I was going to write this post about Facebook.  And Privacy.  And Privacy's evil twin, Secrecy.  And how when we say Privacy, we often really mean Secrecy.  Because not only do well-intentioned but befuddled people confuse the two, but addicts and other evil-doers also (gasp!) use the sacred name of Privacy as a mask for the nasty, putrid character of Secrecy.

I was going to tell you to learn to recognize Secrecy. (It's the one with the goatee.  Oh, and also the one you've lied to someone about, explicitly or implicitly.)  And I was going to ask you to think carefully about whether you are really, really talking about nice, clean-shaven Privacy or if you are actually sporting evil facial hair and hiding from people for fear of being judged.  And that being worried about how it will look if people know that you are who you are is not Privacy, it's illness. And I was going to tell you to live well and without secrets.  And not be both so scared and so freaking judgmental.  And if you live with secrets anyway (you devious person!), then Deal With It if you are outed.  Because it's your fault for having them.

And as for Privacy online (or Secrecy online for that matter), I was going to inform you that it's an illusion.  Nothing on the Internet is really private; it's on millions of computers around the world, forever.  If it's truly private, don't put it out there or at least recognize the risks, because demanding Privacy online is the equivalent of yelling at people for walking into a public restroom while you're using it with all the doors wide open.  Good, honest, non-goatee wearing Privacy is what the confines of our own Real Life are about. (It's all the stuff I don't post on the Internet. Whatever that is.) *

And I was going to tell you all this as someone whose life and marriage has been marred by secrets, so that I can see the difference between Privacy and Secrecy in the big, ugly gash burned through the middle of my existence.  And as someone who has this secret blog with a secret identity.  And who litters the Internet with posts about whole bunches of stuff that, really, I'd rather people in my Real Life didn't know.  All of which makes me one of the World's Experts on Privacy, Secrecy and Stuff Not to Post on the Internet.

But as I was writing that post, being all opinionated and you'ing you about how to do stuff right, you whiny and incompetent Facebook users, I saw that all that stuff about you was (surprise!) really stuff about me.  And not just stuff about me, but putting all my worst fears and worst character defects right out there in your face.  I mean, really, that kind of bossy, judgmental, know-it-all-ism -- telling you about how you shouldn't be bossy or judgmental because it makes me have to deal with my uncomfortable feelings about Secrecy and Privacy and how they've gotten all mixed up in my life to the point where it makes me want to punch them both square in the nose -- that's me at my total worst.  And that is the very kind of secret I shouldn't post on the Internet.

"I hate that you don't have a blog," said a woman about to undergo heart surgery, as she gazed sincerely up at her boyfriend, "I hate that I don't know what you're thinking."

Mark and I burst into raucous laughter and had to pause the episode of House that we were watching to wipe away our tears of glee and catch our breath.  Seriously?  "I hate that you don't have a blog?" Really?  Yep.  That's what we personal (and dare I say it, female?) bloggers are all supposed to be like.  So divorced from real life connections, so caught up in deluding ourselves about these supposed "friendships" we have online, so obsessed with our hit count, so eager for an audience, so narcissistic, that we can't even talk to our partners or parent our children, at least not unless there's a screen between us.

The comments on the recent Motherlode post on "mommy blogging" back up this perception. There are lots of women there talking about the community and connections they've made and about the therapeutic release of writing.  And there are plenty of others saying those connections aren't real and that the children of these deluded, self-obsessed women are being sorely neglected.

And it makes me wonder, why do people think bloggers and other social networkers are so crazy and scary and dangerous and delusional?  Why is an online presence portrayed as something that precludes, rather than enhances or supplements, other relationships?  What makes friendships "real?"  Why do we believe that people don't know what "real" relationships look like?  Why does it matter so much how people (particularly women) spend their free time?  What makes us believe that online time is not, in fact, free time, but time that is being taken away from more important things?  For that matter, why do we always have to be doing something "important?"  What makes something "important" in the first place? (From what I read "important" is anything from things I'd count as truly important -- like spending time with loved ones -- to things I consider not at all important -- like making sure the house is tidy and/or we're making more money.)  What makes it ok for a published author of personal essays or a memoir to write in detail about herself, her life, her children, her friends, her family, but not ok for bloggers to do the same?

If there are any universal answers to those questions, I don't know them.  What I do know is that there are hundreds of people who have passed in and out of my life and have all seen a sliver of me, both online and offline: sitting next to me in a movie theater, driving me a few miles in a taxi, clicking on a link to my blog and clicking right back out again.  I know that there have been dozens to hundreds of lurkers in my life, both online and offline, who have seen bits and pieces of me (and not always the nice bits, nor for that matter, always the nasty ones): the neighbors who (assuredly) heard Mark and me arguing or laughing or having sex through the thin walls of our old apartment just the way we heard them, the folks at the next table in the restaurant listening to our conversations, the people silently reading my blog.

I know that I have hundreds of people I've talked to and spent time with each day over the years, who've shared a workplace or the classroom or the social space, both online and offline: coworkers, high school and college buddies, neighbors, moms at my kids' schools, folks in online discussion groups, blog readers, fellow bloggers.  Some I know well, have fun with and consider good friends.  Others are acquaintances whom I don't know, and still others I don't really like at all (and vice versa, I'm sure).

Then I know that there are people in my life, both online and offline, who are my soulmates: the ones who are family or like family, the ones who would know my voice (spoken or written) anywhere, the ones I call first when I have joys or sorrows to share, the ones who can come into my house and help themselves to a drink or a snack, the ones I laugh and cry and eat ice cream with, the ones who see me -- as me, all of me -- and get me, and are there for me, as I am for them.

Some of those soulmates are people like Jay (whom I've known for almost a decade now) and JW (who is my son Austen's absolute favorite person in the world to talk to long-distance (just don't tell his grandparents)); people I met online.  I didn't know what they looked like or what their voices sounded like or get to see or touch them in the flesh for years.  And some of those soulmates are people like my husband Mark or my friend Kelly; people I happened to meet "in real life."

I also know that I am fortunate enough to have six hours a day free when my kids are in school and my husband is at work.  I know that I spend the vast majority of that time on housework, household administration and errands that are unseen by the and unacknowledged by people both in and out of the blogosphere.  And I know that I take some of those six hours, as a gift to myself and a support to others, to write.  I know there are people who don't respect that or see it as useless and "a waste of time" because I either don't get paid (or don't get paid much) for that.  I also know that I love my life and the way I spend my days, and that although what I contribute to the world (whether in doing the dishes or feeding my kids or blogging) may seem small, it's important: just as, in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey's life and work in his small town was as valuable as anything he ever could have done if he'd gone out and built those bridges and skyscrapers he dreamed of.

No doubt there are people out there who become so obsessed with some aspect of their life or group of friends that they ignore other relationships.  No doubt there are people who can't tell the difference between a genuine friendship and the high of a falsely instant connection (I'm married to someone in recovery for just that, remember?).  No doubt someone, somewhere in the world, has to conduct a poll of everyone she knows before making major life choices.  No doubt there is a mom out there somewhere who is ignoring her kids while she does something else.  But all of that is hardly new to the Internet, just as "real" friends in my life haven't been confined strictly to people happen to have met in person.

And that's why Mark and I laughed as we listened to that fictional blogger on House.  We laughed knowing that I blog (about intimate details of our lives) and he doesn't.  We laughed knowing that we were snuggling on the sofa watching House after talking for over two hours -- about everything from mundane topics, like scheduling the kids' doctors appointments, to quite serious matters about our marriage -- during which I never once wistfully opined that it would go better with a keyboard in hand.  We laughed because Mark knows me better than anyone, online or off.  And we laughed because we both knew exactly what bits and pieces of those few hours spent talking and watching TV would go on the blog and what never would.

Earlier this year, I read an article about technology that would allow us to record and store every moment of our lives. Imagine: our whole lives stored in a single searchable archive. We could settle those arguments with the boss by replaying what was actually said. ("See, you did tell me you wanted this by Thursday, not Tuesday!") We could go back to that first kiss over and over again. In fact, if I were recording my whole life, I'd even be able to figure out where the heck I read this elusive article (The New York Times, maybe?) and link to it.

Maybe it's the year (and the first decade of the 21st century) drawing to a close, but the idea of a life archive was on my mind the other night.  My memory is flawed — as memories are —and ever since I was a child, I have wanted the ability to go back and reconstruct the past if I need to.  It's one of the reasons I write so much: not just here on my blog, which is a relatively recent occurrence, but in the thirty plus years of journals I have stacked up in my closet and in the copies of letters I have in file drawers (yes, years ago, back in the days when people did things like write letters on paper and send them to people in the mail, I started fastidiously making and keeping copies of my outgoing correspondence) and in the e-mail archive I have dating all the way back to the early 90's.  And I'm not just an obsessive chronicler, as Mark can attest from the paper laden state of our bedroom/office, I keep nearly every scrap of information that passes through my hands: from calendars to holiday letters to post-it notes.  And it's still never been enough.

My craving for a complete record of every moment of my life reached a height when I discovered Mark's sex addiction.  I went back over what I had and found it scandalously lacking.  How could I not have written anything at all on what turned out to be several major dates of acting out?  How could I not have a copy of some of those suspicious receipts that caused me so much angst?  And how could Mark have deleted all the e-mail in the secret accounts he used for contacting other women, so that, when at last I discovered them, I would have no way to verify dates and times?

I wanted to weigh every word he had written to someone else.  I wanted to compare each date and time to other events in our lives so I could thoroughly revise our history together based on what I now knew to be the truth.  I wanted to go back to each instance of his acting out and see what I had missed.  Did he look different when he came home after having sex with someone else?  Was there some way I could have known?  Now that I had all the information about what was happening at the time, would our lives together look different to me?  I wanted to go back to those sections and play them over and over again, like a detective in a crime drama, ready to pause it and say, "There!  See that!  The way he raises his eyebrow right there.  That's the tell."

I believed that somewhere out there was some objective reality that I'd failed to completely capture, and if I just knew how to access that, if had a more complete picture, if had more information, everything would be different; I'd be safe.  I would have something to point to in my self doubt and say, "I'm not crazy!  There was something there, something wrong, I just didn't know how to look for it."  I believed the whole truth was knowable by me if I just tried hard enough, if I had all the pieces to the puzzle.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the information alone was not enough.  The security of some objective truth is an illusion.  I still need the ability to interpret what I know and the confidence to believe in my own interpretation, my own truth, in the face, not of contradictory facts, but of contradictory interpretations.  There were times I did have evidence of my husband's addictive behavior, but I didn't have the ability to understand it or the confidence to hold to my feelings in the face of contradictory spin from Mark.  If I could play back the movie of my life, it wouldn't appear the same to me now as it did then or as it will in ten years or twenty years, not because of new information, but because of new experiences.

Still, I'm pretty sure that, given the chance, I'd totally buy something that would record my life.  After all, the fact that I still don't know where I read about all this in the first place is going to bug me for at least the rest of this year.  And wouldn't it be nice to just look that up rather than do all this tiresome letting go?  Maybe if I check my e-mail...

Summers are hard. Enjoyable, yes, but also draining. My kids like routine and predictability, and frankly, so do I. In the summer, there can be routines, but they're different from the rest of the year, and they change more frequently. The whole world seems a little topsy-turvy.

I feel like it's been a while since I've made my plain old voice heard here. Just me. I don't think that's all summer, although some of it is. I think some of it is not bringing my beginner's mind (as they say in Zen) to my blogging. I've learned what to expect from blogging, what's safe to share and what's not.  I've learned that A Room of Mama's Own is not entirely my own, and I've narrowed the window in accordingly, to protect myself and especially to protect others.  I have a blog voice now that's feeling distinct from my everyday voice.  I won't say that's a bad thing (or a good one); it just is.

Anyway, I just stopped by to say to myself (as if you all aren't listening in) that I miss talking to me and that I am here.

Mary Ann did this little exercise on her blog a while back, and it looked like fun. You are supposed to list what you are about without stopping to think about it. Since the kids are on break, and I don't have time to think about much of anything, a post I don't have to stop and think about sounds perfect. So, I'm about...

• My God (although that still feels weird to say) and my spiritual life
• Becoming healthier: mentally, emotionally and spiritually (one day maybe physically will get in there too)
• My kids and being the best mama for them I can be
• My marriage and doing my part to make it work
• My family and friends (including my "imaginary" online friends)
• Animals: my pets, helpless strays, injured wildlife...
• Writing and this dang beloved blog of mine
• Leaving my part of the planet a better place than I found it
• (Striving for) compassion and mercy
• Horrible, merciless mockery of things I find absurd
• And in light of the two above... Progress, not perfection
• Letting go (but also not perfectly)
• Good books and beautiful words
• Laughter
• Sharing (sometimes, ahem, oversharing)
• Occasionally hiding in the bathroom to write a blog post (hm, maybe that should go under oversharing)
• The ocean
• Opening night at the movies
• Practically anything with sugar in it

What are all of you about?

My friend Mama over at The Elmo Wallpaper riffed on the Facebook "25 Random Things" meme and started her own "10 Things" meme. She did 10 random things about herself as a mama, and while I think she'd be happy with any 10 things, I'm going to stick to mamadom too. I was going to save this for Haiku Friday, but I decided that -- between sleep deprivation and sick kiddos -- this is about all my brain can handle. So, I'm going to bang out a little list as I eat some Pillsbury turtle cookies and wait for the kids to fall asleep.

1. I hate parenting books. I read a few when my son was born. The ones I read espoused philosophies from opposite ends of the parenting spectrum and used what a friend of mine used to call "the friendless alcoholic" technique to support their points (and sell their books): "if you spank/don't spank, wear your baby/let your baby cry, sleep in a family bed/have you child to sleep alone, then your child will grow up to be a friendless alcoholic." There was absolutely no evidence to support any of the claims about what was right for the child other than the author's opinion. I had my own opinions and beliefs, so out the books went.
2. One of my beliefs is that -- short of actively abusing or neglecting kids -- I can't really screw up this whole parenting thing, and I try to remind myself of that when I'm stressing over not getting some relatively minor thing quite right.
3. I think the most important work I do as a parent is to model for my children how I want them to behave and that's what drives me to keep learning, growing, changing and working on myself. If I want my children to show compassion, I need to show compassion. If I want them to have good boundaries and be able to stand up for themselves, I need to have good boundaries and stand up for myself. If I want them to have happy, loving relationships, I need to show them what those relationships look like. I work to be the person I want them to be.
4. I thought I would love pretend play games with my kids, but I can't stand it. Unfortunately, it is my daughter's absolute favorite thing to do. Fortunately, her brother likes playing with her if he's around, and they are super cute together.
5. I love to color in coloring books, but my kids never go for my suggestions that we color together.
6. I love playing video games with my kids, but again I think I like it more than they do because I'm always the one suggesting that we play. Sometimes they play with me, sometimes they turn me down. I want to set up my Wii to be able to play with Jay so I don't have to rely on my kids to beat me at Mario Kart.
7. I used to use video game time to reward my son for eating new things. Now he doesn't care about video games enough for this to work. I'd have to charge him to access playing cards and board games if I really wanted results now.
8. I have no limits on how much TV, video game or computer time the kids have. I didn't have any limits on this as a child either. I mostly chose to read instead. My kids mostly choose to do other things, but when they don't, I'm ok with that.
9. My kids currently participate in zero organized activities outside school, in part because it seems like the thing to do and I tend to not want to do the thing to do. (I don't have problems with authority, shut up.)
10. I'm stealing my last one from Jay: the most important thing I've learned is that my children will show me how to be their mother if I can slow down and really listen to them.

1. If you could be famous, what would choose as your profession?

The Maven threw me a big, slow, hanging pitch here. It's interview batting practice so I can warm up for the tough ones ahead. The answer is (drum roll, please): writer. And not just because it's the one thing I passionately love doing. I have to admit that, sadly, sitting on my butt and stringing words together is about the only thing I'm good at. And being a famous writer would be a lot easier to deal with than being a famous politician or actor or musician. Few people know what writers look like, allowing me to blend into crowds and maintain the invisibility that I love.

2. What is the most important thing your son has taught you about life?

He's taught me that everyone learns and interacts with the world and processes information differently. I knew that to some degree, but he's made me feel it viscerally. There are things that are intuitive to me that he just can't grasp and vice versa. I can see how hard his brain has to work to figure people out or to tell his body what to do in order to get his clothes on. Yet I look at a math problem and see a jumble of numbers, and I can see that even at eight, he looks at the same problem and hears a symphony and sees the hand of God. He's made me much more accepting of where other people are, more appreciative of their triumphs and more comfortable with my own shortcomings in relation to other people.

3. What were you like in high school?

I was a nerd. I was at the top of the class -- the kid who had the best grades and won all the prizes -- and I felt conflicted about that: both proud to the point of arrogance and ashamed for not fitting in. I was shy and scared of people. I was a perfectionist, but spent a lot of time trying to look like I had thrown my work together at the last minute because I didn't want to seem uptight and I wanted people to like me. I spent a lot of time reading and writing (bad) poetry and angsty journal entries. Um, so pretty much the same as I am now, only with a hotter body.

4. If you could have dinner with any three people, who would they be and why?

Hillary Clinton, William Shatner and Anne Lamott. Hillary Clinton and Anne Lamott are both women I deeply respect for their accomplishments and the way they've worked through their personal pain. William Shatner not only appeals to my Star Trek nerdiness, but he's a codie. And I think each of them, in their own way, would be quite a lot of fun.

5. And now for the most important question: If you were on The Bachelorette: Sesame Street edition, who would be your final pick and why?

This is an excellent question, because I do like to think about which character I would date on every show I watch.* I hope this counts, since he's more often associated with his own spinoff hit franchise, but my pick is Kermit the Frog. He's gentle and intelligent, and there's something a little sad and broken about him that makes you want to hug him and take care of him, which is totally appealing to me in a man (or a frog). But he's not so broken that he winds up living in a trash can or binging on cookies or fastidiously trying to control his environment and his roommate. And he doesn't have Elmo's annoyingly cheery voice or Ernie's boundless optimism, both of which would need me to be cranky to counteract them. If I had to pick a runner up, it would be Grover, because he's goofy, a little insecure and very much lives in a fantasy world, which are also traits I find hot in men (or monster puppets).

* For those of you interested, the answers for dating preferences in my current top three favorite shows are:
Lost: Desmond. A crazy guy with a lovely Scottish accent who spends years on an island thinking of nothing but his tragic romance and Charles Dickens? Hot!
House: Um, House, of course. Sure, he seems like an asshole, but underneath he's a sensitive guy and I'm pretty sure I could fix him.
Heroes: Sylar. He's crazy, dangerous and nerdy, which all equal sexy in my book. And in the alternate future where he overcomes that addiction to killing people by psychically cutting their heads open, he's a sensitive guy and totally awesome dad.

And now...
Here are the rules if you want to participate in 5 Questions:

1. Send me an email saying: ”Interview Me” to mamampj@gmail.com
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You can then answer the questions on your blog.
4. You should also post these rules along with an offer to interview anyone else who emails you wanting to be interviewed.
5. Anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog. It would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger.

My husband is weird.
He loves my blog but hasn't
actually read it.

I do summarize.
Sometimes I read posts to him.
I can not not share.

"Does HE blog/journal?"
No, he finds blogs triggering.
He has a journal.

Last, "Do you look like
the woman in the header?
Nope, I don't think so.

I guest host a chat at The Second Road on Sunday, December 7 at 6:30 p.m. US Eastern Time (or New York time, as I prefer to call it).

You'll need to sign up for an account at The Second Road in order to access the chat.  Hope to (virtually) see you there.

Cat asked: "If you could have named yourself any name - when you were younger (first name) what would it have been?"

I actually would have named myself Mary. Um, not "Mary," as in "I really would have picked my real life name," but Mary, as in "my name is not actually Mary, but I do like it."

When I was little I had this (growing up Catholic, go figure) plastic statue of the Virgin Mary that had a little white light bulb in it. The plastic Virgin Mary was dressed in blue, looked very serene and exuded a soft blue light in my bedroom at night that made me feel safe and calm. I've left the Catholic church, but that little plastic Mary light left me with a sense of the mystical desirability of the name Mary.

Addicted Rantings asked: "How many pets do you have (if any) and what are their names, or pen pet names?"

I have one cat and one goldfish. The goldfish doesn't have a name in real life, because it just happens to be the sole survivor of a tank full of nameless fish, who were at one point victimized by my kids' addition of glue to the tank. The cat does have a real life name, but I haven't given him a pen name yet. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned him on the blog at some point, if only because his vomit was adding to some chaos or other I was busying cleaning up.

It's hard for me to come up with pen names for the people and animals in my life I've had a hand in naming. I haven't yet given my kids pseudonyms on the blog because I love their real life names so much and think they suit them so well. I named the cat with love too, so I'm not going to pick another one for him right now.

Sophie asked: "If you could be part of Neo's posse, fighting the Matrix, what would your name, bio, and avatar costume be?"

Oo, that's a good and difficult one. I can think of lots of cool names, none of which fit me... I think I'd like Ophelia, because I identified with her character once upon a time and always liked the name. I think, like Cypher and Neo, I would have been born in the Matrix with all the complicated feelings that engenders. But I'd generally stay on the ship, working the computers and equipment, because I'd be too scared to go back in again. And I think my costume would be something a little like a tattered 80's version of the post-apocalyptic world of the future: some black, updated version of Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" dress.

Shawn asked: "Why the name MPJ?"

The initials are not my real life initials, but they do contain elements of the initials of people who are important in my life. I picked the initials first, then added the name "Mary P Jones" to them when I decided I wanted to my gender to be identifiable when I commented on other blogs.

SAWife asked: "This probably has been answered before, but who's the lady with the typewriter?"

The lady with the typewriter is some poor unwitting model whose image was licensed to Strumpfkunst, who created my blog header. I wonder if the model knows that she gets pasted up all over the Internet as the alter ego for a crazy lady?