The Twilight Of Kathy

Ah, Tuesday. Another morning, another three aborted posts. We have partial screeds on why I hate Twilight, how I feel about Postmodernism’s affect on the Christian church, and how my brand of feminism meshes with libertarianism.

All heavy things that I can’t coherently keep under the 500 word cap I’ve imposed upon myself for this blog. I used to have a friend who would go around typing ‘tl;dr’ on anything more than a paragraph and I think of her every time my entries start getting around the 350 mark. tl;dr means, quite simply ‘too long; didn’t read’ and seems rude to me. Just don’t read it. You don’t have to flaunt your inability to sit through anything larger than the copy on a toothpaste tube. Yet still I try to oblige. Especially since the vast majority of my blogging circle has migrated to Twitter and Facebook, where the number of letters and words is far less. And still some of them use a service that provides statuses for them. There are writers and there are those who don’t like to write.

I still like blogging, because I think the way I blog. I guess that I’ve always been a writer even before I wrote seriously. Because my thoughts are formed in thesis statements and supporting paragraphs. In the back of my mind I toy with synonyms and alliteration the way some people fantasise about naked women or chicken. But I’m starting to begrudge being a blogger because people don’t talk to me anymore. They read my blog and feel as though they’ve conversed with me. But I don’t know about their days or their feelings. I don’t get to talk WITH them. I merely talk AT them. Or, more accurately, they overhear the conversations I have outloud with myself.

Although, given the vast number of childhood and high school friends with whom I’ve become reacquainted via Facebook I suppose I should be grateful for those who don’t actually talk TO me. Because they all call me ‘Kathy’. That’s a name I never chose, that my parents decided to call me. A name I don’t like. It has never felt like me, like the person I am. Kathys are breezy and sunny and bouncily young. They always smile. I am far too old, far too cynical, far too wry. I’ve got an edgier streak that doesn’t suit Kathy. I much prefer Kate, Kat or Katherine, all of which are either more serious, more dark or more abrupt even though none of them exactly fit me either. My husband calls me Til after Til Eulenspiegal, but that’s so private a name that it sounds foreign coming from anyone else.

Ironically the name which suits me best so far is one he also gave me. Well, he and Aunt B.. ‘Coble’ seems to be most suited to me out of the various monikers I’ve got. I don’t quite know why; it sounds both friendly and odd and maybe a little smart and cynical. A coble is a boat made to fish in the choppy seas around Scotland and Northern England. It’s low and sturdy. I guess that’s how I see myself. Dutiful, sturdy, bouncing on the waves of life and carrying people I care about.