Say What

I am taking part in the Facebook Ultimate Blog Challenge. The ask is to post daily for the 30 days of April. If we do, I think we win a badge. That makes me happy. I am big on badges. Money would be nice but a badge will do.

If I’m honest, I had a bit of a head start on daily blog-writing, publishing my first post on March 14 and committing to do that daily for a year. (That could change and for an exceptionally good reason which I will address in a later post.)

Paul Taubman is running the challenge. Since April 1, he has been posting prompts I have blithely ignored until now. I have lots to write about. But his prompt today was not only an interesting ask but potentially valuable to me. For the memoir, I have to describe my ideal reader. As of now, I don’t know exactly who I should be writing for. Imagine, Paul suggests, sitting in a cafe with one of your blog readers. Letting them tell you what they need to hear. The exact words of Paul’s prompt:

Have Coffee With A Reader

If you were sitting in a coffee shop with one of your blog readers, what would you chat about? What would you like them to know? Or what would you like to know about them? Share it in a blog post.

I am naturally garrulous and gregarious (ie, verbose) and a former multi-media journalist. Talking to people is easy for me. Not just easy but usually enjoyable and occasionally fascinating. I believe every single person has a story to tell. Finding them was my main bread and butter as a CBC journalist. The newsroom hierarchy was such that you weren’t rising on the corporate ladder unless you were bent on pursuing “hard news.” My bent was more toward “human interest” stories. That is the sole reason I did not become the female version of Peter Mansbridge, the legendary CBC TV news host, of my set.

I did a few stories I was exceptionally proud of. Annie Cairns was an orphaned Middlemore Home schoolgirl who was moved from England to Canada at 14 in the 1940s. Her story was analogous to Anne of Green Gables as she evolved from a mistreated child to eventually become a settled wife, mother, and homemaker.

Annie’s story was broadcast on CBC radio and ripped off the cloak of shame she had worn all her life. She eventually traveled back to England and elsewhere around the world in the remaining years of her life. Free as a bird. That pleased me greatly. It was my first real-world experience of giving voice to a miserable history allowing them to drop the veil of shame that changed someone’s life for the better.

So, back to the present and Paul’s prompt, what would I ask a blog reader? I would want to know what grabbed them about any particular blog post they had read. What bored them? Or confused them? Did any of the posts delight them? Or repel them? I would want to know how to address readers’ concerns more directly. What would they want to know more about? What would they prefer never to hear tell of again?

I enjoy sharing my take on what I have learned about life in our time. It makes life make more sense to me, in fact. The lessons have been abundant. Sometimes hilarious. At other times, searingly painful. Wondrous. Perplexing. Savage and sacred. The whole enchilada.

I would like them to know about the lessons I have learned from the greats of history. Antoine St. Exupery’s The Little Prince taught me that we find love and meaning by pouring them into something we care about and watching it grow. Don Miguel de Ruiz’ The Four Agreements taught me to lighten up and not take everything people said personally. And to do my best no matter how lowly the task. Gandhi taught that lesson well as he cleaned latrines along with the untouchables caste in his Indian compound. That is the very definition of walking a mile in someone else’s moccasins.

I’d say more to my blog readers if I knew I had their ear. I’d ask them more questions. I’d probably get up and get us another coffee. And a couple of biscotti.

Writing this blog is something like starting a conversation. A little one-sided at the moment I grant you. But it is written in the hope that one day that conversation will become a two-way street. Even a multi-way street. Which would be – to use the parlance of the time – awesome.