Commenting on comments

So another snowy day on the East Coast has me stuck inside and on a personal day from work, thus giving me way more time than usual to do whatever I want. Just as I was enthralled when I first joined facebook and posted and commented far too frequently before coming back to my senses, I am a bit too focused on the potential of this blog so have been coming back and toying with it all day. Looking for ideas on how other people design their pages and what they muse about, I have been reading interesting commentaries all day.

One of the blogs I read mentioned all of the comments people posted in response to the article I cited as the inspiration for my first blog post. At first, when I started to read them I got irritated, as I usually do when I read any kind of comments sections. I added the "addendum" to my first post and carried on. Lack of motivation to trek through the snow to get the gym and a multiple handfuls of Goldfish crackers found me reading more of the comments. I just can't help but make my own comments in response.

Some people, probably the same who like conspiracy theories, guess that the women in the blogs are not real. At least a couple residents of Utah, aka Mormon home base, chided in to say life there isn't that peachy keen. I feel I can attest to the reality of those women. Even if I don't know them personally, I know plenty of similar women who could have been in the featured blogs. I would also argue that they really are that happy. Furthermore, having lived in Utah briefly, particularly Provo, I think it's fair to say that it's a little more cushiony than the outside world. While not everything is as it seems behind closed doors and blogs are meant to showcase the good times, not to air out family feuds, I think people living in a tight knit community with a belief system that focuses on kindness and service have the happiness odds swinging in their favor. And though Utah was not a good fit for me, the square peg, I don't think the happiness of the people there is at all insincere. Furthermore, most of the young hipster blogs featured were coming from cities like DC and NYC, not SLC.

Part of what drew my attention is not the focus on religion or even the contrast with the societal focus on work and education and worldly success but the point the author makes about women of my generation (I clock in at a whopping 30, for a point of reference), trying to forge our own path. Our parents generation, having babies in the 80's, when our culture shifted toward white collar, Wall Street, Alex P. Keaton mentality, did so at the expense of marriage success rates and fulfilling personal time. Fast forward to today, with a failing economy and a focus on all things "green" and it's no wonder that self-reliance and personal industry are coming back into fashion, even among people outside of the Mormon community, which has never given up promoting it.

So here we are. We are a generation of (not only) women who want to find some way to live in between the extremes of the 60's housewife and the 80's business woman. Therein lies the dilemma but I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge. Lots of people have overcome much greater obstacles.