Sunday, July 13, 2008

Instructions to the Double...Background Leading Up To the Roxiticus Desperate Housewives Third Blogiversary

Roxiticus Desperate Housewives is coming up on its 3-Year Blogiversary on August 5, 2008. Looking through old magazines I've collected haphazardly at our beach house, I came across a stack of papers bound together with bulldogs. The collection turned out to be my August 2005 printout of Instructions to the Double, the blog that inspired me to blog. It now feels like a silly idea to print out a blog, since everyone's banal maundering is readily accessible online. In fact, I've joked with Matt over at MTMD about services I read about in my early blogging days that offered to compile all of a blogger's printed blog posts into a handsome leather-bound volume, and I feel certain that Matt will be surprising me with just such a tribute on August 5th. However, in this case it turns out that I am glad I printed out the hundreds of pages of Instructions to the Double. The blogger, "Tess," deleted most of her blog archives, leaving only a handful of old posts and no trace of her ongoing existence online. So I have the stack of pages that runs for less than a year, from October 7, 2004 to the end of July 2005, here on the beach with me for a blogiversary memorial re-reading. Back in the summer/early fall 2005, I had tracked down "Tess" at her new blog about her master's degree program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. But at some point Tess abandoned that blog as well, leaving me wondering what has happened in her life over the past three years.

It also turns out that Tess' writing/blogging style was a rare find. Since I returned to blogging in earnest and surfing other people's blogs (OPB) in February 2008, thanks to BlogExplosion and EntreCard, I have discovered quite a few blogs that I enjoy reading (and exchanging comments) on a regular basis. The Catch-22 with all of my favorite bloggers, however, is that they WANT people to read their blogs. Bloggers who work to drive traffic to their blogs are "writing to be read." Tess' Instructions to the Double blog read like a very well-written personal diary, the memoir of someone who was not aware of her audience.

I'm going to write more about Tess and Instructions to the Double as we count down to the Official Roxiticus Desperate Housewives Third Year Blogiversary....stay tuned.

14 comments:

Beamer said...

Always amazes me how the Internet is an ever evolving Beast. So many great web pages I know of have gone by the wayside.

Beamer

Mariuca said...

OMG!!! My connection is damn slow today, it's making me go RED!! EC dropping is a nightmare today. :(

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this post and will be looking forward to some big celebration on ur blog birthday! :)

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the upcoming blogiversary! I'll hit 3 years myself in October - although my archives only go back about a year and a half due to a horrible blog disaster that wiped EVERYTHING out.

I write for me. I really don't care if anyone reads what I throw out there. It's not for them....it's for me. :)

Anonymous said...

Happy pre-Blogiversary!

Thanks for the comment and the vote. I haven't done the Mutterings for the 285 weeks it's been around, but I have found myself surprised at what pops into my head for some of the words, and that leads to self contemplations, so yes, I'd say it's given me a better sense of self

Anonymous said...

Hey advance Happy Birthday to your blog. I am interested to know how you celebrate your blog anniversary. you are bookmarked.

Bugz said...

Great post! You got my vote this Monday morning : )

Mariuca said...

Roooooooxy! I'm baaaaack and my connection is back to being speedy, so dropping is so breezy! Nite nite! :)

Mariuca said...

Roxy, sorry I'm late, traffic was really bad he he! My connection is acting up again, but I'm here to vote now, good luck! :)xpb

Anonymous said...

I know some people write diary blogs, and I always wonder, why? They could do it on personal diary software. It would be much simpler.
So I agree that people really write because they want to be read. And further, it's in the comments that we make the connections. That's what it's all about for me. The connection part.
I look forward to reading more of Tess' stuff. The poem was fascinating. She seemed to have a lot of spirit and fire.

kml said...

There have been a couple of bloggers that I really enjoyed following also, then they just up and left. It does make you wonder what happened to them - hopefully it was for the better for them!

Mariuca said...

Hola Bree! Thank you for advertising at Mariuca today, you are doing a good job of keeping her spic and span. Hope she will bring u some good clicks today, love and hugs! :)

Mariuca said...

Hi Roxy, back with MPG! What are u having for breakfast today? :)

Matthew S. Urdan said...

I would love to present you with such a wonderful anniversary gift as the bound volume. Please send your phone number and physical address so that I can make sure it gets to you on the day of your blogoversary.

Henson Ray said...

Very cool. I find it fascinating that you kept her postings in print format, and in turn, became possibly the only person who has access to them ever again. And the fact that you don't know what happened to her makes the mystery even more interesting. Could be the plot for a great book/movie...you trying to find the person who inspired you to blog. But what is it that you discover? Did she become an underworld spy? Or did she marry and have two kids...and then become an underworld spy? The possibilities are endless...as long as they all end in her becoming an underworld spy. I don't know why...it just seems like a great revelation.