BlogHer - Jealousy Isn't Always An Ugly Emotion - Comments

definitely not just women

maggiesnow — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:02:50 -0500

The harshest, most intense jealousy used against me since I started blogging has been wielded by a man.

Men are definitely not immune, but I will say this: they seem to have an easier time dropping it. They feel it, they just don't wallow in it. They cut you deep, and then they cut you off.

I don't think it's a better way to be.

(and Maria Immoral Matriarch? Your comment up there? I LOVE YOU. Thank you) :)

Maggie, Dammit!

http://okayfinedammit.com

My point exactly

HeatherB — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:14:18 -0500

I also think that -- having been the subject of a lot of speculation,
myself -- it's natural to bristle at the implication (real or imagined)
that either you make more money than you really do OR that you can't
possibly be earning what you do for what is hard work. I have no idea
what propels these discussions, whether it's jealousy or ignorance or
whatever, but bloggers' incomes are suddenly being scrutinized and I've
got to say, I don't know many people who enjoy that.

Yes! I've been trying to put this into words since receiving The Email but it wasn't so much the presumption of popularity that bothered me; that's just a shrug of the shoulders and a laugh, it's the assumption and subsequent feeling of being called out with regards to how much money is made by our blogging and if because of our riches, we are suddenly different people. No one wants to feel goaded into defending their writing and personal finances in a single email and post. That is when I became slightly annoyed. And I write about personal finace, but still! Obviously it wasn't her intention to cause trouble, etc. but when you throw money into the mix it brings what could have been innocuous to mildly offensive.

Heather B.
Personal Blog: No Pasa Nada
BlogHer CE: Business, Career & Personal Finance

Rita

Jerri Ann — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:28:31 -0500

I wanted to openly thank you for making the statement that this wasn't suppose to be against "me" purposefully and that it just kind of worked out that way and most bloggers didn't mean it to be a direct punch at me. I appreciate you making the statement that you didn't want that to happen. It means a lot to me. Thanks!

Jerri Ann

Mom~E~Centric

Thanks Again..

Snoskred — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:11:08 -0500

Thanks Jerri Ann, I think that post was brilliant. Good on you for apologizing. I know you had done it before but as I said it got lost in the long posts. :) We are all learning, even those who seem like they are "A" list bloggers or whatever, and everyone makes mistakes regularly.

I type 90 words a minute and there is still no way I can do everything I want to do on the web - reply to emails, comment, post in forums etc.. Stuff just gets on top of me. I know that some of the more popular bloggers (eg Problogger) sometimes hire virtual assistants to help out just to try to keep on top of it all.

I think knowing that someone reads everything, even if they don't have the time to reply, at least helps us to feel heard. ;)

As far as your writing, the only thing I will say is that your posts can be pretty long. I used to have that problem myself, in a big way. I have an editor friend who helped teach me to cut out the extra words that take up space (like actually and really etc, I still use them but nowhere near as much as I once did). Sometimes it takes a set of fresh eyes to see that stuff.

I also learnt that it is a good idea to use headings througout a post in order to draw people through it if it is an especially long post. eg this one where it was fairly easy to do it - Snoskred made 5 million dollars online this year. It is a little harder when you're writing personal stuff but just taking the first part of a paragraph and making it into a heading or perhaps using a quote from a song or a movie or something and making that into a heading for the paragraph can help people keep going with a post they might have given up on otherwise.

The majority of blog readers tend to skim read, and they find it a lot easier when a post is broken into little digestible chunks. I wrote a post about that here - 10 easy ways to improve your blog writing. I also have a great list of blog posts not written by me that are helpful across a lot of areas of blogging in my sidebar (under bloggers are helpful). Most bloggers are helpful, I've found. :)

I hope some of that info might be useful, anyway. ;)

www.snoskred.org

Thanks Elisa - Just Curious

Jerri Ann — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:42:41 -0500

i was just curious since we have discussed that in this "stuff" too.

Jerri Ann

Mom~E~Centric

Interesting you should ask

Elisa Camahort — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:49:42 -0500

I thought it was one of the more interesting things we learned during the keynote. Heather indeed said she reads everything, but cannot answer most. She said she decided that an auto-response saying something to the effect "Thank you for the email/comment. I have received this, but get so many I can't answer each personally" would seem less personal and more lame than no response at all.

So we just turned out to the 1000 people in the room and asked how many agreed that no response was better than a canned auto-response like that. I would guess over 80% of people raised their hands.

I was surprised, personally. Not so much that a lot of people would feel that way, but rather that nearly everybody felt that way.

Elisa Camahort Page
BlogHer
elisa@blogher.com

My BlogHer profile truly shows you everything I do online...Check it out!!

Question

Jerri Ann — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:28:04 -0500

Did Dooce say the following at Blogher or not?

Dooce/Heather was discussing how she reads every single comment and email she ever receives

Jerri Ann

Mom~E~Centric

Let me say it like this

Jerri Ann — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:58:24 -0500

"I sent out a question which could have been read an insulting by some
people, and I owe people an apology for that. I'm sorry. Or even, I
sent out a question and I'm not sorry that I did that however I am
sorry if anyone was insulted by it because that wasn't my intention."

That is exactly true. I had no intentions of offending and I am sorry if I did. And, I will say again, it is my blog, not my husbands, I was only tapping into what others have said many times before, men have a competitive edge. And, I truly had not thought of it the way he did until he said it out loud, then I ran with it. My blog,, my words, and an idea stolen from my husband....any of you ever steal an idea? Or get an idea from someone. That's what I did, and obviously it was a bad one. Again, my blog, my writing, my question, my offending...and I do apologize to those who were offended.

And, I tried or at least I tried to say that the commenting issue was easier for me to understand when I was the one sitting here with an inbox full of comments and emails. I usually get 10 to 12 emails per post and sometimes no comments. Those 10 to 12 emails are from the same 10 to 12 people. What I received from that post was overwhelming. I tried to say that from that experience, I did learn that it is completely possible for somoene to over-look comments and NOT be able tor respond. I took me 3 days to respond to those 40 or so. If it were 100's or even 1000's like you said, I see now how that could be a problem. Again, I'm sorry if I offended anyone in that department.

Lastly, my husband sits and wonders why I read "so many blogs all the damn time" and I tell him, "to learn". Why do I read "every freakin' article in the damned newspaper" and again, my response is "to learn". You all are not blind, you can see my writing skills aren't wonderful. I told you the one job I have regularly in our paper...has one hell of an editor. Normally when she sends it back to me the first time, it is merely 50% of my work. And that is why I am constantly reading blogs and magazines, etc.

So, I"m not sure if THIS post made any difference than any others I've written but if so, I'm glad. As for me being in a rough spot or whatever. I wouldn't say so necessarily. Actually, we just closed our business so I could be with my oldest as he starts kindergarten (and my youngest at home) which also coincided with me catching a good dose of mono which has lilmited even my blog reading......gasp.....if anyone could imagine that? My family was flaberghasted those first few days when I turned down the laptop in bed. I just wasn't able. That's how my feed reader came to have 1000 posts in it. So, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm down and blaming others......if I'm down it is because my 5 year old left me in the breeze this morning and headed to his room exclaiming "I know where to go mom, you don't have to go".

This got lengthy yet again and I apolgize. But like many of you, I've lots to say!

Jerri Ann

Mom~E~Centric

Brava!

stephmsdiva — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:25:12 -0500

These are my sentiments nearly exactly. Not that I've never struggled with the green-eyed monster - I have. I still do. But at the end of the day, I write because I have things in my head that want out, and putting those words on figurative paper makes me feel better.

Again - brava! Well, said.

Stephanie
http://quirkyblogger.com

I want to return to

mothergoosemouse — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 11:56:21 -0500

I want to return to something Rita said in her post - something I've read before on her personal blog (in one form or another): "Young writers are told to read more than they write..."

Reading other people whose writing I admire is what really inspires me to write more (and to write better) myself. People whose *writing* I admire, not necessarily those who are "famous" (tongue firmly in cheek), are the ones who make me think. Blogs are wonderful, but I also read news articles and editorial pieces and short stories from the library and lots and lots of non-fiction (my personal favorite).

There's so much to learn, so much good work to admire, and so much inspiration to be had.

mothergoosemouse

Thanks..

Snoskred — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:54:38 -0500

Rita - Thanks, I'm glad you could see I wasn't having a go at Jerri Ann, it would just have been impossible to discuss the points I did without referring to who it was by name and it also would not have been fair to quote those quotes otherwise.. I did try, but all the "that blogger" type stuff mixed with a lot of "she" and "her" didn't sound right.

Jerri Ann - My thought is, when you screw up as a blogger, you need to own it. When people do that I have huge respect for them - and I've had to do it myself from time to time.

It sounds to me like you're going through a tough time, Jerri Ann, and I am sorry to hear that and sorry about the situation you find yourself in. Yet it seems *to me* that you seem to be using that (and anything else you can) as an excuse for what happened rather than owning what happened. And yes, you say I'm not making excuses - but you have to see how it reads to other people, surely? If it seems like that to me, then it more than likely seems that way to other people too.

I don't know why you can't just own it - say yes, I sent out a question which could have been read an insulting by some people, and I owe people an apology for that. I'm sorry. Or even, I sent out a question and I'm not sorry that I did that however I am sorry if anyone was insulted by it because that wasn't my intention.

You may even feel like you've done that in your posts and comments but I think it is getting lost for some people in the length of those posts. That's why people are still discussing it. They don't feel like things have been resolved. An apology needs to be short, clear, and simple. Not hidden in the middle of a long post or comment.

It seems to me like you are sorry that it happened but you're also a bit too stubborn to say so outright, would that be right? ;) Because I keep seeing it surrounded by a bunch of other stuff. But I think you'll find that making a clear apology changes peoples attitudes towards the situation in a heartbeat - and it is likely they may want to apologise back to you for some of the comments they left and if you did get any unpleasant emails. That might also be a good thing on both sides. It might help repair broken bridges. Of course, it is up to you, and you should not do it unless you want to.

Finally, I'll address a comment you made -

I honestly believe that if someone commented on my blog every single
day, I'd have to at least know what the heck they were doing...stalking?

There are a lot of people who regularly comment on a lot of blogs. No blogger sends them an email saying "are you stalking me", at least not as far as I know. Depending on which blog you're commenting on, it is entirely possible that your comments are just skimmed over to make sure they don't contain anything spammy or insulting and then approved - and some blogs once you have commented once they are automatically approved, in which case it may be that nobody is reading them. You had 63 comments on one post and you say how difficult it was to deal with - Dooce gets *thousands*. Literally.

With that kind of signal to noise ratio and the pure amount of time it takes to moderate, reply to emails, live life as normal as possible, and still blog - it is fairly usual that the blogging does change - there's not as much time to blog for the blogger. You know when you read those great posts and they seem like they took maybe half an hour, sometimes they will actually take days to write for the person writing them.

I have a few posts on my blog which were written across the space of a week simply because I wanted to edit, and re-edit, and hone, and clarify and make sure the post drew people in and kept them reading. I simply don't have the time for that anymore - it is a rare occasion that I post anything which I consider "excellent".. But there was a time when I was posting excellent regularly.

For the people who can write excellent regularly without blinking an eyelid or taking several hours to do it, congratulations. You've won the luck lottery! ;) For the rest of us, it requires a lot of work. It isn't easy. The people who manage it and do manage to earn some money from it deserve every cent they get - full props to them - most of us know what hard work it is to do that.

I think the last thing anyone wants to do is make people feel guilty - that their blogging may not be as good as it once was, that they earn money from their blog, or about anything at all. We ladies carry more than enough guilt around with us already, don't we? So why put any more guilt on each other?

www.snoskred.org

Good thing....

Jerri Ann — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:37:21 -0500

I don't know if it is a good thing or not, but.....I had a long post typed out, and I went to get a drink ...and......I hit the doggone close button on my browser....IDIOT!

So, I'm going to be much more brief than I was the first time, hopefully...because I had a lot of time invested in that one flippin' comment.

First of all, and I'm not making excuses, because I know that is how it sounds kind of, but.......the analogy between jealous in women = competition in men.......the question that I posed was not my own question. It never even occurred to me until my husband brought it up.....there you have male with the competitive nature to be bigger and better and my instinct to just sit back and think "It's more a -- damn! I hope I can be that skilled some day."

I have a handful of "online" friends. Some aquaintances but mostly just people. Those friends came to me via preconception.com many moons ago, they commented on my diary. I commented back and a friendship was formed. I honestly believe that if someone commented on my blog every single day, I'd have to at least know what the heck they were doing...stalking? What? That said, I tried and I think I accomplished commenting to everyone who replied to my post and any other of the posts relating to it. And, in doing that....I was exhauasted. We closed our daycare 2 weeks ago and I don't have a regular job other than my once weekly column in a local paper, but I do have mono and exausted, but not too exhausted to answer comments but it was really hard. I tried to reply to everyone, through the naps and all, but I see how difficult it was. That said, again....if someone commented every day.....I'd have to be at least a little bit curious.

I'm not very good at proof-reading so the person who mentioned that I confused the words "can't" and "can" was truly a typing error. I say it alot, my brain thinks faster than my fingers can type and then my fingers get going....

Anyway, I'm going to go check to see if there were any more specifics that I meant to comment on and pray I don't hit the blasted close button...ack.

This:

"It is very clear to me after having read everything that this was about
being *ignored* by people. The blogger you mention, Jerri Ann, wrote
this after several people had commented on her original post."

"So when Jerri Ann didn't get any attention from the big bloggers by
trying to be a part of their community, perhaps Jerri Ann thought the
best way to get some attention was to link to a bunch of them with a
controversial question - essentially calling them out. And that post
did get attention, plenty of it, and ever since then I feel like Jerri
Ann have been trying to back away from what she wrote. Perhaps because
she realised this was not a good way to make friends in the blogging
world"

It wasn't about attention, I promise you, of course I had wondered, of course I had felt jilted but it really had never dawned on me that their writing was different now than it was say 2 years ago. I'm sure I didn't notice because I've read all along and watched their lives evolve. He only remembers times when I would sit at the computer and laugh until I pee'd my pants over a certain persons posts, night after night, i was howling with laughter. And, he wondered why I didn't talk about that particular blogger or 2 anymore. And, the natural answer to him (and obviously it made sense to me) was that "their life as a non-money-making blogger is much different than their money-making-blogger and does that not in turn affect their blogging?

I used Dooce as a reference in my other post and again, I mean no disrespect but one night about 2 years ago, my husband I sat in the floor and read Blogger X's (not revealing a name this time) archives for hours. I mean for hours and hours and hours...way into the morning. Then, I was talking about folks that I saw in photos at Blogher 08 and such and he wanted to know why I hadn't read him anything from her blog anymore. For one, I do still read her blog, all the time, every post. But, she writes in so many places now that her talent is so spread out that I miss the greatness of it when it was all contained in one or two places. I promise I do not mean that to be rude, I mean that to be the ultimate compliment, she is talented enough to keep a man awake half the night when he had to go to work the next day, rolling in tears laughing and now she has been writing responsibilities, that's talent and I mean it as a compliment. But, that was where and how that entire post came to fruition.

And this:

" I think she put into words publicly what a lot of people wonder or feel on a personal level, at home with their laptops."

Thanks. I've always been one to open my mouth for a group when I shouldn't. But, again, this wasn't even something I wondered initially. I'm not copping out, because when my husband put the question out there, I jumped on the bandwagon. And, that's what happens with me.

This:

"In fact, being very new to blogging, I haven't read Jerri Ann"

Most folks have never read me. There's a reason for that. I'm not popular. Why is that? I dunno. I have a few thoughts. One, I'm not as talented as many of the more popular writers, plain and simple (my newspaper gig has a good editor), two, I'm a lazy blogger, I don't like to and from and back and forth, too much work, and three, I've jumped around a lot. My blog has been hosted in several different places with several different names. So, with that said, most of my readers are people from days at preconception.com and that follow me from the local paper. That's why you haven't read anything I've written. Normally when I write something that gets attention, it ends up being something that gets way out of kilter like this. I didn't do it for attention, I didn't do it for any reason other than when my husband (a male and a competor) threw the question out there, I ran with it.

Finally and I'll shut up. My comment regarding jealousy and guilt......I've basically been brought up and seen this to be true..."the guilty dog barks first"...so the analogy about the crack wasn'nt relative to what I was trying to say....it doesn't mean that I think every person that responded were jealous....it meant that the "guilty dog barked first" and that was me. I was guilty of being jealous....that is not how it reads to me even now when I go back to it, but again, that wwas my intent. And, I think there are many people out there who sit and wonder "why not me?" they just weren't the one to "bark" about it first. I was.

Wait, and I promise this is the last thing, did my post get attention, sure it did, for about three days and now everyone's gone about their merry way. The blog that got the attention is not the blog that I make money from....so I had no reason to write it just for attention or to make myself more popular in the "make money blogging world" because you should have noticed, there are no ads on that blog and only a review or two here and there. That blog is my blog, my space, my pesrsonality, just me.

Jerri Ann

Jealous of Community

arduous — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:34:07 -0500

Beautiful post, Rita. I think there's another aspect to jealousy among bloggers that is worth mentioning: jealousy of community.

It's interesting. A few weeks ago, there was an Eco Mom Carnival announced, and most of my blog friends were participating. In that moment, I felt excluded and sort of jealous of all the other bloggers.

In retrospect, it was beyond stupid. First of all, the Eco Mom Carnival was about empowering mothers, not about excluding non-mothers. Second of all, several non moms (including a couple guys) participated in the carnival!

When the carnival was posted, I quickly realized how silly I was to feel excluded and jealous of the others for getting to participate in this, what I perceived to be, an exclusionary group.

It's tricky. How do you empower a particular group (in this case Eco Moms) without making other groups feel excluded?

It's a different sort of jealousy, I know than the jealous of fame and money, or the jealous of writing. It's more the feeling jealous because all the other bloggers have inside jokes. All the other bloggers know each other and have met in real life, and link to each other all the time. And it sucks to feel excluded and outside of the community.

Personally, on my blog, I make a concerted effort to respond to every single comment. But I'm dealing with a much smaller traffic stream. I get about 20 comments per day, which is a commenting community I'm THRILLED to have, but it's very managable. If I had the 50-100 comments per day that someone like Mir has, it would be impossible.

I think it's valid that people feel jealous of the community. It's a great community, and like, hey, I'll admit, that I sometimes feel a little jealous of the people who actually GET TO BE FRIENDS! with the Wonderful Mir and Susan of The Beautiful Shoes. They seem like awesome people!!

But like, I also get that Mir and Susan can't be personally friends with everyone amongst their legions of fans. Cuz like ... they have jobs and children and husbands and stuff.

So ... if you're jealous of the community among the popular blogs, you create your own community. I have made awesome, spectacular friends through blogging. Some of them are super popular. Some of them get very few hits. But, they're my friends. They're my community. And they're amazing.

http://arduousblog.blogspot.com/

I want to learn how to fly!

Kate Lord Brown — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:05:34 -0500

I love Rita's comparison of the blogosphere and the kids from Fame (now I know why I was drawn to blogging - and it's not just the chance to wear legwarmers again because no one can see what you're wearing). I'm a newbie, but have been writing for a long time. Jealousy can be poisonous and disabling or it can be the biggest motivator to get up and put your pen/pixels where your mouth is. I've finally started blogging having wanted to for ages, and now I've had a chance to look around and see how good you all are, it makes me want to raise my game!

What Kate Did Next http://katelordbrown.blogspot.com/

Agreed.....

Corina Fiore — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:40:26 -0500

I really didn't think that this was an attack on one blogger. In fact, being very new to blogging, I haven't read Jerri Ann nor was I privy to the email/post of which you spoke. I viewed it like a commentary on the collective jealousy in the blogging world. The jealousy that always seems like it is slightly brewing beneath the surface.

Another valid point to make here, I think, is the fact that all moms (whom this seems to be more of a problem for) are looking for a way to make their lives a little better. It is a tough world, and a tougher economy. When they can see that others are making even a small living off of something that they are already doing, something that they enjoy, its hard not to say...... "Hey, I want a piece of that pie." Even if it means just making enough to cover the change in gas prices over the last year, it still is a benefit to the family, to life. When you put it in those terms, sometimes the jealousy isn't so hard to understand.

Corina Fiore from www.dtemama.com

Jealousy Isn't Always An Ugly Emotion

Rita Arens — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:23:38 -0500

Ever since BlogHer '08 I've seen a lot of posts popping up here and there about jealousy, particularly among mommybloggers. And lo, it happens. It's real. I've felt it, sure I have! I am not going to sit here in my contributing editor ivory tower and lie to you about it. How do you think I got here in the first place? So pull up a chair, and let's discuss.

It's not new. Back in April, my colleague here at BlogHer Erin Kotecki Vest (Queen of Spain) gave an overview of what exactly there is to be jealous of:

From ignored, to mocked, to rockstar, to target of backlash-this business of Mommyblogging is getting heated. Who’s consulting? Who’s getting free stuff? Who’s writing a book? Who’s on tv? Who’s just blogging and hoping someone notices but wants the free stuff and gigs?

I think that sums it up, although I've seen a lot of people also salivate about Bossy's Road Trip and her free cars. (Again, full disclosure: She stayed at my house during her trip, and I totally wanted to steal that car. But I also thought to myself, man, that Bossy has some mad publicity skillz. And I salute them.)

Right after BlogHer, I received an e-mail (that many, many people received) from Jerri Ann asking how I (and to be fair, this was a group "I," not a Rita "I") could possibly go on writing about my (see rules for "I") life as though it is normal when I'm getting on a plane every few days. (!) I sort of understood that the blogger was just putting out there into the public sphere what so many of us feel when we're new to something. Oh, look -- there are already people entrenched in this space that I love so much. Can I ever be where they are?

The problem is that we don't even know where they are, how much traffic they have, if they earn money. We just don't really know. And this blogger wanted to know. And she maybe even realized why. She wrote:

After watching Melissa (SuburbanBliss) on one of the morning shows and then later watching Dooce on something, my husband turned to me and ask the question that I posed to you guys last night. That question was, if someone’s blog became popular or famous because they were writing about their "normal" or "mundane" life, how do they continue to make money off of their blog when their life is certainly nothing like it was when the blog first became famous?

So, if we are going to do a real analysis, it seems this question speaks to fame, or the perception of fame. And really, fame is all relative, so if someone perceives that someone else must be famous, then by some definition of famous, famous they are. Following? I, for example, am not familiar with the rockstars of snowboarding, but I'm told there is some freaky dude named Shaun with long hair who rocks everyone's world. Famous to me? No. Famous to snowboarders? HELL, YES. Much in the same way the bloggers who are important to you and me are maybe not so much important to oh, my boss.

I've thought a lot about this mommyblogging jealousy thing that I am so not immune to. There are indeed several categories of jealousy. There's the afore-mentioned fame jealousy. There's also money jealousy. This one is a little easier to squish, though, when we realize that with a few obvious exceptions, most bloggers don't earn their entire income from blogging. Or if they do, they would otherwise be earning nothing or working part-time. They are not replacing their senior vice president salaries with their blogs.

I take issues with articles like this one that equate personal blogging and making money from one's personal blog to what I would term "freelancing" or "consulting." Maybe I'm alone in this thinking, but if I don't get to choose my subject matter, I'm freelancing. If I get to write whatever I please, then I'm blogging. So maybe in our discussion of jealousy, we should define "blogging." Being jealous of someone's freelancing career is totally fair (and color me jealous), but it's not fair to think freelancing doesn't take every bit as much time on your couch as it does in an office building downtown. Work is work, and freelancing is work. Work is also usually compensated in the free market.

I don't think professional freelance bloggers are paid nearly enough when compared to rates for print or marketing freelancers, but that's a post for another day. If you find yourself jealous of full-time freelance bloggers, like I am, remember they are either doing it in lieu of a "normal" job or they are doing it IN ADDITION to a normal job, which means their free time goes from maybe an hour a day to maybe nothing a day. Suddenly, not so jealousy-invoking.

Finally, there's writing jealousy. And here, we also need to break it down to:

Jealousy of someone's success in breaking into paid blogging or paid freelancing in the print or television world.
Jealousy of someone's writing, oh, my God, their sentences.

Megan of Velveteen Mind writes about wanting to break into magazine writing.

Don't get me wrong, I do love the community. Some days. Most days. But I want more. Do you? If blogging is my springboard, I need to jump already. What do you want from all of this? What are you doing about it? Are you satisfied? I used to want a really cool alternative to keeping a baby book for my kids. Now I want something for me, too.

While I admit to jealousy of other people's "money" or "fame," which may or may not be real, I get most jealous of other people's sentences, which most certainly ARE REAL. I approach blogging as writing, and even though there are plenty of days that I throw up a funny (I hope) anecdote or some political rant, I did start blogging to practice my writing, looked at it as doing scales, wanted to be sure I could make myself come up with something quickly and avoid the dreaded BLOCK. When I read other bloggers' writing and it is painfully good, I feel inspired. It makes me want to riff on it. It is called being influenced. And in this way, jealousy is a gift, as it gets me sitting down with my computer, fingers itching, back sweating, wanting to respond and to respond well. Wanting to build good sentences of my own. Sentences I might otherwise be too lazy or exhausted to write. Some of the work of which I've been proudest was written in a feverish, gut-wrenching response to my own jealousy of another writer's words.

I put myself through a writer's workshop in grad school (and I've talked about this before, and it's not to be "oh, I'm so cool with the degree" but to share the pain and agony that is a focused writing program for perspective on writing and students of it) and I learned that in writing, as in the other creative fields, jealousy is encouraged. Young writers are told to read more than they write, to borrow, to steal and to use another's style as long as it takes until they find their own voices. Often our own voices come out after failing to copy another, trying on writing styles like we tried on handwriting in the fifth grade. We find our voices, our signatures, by accident. I give you Jackson Pollack. I give you John Irving.

I find myself reading posts and thinking, "God, I wish I had thought of that first!" It makes me try harder the next day to be original. It keeps me from being complacent in my own personal growth. It fights off the exhaustion and stokes the fire in the belly. These emotions are the gifts we give each other as writers.

And now, having attended BlogHer for the past three summers and two winters (BlogHer Business, baby), I have met many of the women and men whose writing I so admired. I've heard them modestly admit there is a piece or two they were happy about. I've heard them wail over how they looked on TV. I've heard them admire other writers the same way I admired them. They are human. Talented humans, to be sure, but human all the same.

In our celebrity culture, it's easy to pick on people in the public eye. The Britney Spears Suicide Watch of 2007 comes to mind. How hateful, though, really. How horrible. I don't know how to say this without sounding preachy, but I try to turn my jealousy into fire in the belly instead of vitriol or self-loathing. I think Jane described the process of disarming jealousy really well:

It’s so much easier to feel jealousy when you don’t know someone, because when you get to know people they’re humanized and it’s tougher to be adversaries. When you interact with people on a face to face basis, you realize everyone has their foibles and their bad days and their moods, and it’s easy to project a whole bunch of stuff onto other people that’s not even there.