Heather B. Armstrong

A few weeks ago I hopped on the phone with Heather Wood Rudulph of Cosmopolitan to talk about the history of dooce^® and where I'm headed next for their "Get That Life" series.

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"As a web designer, you're constantly looking for inspiration online. And part of what I browsed were LiveJournals and blogs. There weren't that many at the time. Many of them were basically résumés or galleries of things people created, paired with an anecdote about their life. I thought, I can build one of those. It was going to be like my own little online magazine about living in L.A. that I would send out to 12 of my friends."

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"I had very severe postpartum depression after my daughter was born, and I wrote about it very carefully. It was so debilitating that I ended up in the hospital. I remember trying to balance in my head — and this is what's so fucked up about living your life online like this — that I needed to go to the hospital, but I was so terrified that the people who read my website would label me as that crazy lady who ended up in a psych ward. I checked myself into the hospital for four days, wrote about it, and my traffic did another spike."

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"I think the term 'mommy blogger' is a little dismissive. But that label is not something I can get rid of. I've embraced it because what we did — a lot of women who were in the first guard of bloggers — was created a community in which to feel safe. We helped raise each other's kids, we comforted each other, and we gave voice to women who are so easily dismissed as "just a stay-at-home mom." We supported each other and stood up to say our stories were important. I mean, who the hell is going to hire a mom in Salt Lake City to write stories about parenthood and pay her a lot of money? But they didn't have to hire me. I hired myself."

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"I grew up always wanting to be a teacher, and I think it's time. I've got 18 years of experience online, and, oh, the stories I have to tell, the insight I have to share. I want to speak and consult and help others navigate this ever-changing landscape. Because I've done everything right, and I've done everything wrong."

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Photo credit Chad Kirkland who was one of the most fabulous photographers I've ever worked with.

Food blogger Adam Roberts wrote last month about why he parted ways with his ad company, why "food blogging" as a career became impossible:

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"I realized I could no longer rely on food blogging to be my sole source of income. That sentence is funny to re-read because could anyone ever really rely on food blogging as a sole source of income? Well, at the beginning it wasn’t clear; and for a while, it seemed possible (supplemented with book deals and TV shows and magazine columns, if you could swing it). But now the writing’s on the wall: to do this full-time, you’ve either got to be wildly successful or you’ve got to be a shill. I’m not the former, for a while I was (uncomfortably) the latter, but now I have to stake out a new path as a food blogger and that’s what I’m trying to figure out."

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Via Kottke, who thinks I'm retiring. Now, If I read what I wrote correctly, I think it says (and stop me if I'm wrong), "I have no intention of shutting this space down. There are too many memories in these pages, and frankly, I still like to write stories." You will read so many persepctives on what happens when you make your passion your living, and I will not wax poetic about that now. What I will say will reveal my privilege in just one of its many disgusting shapes: when you take a look at your DSLR camera and think, "I cannot possibly take another photo of my dog," you've hit one magnificently ridiculous wall.

Before I begin this post about the birth of this website, I must first offer so much gratitude to the design company ALSO (in particular Jenny Volvovski) and developer Brett Burwell of Static Interactive who both lived through the upheaval that happened when I became a full-time single parent. They may have one or two or ten email responses that include some variation of, “My kid is sick again, working on finding backup.” I have so much gratitude for their expertise, advice and patience.

I also have to thank copywriter John Bray for jumping in to help me when I realized that writing about myself in the third person made me feel as gross and dirty as a politician getting caught sending unwanted photos of his bulging boxer briefs. His eye for detail has been crucial in seeing this endeavor come alive.

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Yesterday morning I pulled a bag out of the refrigerator containing mounds of chopped kale and spinach and began adding it on top of other ingredients in my blender. My five-year-old daughter Marlo scrunched up her nose, and with a mouth full of cereal yelled from across the kitchen, “Ugh. Again?!”

I had chopped up several heads of these greens the night before and added them to a food processor with the juice of several limes, an avocado, a bit of cilantro and some coconut oil. Marlo wanted to “help” so I let her add the greens each time there was room enough to jam more in. The end result was a very tasty green sludge packed with tons of nutrients that I can add to meals. However, Marlo took one look at the consistency and forthrightly delivered her judgement: “You better throw that away.”

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Jon Stewart reaveals to The Guardian the details surrounding his decision to leave “the most perfect job in the world” and in doing so shows that like so many of us he is trying to figure out a balance. These snippets especially provide so much more insight than a self-help book, about knowing when you need to look at where you are and ask yourself how you're feeling about where you are. What do you do with the answer to that question?

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“It’s not like I thought the show wasn’t working any more, or that I didn’t know how to do it. It was more, ‘Yup, it’s working. But I’m not getting the same satisfaction.’” He slaps his hands on his desk, conclusively. 

“These things are cyclical. You have moments of dissatisfaction, and then you come out of it and it’s OK. But the cycles become longer and maybe more entrenched, and that’s when you realise, ‘OK, I’m on the back side of it now.’”

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We speak soon after Stewart announces his retirement from The Daily Show. He is in his office in New York, preparing to shoot a Friday-night episode, and the difference in his mood is striking. His voice is about an octave lower, and he sounds weary, weighed down.

But talking about his film in London, he is animated to the point of hyperactivity, gleefully pointing out the pretentious decor in the hotel room where we meet (“A photo of a submissive woman with a cigar in her mouth! Just what every room needs!”).

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“But you don’t want to make any kind of decision when you’re in the crucible of the process, just like you don’t decide whether you’re going to continue to run marathons in mile 24,” he says.

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“Honestly, it was a combination of the limitations of my brain and a format that is geared towards following an increasingly redundant process, which is our political process. I was just thinking, ‘Are there other ways to skin this cat?’ And, beyond that, it would be nice to be home when my little elves get home from school, occasionally.”

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Not since Oprah Winfrey announced her retirement from network television has a US TV host’s departure received such international coverage, but Stewart bridles when I make the Winfrey comparison: “If Oprah can leave and the world still spins, I honestly think it will survive me.”