My Prerogative

Regular readers may have noticed a lag in my posts. Sorry about that, especially if you've missed my musings anywhere near as much as I have missed writing them. I'm chalking up the hiatus (during which I often saved songs but never sat down to write the posts) to two factors:

1) My boyfriend and I trying to figure out how to be two people living in the same city and dating as opposed to two people living 1000 miles apart who want to spend every possible moment together when they have the opportunity -- I'm not sure either one of us (or our bodies) have settled into this-isn't-just-a-visit-this-is-our-life mode just yet; and

2) My ex-husband discovering my blog and freaking out about what I've been writing about for the last year, culminating in me agreeing to make my blog private, though that doesn't feel like the right decision for me (so it is strange that I agreed to it at all, especially since he labeled me "utterly self-absorbed" -- perhaps that particular verbal lashing doesn't hold a lot of truth).

And it's the second reason that had Bobby Brown cranked up on my very own personal stereo today:

Everybody's talking all this stuff about me now

Why don't they just let me live?

I don't need permission

To make my own decisions

That's my prerogative

Oh yes, I almost forgot, there was another reason this song popped into my head -- my google alert brought up this post from a fellow blogger. Ouch. Good thing I have such thick skin these days.

Tell me, tell me

Why can't I live my life?

Without all of the things

That people say

Of course, I know why -- because I'm choosing to be in the public eye, both in my job and in my blog, and that means people will try to make their own sense of what I'm trying to do in this world. I'm also daring to blur the lines that many people take for granted, comforting lines (such as party lines) that help people operate from a more comfortable space.

What makes me saddest about his post is the assumption that I'm working in my job -- by virtue of who I'm working with -- for anything other than what I want for my own kids: schools where kids and adults alike are nurtured and free to develop into the beautiful beings that they are. We're so far from that in the public schools right now, we're going to have to erase the lines and start over to come up with a solution, and we're not going to be able to do that if we insist on choosing sides. So I'm not going to. Choose a side, or stop blogging:

It's the way that I wanna live

I can do just what I feel

No one can tell me what to do

'Cause what I'm doing I'm doing for you