Parting with Things: Aethelread the Great, my Misty Collection...and Hello Dear Hystery

One of my favourite - hell, my FAVOURITE - blogger decided to resign the world of blogging this week.  He posted and explained why - his heart wasn't in it anymore, he felt his blog wasn't serving any particular purpose where once it sort of had, and it had no particular identity to boot.  There was more.  I read it all very carefully at the time, through tears.

Don't go stopping at that point and imagining me over emotional - have you never read a damn good book and cried piteously over the sad bits, and when it ended?  Or film, or TV?  This is the same.  Except its almost more, because the person is posting close to real time (even if some posts were written aeons before).  You know the actual brain that wrote the thing you so agreed with, identified with etc, is out there somewhere, this day, this week.  You can say things in the comments section should you wish, or write the person a mail.  If they chose to engage with you, you can have a conversation!  The net can be an amazing thing.

I have passed back and forth in my head, the idea of writing this post for several days now.  Ever since I read Aethelread's heartfelt and so cleanly written swansong.  In some versions of this post, I retrospective-d his entire output, and highlighted what I see as its clear coherence (it has shedloads of theme and identity, not none), and wrote an extremely lucid, and indeed Aethelread worthy analysis of why it was such a great blog, and why I kept reposting bits on Facebook etc.  The trouble with this brilliant idea is that I have only been reading his blog a couple of years, there's 6 years of it, and I was still going through the back catalogue, as the whim took me.  And I haven't got time to do such a brilliant post; I've been interrupted countless times while doing this very flawed one...

His output has been relentlessly readable: lots of spot on, cleanly written, unemotional but on the button emotionally (get *that* right in everyday life and you're a a superhero) political analysis of whatever was current that caught his eye - especially things I found a bit confusing and needed explaining in more depth.  He had a keen eye for LGBT issues, especially exposing hypocrisy in laws and ministers etc (he's gay) - themes in those posts just kept rearising, as the same old issues were slowly worked through in the political sphere (civil partnerships, marriage still an issue).  He posted many honest, clear and thought provoking entries on depression, anxiety to paranoia, sense of identity and self, sense of community (or not in some cases) - his blog was at least partially a mental health issues blog.  That's how I first found it, one day deeply down looking for wise words, I found some on his blog, and stayed.  He reviewed books and TV and music, as it moved him depending on why he found it interesting, or lacking.  He had a big thing for The Pet Shop Boys (who doesn't in their right mind??!).  This is just a glance at the vast output he's left there for us to read when we get to it.  (He's on my Blogroll - go see.)  There was such a clearness of thought, such a ...I hesitate to get all 'he was like a surgeon in his incisiveness', as that's clearly hyperbole and he'd hate it; it also leaves out the dry humour that ran through even his angriest and most downered posts.  Sometimes he made me laugh out loud.

To me, all this wasn't no purpose, or no coherent blogging identity - as he says he felt his blog may've suffered from - it was a clear identity: HIM.  If you liked one thing he wrote you were likely to like another as well, as if you liked the way he thought and spoke, you liked the way he thought and spoke on most subjects.  A few glanced off me, some TV stuff I was unlikely to watch anyway - but since when do we engage our audience 100% of the time?  I thought it interesting he worried about this too - as since the very start of my own blog, I've consistently felt that its just a ME ME ME thing.  Stuff that interests me, and thats it.  You'll get a bit of 'creative writing' practice (as damn it, one day I'll get the time and brain power to finish a bleedin novel about...god knows what in my current state, gah!).  A bit of Books I've Read, especially my never ending Dr Who marathon - which isolates clear half my readers immediately (so I'm left with about 3 tub thumping Who fans).  Or Films and TV I've watched (great preponderance toward horror, as a bit of blood cheers my odd mind when its sad).  Some stuff about neopaganism or herbalism (see, the Dr Who fans don't know where to look now).  Mine has absolutely no structure or theme either.

I get a bit sick of the Successful Bloggers who make a living from this actually having themes, and coherence beyond that of themselves as a person.  Because the strength of a blog like Aethelread's is that you felt like you were meeting at least a part of him as a person.  Like having coffee with someone in a shop, regularly.  Where they do more talking than you, but you're tired and they're eloquent, so that's fine.  You never know what will be on their mind, but you're always happy to listen, because they are NEVER boring - this is the brain you find so interesting, talking.  Cool.  You never knew quite when they would turn up, either, cos these unprofessional bloggers just turn up when they feel like it and are ready to say something; not regularly once, twice or (too much for gawd's sake) three times a week.  It was a lot more real, as an interaction, than a semi plotted in appointment with one of the professional blogs.  Also, I liked the way he never had pics, and had pages of text.  I liked that he trusted us to just get on with reading and didn't worry we would freak out cos we hadn't seen something pretty for 2 minutes.  I add more pics to my own blog, I've noticed, recently.  This is only cos I like the prettyness and think it helps the thoughts in some of those blogs - its rare mine are heavy analysis - pics would have got in the WAY of his thoughts. You don't generally have pics in books of essays, or novels; I never understand the pressure to have them on blogs if they aren't appropriate. 

For that reason and many more, you end up feeling (artifically or not) closer to the unprofessional blogger in question when you know they're...just a person out there, similar to you in at least some of their concerns.  You end up feeling a little tiny bit like you have a sort of friendship - like a sort of strange pen pal, with whom you occasionally swap encouragement, via a comments section.  I know its nothing like 'real life', I'm not daft.  But I'm also hermity, depressive and socially anxious - in many ways, this suits me just as well as real life.  Because bloggers like Aethelread don't just (or ever, in his case I think) write to be witty.  They write what they really think, about things they care about.  The sincerity and honesty are addictive.  And better than many interactions I've had in Real Life!  The dynamic is different, interesting, and not so threatening.  (Poor Aethelread on occasion woke trolls with his brave postings, and did get threatened.  I tried in my ever Quixotic fashion to speak up if I noticed, but I'm usually so busy policing my Facebook page against the same kind of unthinking aggression the internet can bring out in what I charitably assume are otherwise reasonable people...mostly...that I probably missed a lot of that.)  So, anyway.  I felt like Aethelread was sort of my friend, faraway.  So that, in other versions of this post I just wrote a sad little BlackberryJuniper very Sherbet-ed paragraph saying - 'oh, my friend in the ether is gone, I will really miss him and his brain, I feel rather depressed'...which, you know, however honest and true is actually a bit of a pointless thing to say, and comes across a bit emotionally blackmail-ey as we depressed and anxious one's can so often come across.  So I wrote up and posted my Seaside Fish and Chips post instead, which was late and needed doing, even though I felt that too was rather flawed.  But it had nice and genuine from the direct action photos...

I didn't really know how to approach my post here.  I wanted it to be a bit like a eulogy, in the sense that if someone you've never met announces they will no longer be present where you used to 'see' them, its almost like they've, er, died.  A bit like a thankyou - because maybe he didn't really understand how much his blog did touch people and make them think - and that ISN'T nothing, its a big fat deal, and a good thing (he never used his words for evil!  And he could've, he was very persuasive).  I did not want it to be like a goodbye, because part of me hopes he'll take 6 months off and change his mind and come back replenished and maybe start a new blog.  Also, I am genuinely outright crap with change, and I didn't pick this one, so I reserve the right to stamp my feet, and have a minor (if respectful of his decison) tantrum about it.  So.  No goodbyes, pah.

Anyway.  I need to pay a large utility bill.  Bear with me, this isn't a seismic subject change.  You know when you don't have an income, cos you're a mum at home who gets 'housekeeping' from your working partner and that's it; or you're on benefits or something?  Well, that's me.  I've sort of run out of worth it things to sell for when I need to pay a bill.  Stanley is running out too (and he, as a boy, has toys that are worth much more than mine).  You can only sell so much stuff back from the 'good times' when you both had a job and money bled like water because neither of you were that sensible and lived for today instead of...this today.  This today is rather hand to mouth what with the outrageous cost of rent, utilities, travel and the exponential rise in the cost of food.  (And the fact that I alone have almost £60 a month of medication I have to take...thats a chunk from the 'housekeeping' bill.)  So anyway, I have some comic collections, because I am (a) nostalgic, and (b) geeky.  I recently sold all my Spellbound's (lovely things, sigh).  I didn't have a full collection of those, they are notoriously difficult to complete, and I wasn't hugely emotionally attached to them.  That leaves my collection of Summer Specials, and my collection of Mistys.  (The UK girls spooky comic running from '78-80; not the US comic; Spellbound was a precursor and just as good though different in tone).  The market for Summer Specials (of Bunty, Tammy, Jinty etc) has been going through some extremely strange vacillations the last year or so - in that I have seen the same comic in the same condition go for £5 or £100, and not that far from each other.  I can't be doing with that sort of unreliability when I need to pay a bill last week.  Also, that sort of unreliability is down to ebay as an auction system.  You need at least 5 days for a decent auction on a comic (and most of the action will take place in the last hour, its maddening; snipers are so irritating).  I want to put things up on a Buy It Now basis, for 5 days max, closer to 3, to get that sense of urgency going - and get the damn things sold, so I can pay my share of the stupid bill.

The annoying thing is...I LOVE those comics.  I tried to list the first batch of them (I have an almost perfect clear run), yesterday, and felt so sad I couldn't.  So I made myself do it this evening - with the proviso ticking through my head that I can always go to my favourite Real Life comic shop at some time in life and start the whole damn collection again (Misty's are more accessible to collect than Spellbound, literally more originally printed).  Yes, I know that sounds insane - sell something only to buy it again.  Ever heard of pawnbrokers?  I mean much later in life anyway.  Like when I am able to get a part time job or somesuch.  I'm rather gutted it took me 8 years to collect the ones I have, because I still haven't finished reading them...I tried to analyse exactly what it was about them I was so upset to be parting with.  The idea of the me I was when I first read them, the teenage me, slow to catch up with the others?  The way it was one of the first things that got me into Spooky and set the pattern for a lifetime's worth of reading/watching/thinking/philosophy?  The fact the artwork is just so pretty, and Misty herself is such an incredible witchy babe - she's aspirational?  The way I look at the comics and see a part of myself externalised, a sort of strange ideal part?  I don't know - any and all of those.  But I was almost in tears as I listed the first batch.  Like I said, absolutely crap with change.

Then there's you, Hystery, of the Plainly Pagan blog.  You're my other favourite blog - for a remarkably similar set of reasons to those I gave for Aethelread.  Your posts are YOU - what interests, worries and causes you to think.  You tell stories of your life, your relationships, your disillusionment with politics, with teaching, with so many things that used to bring you hope and pleasure.  In your own way, you talk about mental health issues also, often.  You and I have a friendship too.  A calm, quiet, once every couple of months hello from across the seas mailing, a checking in and happiness to read the other's thoughts again.  I'm worried about you.  I'm worried your blog is going to go the same way as Aethelread's.  That your thoughts, that I do love so much to read - and you do get dead poetic, I love that - are slowly petering out.  I wish you would stop that, don't let them.  Struggle to speak.  Your readers  - and you know they are out there, I've read the comments - await you.  We love the window onto your world.  Its not boring, or small, or themeless (absolute cacky bollox that coherent theme thing, the more I think about it, when it comes to blogs like yours and Aethelread's).  Its full of anger and sadness and joy.  Expressed cleanly and coolly and calmly.  You're a good writer.  Aethelread was - IS  - a Good Writer.  Its such a shame that either of you, any of you, even think of going, or stopping.  (Also - this is what happens when I add 2 blogs to my Blogroll; other blogs take the opportunity to sneak off the other end!  It won't do!)

So.

Aethelread: thankyou for all the thoughts, you helped me think.  I hope you realise how Good You Are, in both senses of the word.  Maybe...you'll change your mind.  And maybe I'll hear from you occasionally, if not.

My Misty comics: sniffle.  I'll be back for you sometime...don't stop being me. Kind, pretty mirror.

Hystery: listen to me now, and value your writing for the Thing It Is: Communication - the most precious damn thing we have, as humans in such a difficult world.  Please don't stop.  Put your thoughts down here and don't think they are small and meaningless, I swear they aren't.  They never are.  And I owe you a mail, I've not forgotten.  Also, I'm not saying all this to make you feel pressured - I just love your writing, and I don't reckon you're done, by a long shot...

I don't have a pic of Aethelread, or Hystery (bet they're both pleased about that), so here is a picture of one of my Misty's...such a great comic...take this pic as a Reverence of All of Them; good people, good words.