Just My Blog. Random Little Thoughts. Rambling Chronicles. Have you ever thought about what these sorts of blog names mean - do they seem ordinary to you? To me, the names of "Just a Ramble" blogs reflect a particular stance about writing, experience, and life. Rather than focusing on a particular topic, they positively assert subjectivity -- an over-fancy word for valuing individual points of view.

At times I've thought: Why do so many women present their identities this way? Are we putting ourselves down? What's going on? I felt ambivalent. Have you ever had someone ask what you write about, and said, "Oh, I don't know - just life." After a lot of thought and reading, here's where I've arrived:

Our little musings and chronicles defy categories and taxonomy. They're a way of evasion. We won't be pinned down. We don't fit in a box. We're explorers: we range broadly over any topic. We explore what we don't know, rather than beating our chests about that one thing we know so well. We defy logic and structure. What we write about, that so-called nonsense, ranting, spewing, and trivia -- "Just Life" -- is incredibly important! Our patterns of rambling are an extraordinary assertion of our freedom to write, and include all of our experience, the parts that get left out of work life, or business, or relationships -- or left out of history. Our everyday lives and thoughts are important - that's something BlogHer has always recognized -- that we're writing history.

The use of "just" or "little" is certainly self-deprecatory; but that can be seen as humility. It's declaring that we get to write and blog, though we aren't experts with formal credentials. It's an evasion of having to argue, to prove ourselves. To know what we're saying, to be sure, to be right. We get to say what we want, no matter what. Randomness is a virtue.

So I'd like to honor some of the women who follow the rambling path. They chronicle their own overwhelmingly busy or interruption-full daily lives, or their attention wanders from politics to parenting to book reviews. All beautiful!

* http://www.justmylife-mygripespot.blogspot.com/ Just My Life is one of my favorite blogs EVER. She's never pretentious and always hilarious and honest - with a gift for storytelling and detail that cracks me up every time.

* http://pam-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/ These random thoughts include ambivalence about going back to work, a help wanted ad for her life, and classroom management techniques not quite working when it's your own kids.

* http://www.justgirlinworld.com/ Just a Girl in the World actually does ramble, all over the world! What she'll miss about New York, and how she feels about her uprooted, nomadic lifestyle.

* http://www.ramblingsbyreba.com In which Reba enjoys her obscurity and drama-free blog life, shows us a lovely enormous pile of books, and explains how procrastination has its rewards.

http://boondockramblings.com - Three reasons not to leave your 2 year old alone for just 2 minutes, and how to get around your spellchecker.

* http://occasionalramblings.com - Those playlists where the music turns out to have unexpected sweary bits. Details, details! And what you find when you zoom in on the cropped-out bits of your photos, very funny!

* http://mcmamasmusings.blogspot.com/ - McMama muses on living every moment to the full, and her ambitions to be a runner.

* http://chroniclesofmomnia.blogspot.com/ hits a sort of jackpot by having the tagline, "The rantings and recollections of one semi-delusional mom." I could definitely recite her incantation against getting her period at an inconvenient time and I also enjoyed her gross and funny post on the horrible smell coming from the plaster cast on her child's broken arm.

Using some variant of "crazy" sometimes asserts freedom from logic or often, exasperation with a world that doesn't quite make sense, or where we don't fit perfectly. There are lots of random crazy ramblings that take a strong stand in non-linearity. But I thought I'd mention some bloggers' critiques of casual use of "crazy" and "insane". In fact there are many declarations, rants, and heated debates on the subject. Here's a couple of starting points for critiques of the careless or pejorative use of "crazy", which is harmful to people living with mental illness:

Feminists are fine with being bigots if it's just ableism
Fighting Ableist Language by Jill from Feministe.

So, if you're still with me in my own little ramble, I'd like to put our chronicles in another context, the context of the history of women's diaries, letters, and autobiographies. Take a look:

Here's a big database of North American Women's Diaries and Letters, Colonial to 1950. It has the full texts of hundreds of fascinating diaries.

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and her amazing lists.

Elegant Things
A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat. Duck Eggs. Shaved Ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl. A rosary of rock crystal. Snow on wistaria or plum blossoms. A pretty child eating strawberries.

Ida B. Wells and her Memphis Diaries. An ambitious young writer's daily life, and research into the practice of lynching in the U.S. South.

Mary Chesnut's thoughtful, well written Civil War diaries.

The famous diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1915-1977) who lived much of her life in extreme poverty in a favela in Brazil and who made her own house out of cardboard and flattened cans for herself and her three children.

I dreamt I was an angel. My dress was billowing and had long pink sleeves. I went from earth to heaven. I put stars in my hands and played with them. I talked to the stars. They put on a show in my honor. They danced around me and made a luminous path. When I woke up I thought: I’m so poor. I cant afford to go to a play so God sends me these dreams for my aching soul. To the God who protects me, I send my thanks.

Enjoy! And, ramble on!