Confessions of Infidelity
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Dear You,
I’m going to come right out and say it: I’ve been having an affair.
For going on a year, we’ve been having a ball. And by ball, I mean blog. I’ve spilled speckles of self and you’ve lapped them up. And asked for more. You’ve left a trail of tender words here – seen and felt. And I’ve savored each one. Each day, I’ve kissed you good morning and good night. I’ve followed you home, holding your virtual hand, going where led. Skipping beside you. In your bloggy bed, we’ve cuddled, waxing poetic about the universe we shoulder and share. And each night, as we nod off, shutting down soul and self and psyche, you’ve whispered sweet nothings – and sweet everythings – into my ear. And I into yours.
There have been bloggy butterflies. Alighting, flying with purpose, landing softly and uncertainly on the edge of understanding. The precipice of discovery. Our bond has been at once fragile and foolproof, ragged and robust, full of affection and wonder and desire. I have come to need you. Your ideas. Your perspective. Your questions. I have come to crave your attention, your approval, your applause. My days are good because you are in them.
But last week something happened. I encountered a dark and brooding and beautiful ex.
The Novel.
And we’ve been spending some time together. Stolen moments. Late at night. Early in the day. Sometimes in the middle of it all; in the broad and boastful sunlight. And, during these times, I realized something I have known all this time.
I have missed him.
He is a bad boy. He broods and beckons. Define me, he says. Tell my story. I dare you. His blank pages are alluring and alarming. Into them, I dive and flail and come close to drowning. Time with him is less certain. I spend moments and hours and days in his presence and often have nothing to show for it. Just a confused heart. A mangled mind. And a blank page.
And yet. I need him. I crave his company. He captures me and challenges me and chides me. In his orbit, life grows murky. In his shadow, I see a surplus of stories. My stories. Your stories. Our stories. Impossible stories unfurling and unfolding. Of life and death. Of light and dark. Of salvation and struggle. When holding his hand, I feel safe and shaky. Clawed by confidence. Intoxicated by insecurity. Tangled in truth.
So, he’s back. And he needs me. And I need him too.
So here I am. Caught in the magical middle. Awash in anxiety that by being with both of you, I’m really with neither of you. That in splitting myself, I’m losing myself.
And you.
I write these words because I’ve been feeling a bit naughty and wanted to fess up. Here I am seeking your forgiveness for my wandering pen and heart and mind. Here I am telling you where I am when I am not with you, curled up, stroking your back, saying I love you.
But know this: I do love you. More deeply than you know. And I hope that you stay with me. Even though I’m not perfectly committed. Even though I am philandering with fiction.
Insecurely yours,
Aidan
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Are you monogamous when it comes to blogging or do you cheat on your blog and write elsewhere? How do you handle the split focus of affection? Do you find it difficult to juggle your loves? Do you ever feel like you are cheating on one aspect of your life (family, profession, etc) when you are spending time with another? Is this existential infidelity just part of life? Feel free to talk about actual affairs too. That would be very interesting and wonderful material for this blog. Oh, and for my next novel(s). (Don’t be jealous.)
***This post was inspired by my guilt about devoting time to something other than my blog and by my virtual sisters’ fabulous Love It Up challenge. Head on over to Momalom between now and Valentine’s Day to read some other love letters…***
So cute. Love it! I don’t have anyone to cheat on my blog with. My blog is where I even discovered I like to write but there’s a chance in my future I may wander. See what it’s like to hold someone else’s “Pen”. Who knows. But for now, i’m faithful.
Monogamous, but I would like an affair with a novel.
Dear Aidan,
Ahhh, if only I had the time to entertain the bad boy. A girl does like her bad boy on occasion, when she’s in the mood, when she’s feeling naughty.
For now I can barely manage a business letter at my job, let alone words that don’t make it on to the blog. Can I follow in your footsteps, quit my job and write my way to success? Probably not, but the future is long and mighty. She will lure me to the next step and then I will leap, as any daring girl might.
I’m so glad you joined in with Love It Up. We always appreciate your words, your prose and your thoughtful questions.
Love,
Sarah
That is exactly why I embrace polyamory! I am in an open relationship and so far it is working out pretty well. But the key to an open relationship is communication and the very unsexy – planning. And the number one thing about planning that I have learned is that it is just a plan. Every day, every week I am trying to figure out a way to balance it. Sometimes I wish I could just have blog days versus fiction days versus consulting days. But, it doesn’t seem to work out like that. So I try half-days – which works better but I am always adjusting. If you ever find the magic formula, please let me know! In the meantime, I am so excited for you and your affair.
I could use a little fling with a bad boy! Because sometimes I feel like a tired, one-trick pony.
I envy your affair and your motivation.
It’s all a matter of perception. I don’t consider it infidelity; it is passion, spilling over and requiring multiple outlets. A variety of lovers and still never sated. And never enough hours.
Not so bad when you think of it that way, is it? Except for the pull, always the pull – for more, and more, the new, and more of the new.
When I am working on another writing project in tandem with the blog, it is REALLY hard to divide my attentions. The fact is, I only have so much creative energy in a day, and the blog usually ends up getting the shaft. Which just kills me. But, you can only do so much. While I am not a novelist, I have a friend who is, and she feels that same tension with her blog, I know.
Oh I love this. I was smiling throughout. I am mad when the blog and the blogging world is too much on my mind. I feel like I am cheating on my real life when I’m too involved. You know? Sometimes I feel bad if my husband notices me being in TOO deep. Spending TOO much time at the computer talking to all of the blogs that I love….
I need to tear myself away more often….I’ve got all kinds of things to do…that need my love.
Oh I so know what you are saying. Days go by with only my mind playing with my novel while my kids, job, life all clamour for attention. And my WIP is so quite an undemanding – unlike some of my followers who notice when I’ve been quiet on my blog and then send me little notes….
So my poor little love sits alone in the corner waiting for me to finish wiping noses and hunting for jpegs to insert…
Happy writing about ALL your loves!
ps. Don’t have time to go back and check for such things as punctuation or even logic – puking child is calling out from the couch. Such is my life…
Oh that is just too funny. I have that same issue but only with reading blogs versus reading novels. It’s funny because, even though I have a blog that I write on, I don’t really write elsewhere or even really like to write. I’m definitely more of a photo person. This made me laugh though because I can totally see how a writer could procrastinate (wondering if that’s the right word) by writing on a blog instead of on their work.
If you can believe it, I write in multiple places: my family blog, my journal, and the two websites I contribute to. On top of this, I have decided to take the plunge and write.
Each of these places allows me to stretch my creativity to places I never imagined. My novel writing is slow, because my time is short, but it is coming. The ideas are brewing.
You, my friend, inspired me. Thanks for that!
I started my blog thinking it would inspire me enough to get me back to “real writing.” Then, I fell in love with my blog and the people I’ve met because of it, and I am fully committed and monogamous. For now.
a sweetly inspiring love letter…
now as the song writer said, “if I can just remember who to send it to”
thanks AD
I love, love, love your love letter. You so cleverly capture both the passion I feel for blogging and the nagging questions that our fidelity to this community introduces into our personal and professional lives.
As for me? I’m monogamous, but with a decidedly wandering eye.
I’m pretty monogamous to my blog though I don’t always blog about monogamy.
I wish I would cheat on my blog. I really do. But I can’t seem to make that first step. Call me old fashioned or a scaredy cat – I really can’t decide which. But I admire those who DO cheat.
I write a number of things. My blog, my novel, my articles… each feels like a different activity.
The time I start feeling conflicted is when I flit between novels. (But I still can’t stop myself!)
Screw the writing metaphors–you, dearest, speak like a woman who knows about a little back seat tango with a real live bad boy! Oh, to hear about your Life Before Yes!
Great letter, Aidan!
I suppose there is no need to confess that which is so totally obvious, to those who know me of course. Yeah, I cheat. On my kids, my husband, my friends. Pretty much anyone or anything that begs my attention on a daily basis.
I even cheat in my sleep. How sick is that?
After years of denying my true feelings, my true desires and the promising lure of redemption, I have finally bitten into the forbidden fruit (Living out my dreams of becoming a novelist…to Hell with the laundry).
I never was one to finish anything. Until I was forced to commit to countless responsibilities that accompany parenting. But, (Behold the Underlying Truth)… if there is one thing I have learned in all my years of procrastinating, it is that Life Is Short. And I just couldn’t ignore that nagging, seductive voice in my head any longer.
So, I write. Blog, occasionally. Email, often now that I have high speed. Sometimes I even put pen to paper and write an actual letter. And, I spend every other waking hour of my life thinking about, planning out and setting to task my first novel. It may not be any good. But, it’s what lights my fire.
Great letter, Aidan!
Loved this
I’m struggling with this… I have a little creative writing class that I’m taking online, and while I want to give it my all (and all…. meaning… 1/2 an hour twice a week as it’s not what I was hoping/expecting it to bed…) I still write my blog first when I have time to sit. And read others… always!
I write so many different blogs I make Tiger look like a nun.
Beautiful. Don’t worry one bit about “cheating.” Who knows, maybe your blog will help your novel and vice versa?
On a nearly perfect day I work on the novel in the morning and the blog at night… I adore your analogy.
The blog often gets shafted for other writing projects. Sometimes its the other way around, too. I don’t feel I have the ‘energy’ to write other things, but can somehow find myself spending six hours on a blog entry… I think that’s when I’m feeling creatively a bit stuck.
I am terribly unfaithful, cheating left and right! Not only do I have several blogs/sites, but I have two novels and short stories and poems. Heh. It’s the only area of my life in which I’m not completely one-minded and loyal!
I love this one! Its funny, I purposely did NOT read any until I wrote my own. I wrote to my Blog too but not to confess to any literary infidelity, but just to tell my blog I love it! Great post!
Aidan, I think about this all the time. I’m quite attached to my blog. Hell, I’m quite attached to YOUR blog, and Kristin’s blog, and Amber’s blog, and BLW’s blog, and everyone else’s. This is more than blogging at this point, it’s checking in with friends, it’s seeing what’s on everyone’s minds, what’s going on in their lives.
But – and there is one – I also have a book. A memoir and it sits on my computer casting baleful glares at me. I’ve always kind of considered myself a life support system for that book, which is written but needs a good edit and then needs to go out into a bunch of agents’ slush piles, I guess. And instead of find myself consumed day after day after day with my blog and the blogs of my friends, so that I never get to that edit.
So you’re right. I have to balance or pick or cheat or something. There’s only one of me and two siren calls. Which will get me where I need to go?
Yes, I am JUST NOW getting to read this. I have that novel. It sits. At the end of my bed. It’s pages get tossed about, misnumbered, rearranged. It’s characters play in my head.
It has remained the same 40,000 words for many years. But someday. Some. Day. (A love affair awaits.)
first off, i think balance is hard. right now, i’ve got a sixty-hour-a-week job, a weekly writing gig (that i just picked up), MY blog (to keep people coming back, i need at least two solid posts a week), and my book (which is now available!).
oh, and don’t forget about Lovie, Pookie, and the wee two-year-old trio. balancing all that? very tough.
as far as balancing blog and other writing…also tough. i frequently hear bloggers talk about that book they’ve never written, the one they’re quite certain is inside of them. my two cents, and my two cents only: unless you spend some significant time wrestling with blank pages, no book’s gonna come out, unless, of course, it’s a book which reads like a blog, filled with posts that double as short chapters.
it wasn’t until my book was totally complete when i began to blog. now that i see how time consuming (and self consuming) blogging is, i’m glad i didn’t start blogging while i was writing it, or it probably wouldn’t have ever gotten done.
my point? i’m not mad at you for cheating on me. (whore) if you didn’t, there’s a strong chance i’d only get to read one of your books, and i want more than that.
GL w/ your next one. you rock.