebook and he doesn't have one.  I'm such a nice person.  In the end, he walked up to me, shook my hand, and walked away.  A 20 second encounter.  Rudy says he was watching me the whole night.  Go figure.

2) I had a boy torture me in high school because he was threatened by a smart girl.  Loser.  Anyway, I didn't really want to see him every again.  Sure enough he was there.  Not only was he there, he was in the group behind us in line as we had to wait for a half hour to get into the bar.  Joy.  He was talking to my friend, and another guy.  I went over because I figured it would be good to get it out of the way.  He didn't remember my name but remembered my face apparently, and insisted on giving me a hug.  I gave him a dirty look back.  Then he made some comment about how he wasn't living in our hometown anymore, like it was a bad thing to still live there with my parents.  His friend jumped in and explained that the asshole was living with his parents, just in an apartment in a different town. I said something mean.  I'm not a mean person.  But he's the only one that I think pissed me off enough that I wanted a bit of revenge.  So I said "Wow, that makes me feel a lot happier about my own situation!"  His friend started laughing and wanted to know where this version of me was five years ago.  I smiled and walked away.  I realized that the asshole was just as much a loser now as five years ago.  I mean, who shows up to a five year reunion wearing a Kermit the Frog hat on backwards and a Penn State t-shirt?

3) I saw an old "friend" at a bar a few weeks ago.  Talk about awkward.  She knew all about my mom (but not the details because she assumed my mom's tumor had been removed -- never going to happen) and wanted me to know she was there for me.  Good grief.  Turns out she was too drunk to make it in the bar for the reunion.  Another friend had to put her up in a hotel room for the night so she could sleep it off.  Classy.

So really, it all went pretty well.  The high school popular girls were drinking by themselves, refusing to talk to anyone.  The middle tier was basking in attention from all the popular guys who suddenly noticed them after they had gone off to college girls and come back women.  The bottom tier showed up looking completely different and with social skills to boot.  And then there were the no-shows, a few of which were surprising.  Some people were abroad and unable to attend, but a good amount just didn't show.  I think some of them were scared to face the rest of us after tormenting us in high school.

We'll see how the ten year goes.  I told Rudy we could go to his ten year if he wanted because he came to my five.  He was excited about that.  I can't wait to try to pass off as a student from his high school.  I'll just say I was the triangle player in the band :-)

Really Facebook?

Facebook is changing again.  So after every change, I've gotten into a habit of making sure that everything is still OK on my page.  And a part of that is checking my messages.  A while ago I copied the first message that my first father sent me on Facebook, but I really liked having the original.

And now it's gone.  Just not there.  I went back to the date, and it's MISSING.  I am so upset.  It should be there.  It's an important part of my reunion history, and it's just gone.  Deleted.  Never coming back.  I'm so unhappy with Facebook right now, I can barely speak.

I'm so happy that I thought to copy that message.  And I'm so happy that I've printed out all the emails in case technology goes bust and they disappear too.  Stupid Facebook.

I have a feeling I'm going to be muttering under my breath all day.

Profile Picture

I can't remember if I blogged about this here before or not. I figured I'd go for it anyway because I've been thinking about it a bit lately.

When I first got in touch with my first father, it was through Facebook. I'm pretty convinced that Facebook is not all it's cracked up to be and can cause a lot of drama. However, it was the only way I felt at the time I could get in touch with my first father. I was under the impression that I had permission, but I wasn't sure how long it was going to last. I could see her backing out of giving me permission so I had to move. I also knew not to send something to the house because I didn't want to "out" myself to the wrong people (read here: my sisters). And I didn't want to ask for an email address, because again, I wasn't sure if my first mother would change her mind at all. I couldn't see her giving me his email address. So Facebook seemed like my only option.

The profile picture because a big deal. I knew he'd have my name, he'd be able to see very limited information on my profile (mine was very private before it was cool to be private) and he'd be able to see my picture. How do you convince someone you are their daughter with just a name, a picture, and a message? I also don't like pictures of myself. I'm too critical and I know it's something I have to work on. My way out of this is to use a profile picture of me as a kid. I'll admit I was a cute child and those pictures don’t bother me. At the time, my profile picture was me at five. A friend pointed it out to me before I sent the message. It was decided that sending a message from my Facebook with a picture of me at five was a bad idea. We talked it over and figured that a) I'm writing to him as a twenty-two year old and that sending a picture of me at five would send mixed messages, b) seeing a picture of the kid he gave up, rather than the adult who's contacting him, might evoke a strong emotion (not sure which one) and that might not be the best thing in the world and c) it would be much better to show him what I look like now because I wanted to be seen as a mature woman who he would want to get to know.

It is interesting to discuss this now with my first father. He did notice the picture and tried to figure out if I was really me based on that picture. The name meant nothing to him, the message was standard and didn't give anything away, so all he really had was the picture. He thought that I sort of looked like I could be the right person. Those pictures are so hard to see though, I can't blame him for not getting it right away. I had received pictures of him from my first mother, so I knew what to look for. He had no clue.

These days, I'm still careful about my profile picture for a lot of reasons. First of all, I'm friends with my grandmother on Facebook. Yes, that grandmother, the one I don’t want to know about my reunion. I can hear it now "I saw your profile the other day… What kind of picture is that?" Also, I'm friends with people I work with. I have to maintain a professional image. I've also worked hard to get where I am and I don't want a picture to take away from that. I'm a big proponent of having a positive online image. And yes, I will admit that knowing that if my first father still has that first message, he can still see my profile picture. We aren't Facebook friends (can't imagine what THAT blowup would be like for him!) but I still have to be careful. You never know…

Facebook

This post details my search and can be found here: http://insertbadmovietitlehere.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/facebook/