Seibways existed before, and I intended it as a smart, witty, and seriously brilliant take on web enterprise. Thing is, it didn’t turn out to be that. Why?

• The web is my work, and I couldn’t stand to just write about that as sometimes I just get burned out on the whole thing.
• I am very good at compartmentalizing my life. I keep my work life at work. Most of the time, I don’t even make friends with the people at work because they aren’t my friends; they’re my co-workers.  They can be my friends when I leave and often are. (I’ve job-hopped a lot, so there has turned out to be a significant friend-trail in the wake of my employment).
• I have a very low attention span. I think this is partially due to my web-based life where just a simple click takes you away from the very thing you were thinking about and onto something else, essentially training your brain to give up on your thought halfway through.
• I’m interested in a great many things, so why focus on just one thing?
• Writing is a great process for uncovering what you really think about something. E.M. Forster said, “How do know what I think until I see what I say?” I’m in one of those contemplative phases of my life where this kind of process will probably be good for me.

I also didn’t give up on the old blog because of my general failure to finish anything. I’ve finished many things. I finished graduate school. I got a Masters degree in creative writing from some accredited land grant university out in the middle of nowhere. Though this is proof both for and against my case that I can finish something, I will maintain this general argument out of pure admiration of good irony. I earned my degree in creative writing but then stopped writing, pretty much right after my mother’s 50^th birthday in 1998, six months after graduation and when I no longer had a project and a deadline to work with. (I decided her gift would be a poem. Don’t scoff. It was really good.) Sure, I had a job as a web writer, but I don’t count that at all.

I also finished being pregnant. I have a 3 year old to show for it. I gave birth, nursed, changed diapers, did potty training, and mostly finish the books I read to him at bedtime before passing out next to him, hoping in the back of my mind that he’s falling asleep nearly as fast as I am.

And besides finishing those things and about a dozen jobs since I held my first mowing lawns for GTE when I was 14, I have finished reading an occasional book, tiled a floor, and finished my first half marathon.  I will leave out the list of things I haven’t finished because it is significantly longer and just might drive me to tears.

What I like even better than listing my failures is getting another chance, so here it is. I’m going to write this damn thing. It may not be every day and may not even be every week, but it will be every so often. And it will be about something I want to talk about because my electronic editing screen is forced to listen to me even if readers and my husband aren’t. The dog just doesn’t give a damn. His sympathetic expression is just a ploy to get a treat.

What is it about? Well, it’s the intersection where being a woman, a mom, a webby type, a marketer, a media critic, and a person who likes thing to make sense meets. If you squint really hard you can see that intersection. But you have to be looking Seibways to see it straight.

Tags: blogging, parenting, starting, web | Category Life in General