Nu'uanu Pali

I haven’t been posting much lately. This is partly because I have a lot less time with the new job. And it’s partly because I’m pondering the future — for The Siren, for my activism, for what I hope is the next phase of my writing career,  for me as a woman/wife/sister/friend.

The Siren began 27 months ago. It has grown out of my passion for activism, social justice, feminist outrage, desire for community and much more. It has survived — thanks to some incredible support and one really fantastic guest writer (you’re the best, Natalie!) — the times in my life over the past two years when I was drowning in the sorrows and the losses of cancer. It has, in some ways, become a part of my identity; I am The Siren. But in other ways, it has been a lonely road (I am at this moment sitting in my little home office with only a cat as support-staff). I do not know where The Siren, or I, am going from here.

I thought my decade in service to journalism was enough to make me tough and thick-skinned for my current life in activism and blogging. But part of my present contemplation comes from the wounds I’ve received during these past two years. I have found the activist and the blogging communities to be cliquish, childish, stubbornly rigid, ridiculously hierarchical, disorganized, plagued with politics and in-fighting and far less fulfilling than I had hoped or felt it once was. I have sacrificed money, work opportunities, time away from my family and friends, and a few daggers in the back and now I am left wondering … for what? Was it worth it?

And now — after some real silliness got blown up to ridiculous proportions because of the size of peoples’ egos — I have caught wind of a rumor that there is a little boycott of my little blog going on. I can’t substantiate or corroborate such a rumor, so I have no idea if there’s any voracity veracity to it. You tell me.

So here I am at a major cross roads. I have less and less time. I am shopping my first manuscript around to publishers (and have gotten a few interested nibbles). I am hoping to get pregnant in the near future (and thus, my time is that much more precious as this may be the last free chunks I have for a long while). And, frankly, I am tired of railing against the system into a soundless void filled with cynics and vipers. Does it even do any good? Am I even accomplishing any of the goals I have set for myself, in terms of this blog? I’ll probably never know for sure, but lately my gut is telling me “no.”

I can tell you one thing: If I do go on with The Siren, things are going to change a bit around here. I’m going to bring more of the truth and light I found writing my book to this space. It’s going to get more metaphysical, more emotional and more relevant to where I am now. Less politics (in every sense of the word) and more real. As I’ve always said, The Siren is my space and I’m the benevolent dictator of it. Maybe these kinds of changes will piss everyone off and I’ll wind up with two readers. Maybe this is the end of The Siren. Maybe it’s the start of something new.

All I know is, I’m a different person than when I started this project. And what comes next is going to reflect that, like it or not.