In 6th grade, pervasive note-writing began. I don’t mean jotting down Mrs. Mallott’s “foods lab” tips for no-bake peanutbutter cornflake clusters, or defining Mr. Benson’s vocabulary of the week in our own words. Finally freed from the constraints of Elementary School D’nealian on newsprint, we forged our own unique penmanship blend of script, print, and puffy letters. My girlfriends and I filled pages of wide-lined missives riddled with code words and acronyms “SSS! LLL! Sorry so short! Longer letter later!” Hiding behind Language Arts text books, we fashioned custom signatures and generously employed white-out for corrections and/or manicures. We folded our letters into triangles—tucking in the ends like the paper footballs the boys would flick toward thumbs-and-pointer-finger field goals during free period.
We palmed these secret messages in the bathroom, or passed a dedicated notebook in the hallway among two or more contributors, alternating period by period. For all the instruction we missed in our trance of self-expression (THE PRESIDENTIAL FITNESS TEST IS TOTALLY BOG) and self-reflection (I BLEW MY OWN BREATH UP MY OWN NOSE AND IT DID NOT STINK), I now realize we actually practiced something of value; the art of puzzling over ourselves and our lives’ moments, word by word.
By day I wrote notes, and by night I wrote in journals. From girlhood through young adulthood I filled blank books with hopes, fears, shame, and hearts sketched with the mandatory shine-indicator. And then I wrote letters–from camp all summer long to my friends at home, and from home all fall, winter, and spring to my friends from camp. I wrote to my grandmas, to my sisters away at college, and made tiny words on both sides of blue aerograms for my brother overseas.
With email barely on my radar during college, I brought thin markers with me to PoliSci 104, alternating colors by paragraph for five loose-leaf pages to my boyfriend living one state away. The world wide web appeared soon after, as I sat at reception desk after desk, but it bore no relation to me. I whiled away hours at my temp job filling notebooks with 20,000 Leagues Under Why Me and poetry about Husband’s flaxen arm hair. Yes, flaxen. Yes, arm hair. When I graduated from journaling-per-hour to a salaried position selling TV air time, I made sales opuses of sales letters—losing myself in whatever creativity with words I could muster among cost-per-thousand impressions.
As a new mom with a traveling husband, I wrote my way through naptime and tummytime, sending out notes of exhaustion and isolation, folding rage into humor, tucking sweet memories into emails for a few trusted family and friends.
And then, on a lonely October night in 2008, one of those friends said the word “blog.” I found myself captivated by the internet for the first time. Spending 18-hour days at home with a four-year-old and one-year-old, I devoured irreverent parenting humor as quickly as I became obsessed with writing it.
Five years later, I have a 6 year old and a 9 year old. I’m a lot less desperate, significantly less exhausted, and mercifully less isolated these days. After half a decade of passing notes among internet friends, my drive to crack you up in study hall remains. However, more often than not, I return here to puzzle out life’s moments, word by word, with you.
Thank you for reading them.
p.s. The Well-Versed Mom won Nancy Davis Kho’s new book! Congrats!
Happy Five Years! I’m SO glad that you write to us. But if you could dot your ‘I’s’ with a heart – I would love you more.
love it. people don’t understand why people blog… I get that, but I think the people who don’t understand, never had words as a staple in their life long before getting inter-famous. i’m so glad you found your blog, your voice, your passion. we are all so much the better for it.
Happy 5 years! I hit 10 this summer and still can’t quit. I’m glad that you’re part of the community I get to see every day.
I’m applauding in my mind. This was such a great post and I can relate to so much of it. You made me think of David Sedaris by the way, who writes in a journal, still, every day. (Or least he wrote something saying he did.) You’re so great at capturing the details of life’s moments and it’s not surprise why so many people return here again and again to nod and say, “Me too.” Yours was one of the first blogs I discovered three years ago before I even considered starting my own. And you really made me feel (in emails back then) like I could do it too when I was flirting with the idea. Thank you for the inspiration and for the support. I really admire everything you did to build LTYM and this space here. Can’t wait to see the book and watch you move along on your next chapter.
I can’t believe it’s only been, like, three and a half years since I’ve even known you! Doesn’t seem reasonable, for certain all of us notewriters are connected far beyond the past. xoxo
So grateful I get to have that dedicated notebook passed to me in the hallway. Happy Blog Anniversary. Love you.
Happy fifth! I’m so glad you started blogging, because it changed my life in many wonderful ways, not the least of which is your friendship. xoxo
Happy year 5! I’m so happy to have discovered you! I loved your words about junior high–dear God, I was a note-writing, journaling machine! It was all probably drivel, but still! I wish I were that productive now!
Happy blogiversary! I echo Tara’s comments, well said!
I smiled when you said you wrote notes during the day and journals at night. Same here. 🙂
I adore this beautiful and simple recount of your writing journey and so glad it has brought you here. xo
You have a wonderful history and relationship with words, Ann. You’ve also come a LONG way in a mere 5 years of blogging. You’ve made a name for yourself in the blogosphere and created the phenomenon called Listen To Your Mother. I’m excited to see what you’ll do in the next 5 years! 🙂
I remember the note writing and I have stacks of journals too…and of course the blog. My blog will always be the greatest thing I’ve written because it has brought people like you into my life. I mean that from the bottom of my sketched on a notebook piece of paper heart.
I love this, and am only slightly disappointed it wasn’t delivered in the envelope shaped origami. This brings back memories of having to hold the note I got caught writing to the chalkboard with my nose…good times! Thanks for all of the laughs and memory pokes!
I guess girls now don’t know the thrill of passing notebook paper folded this way and that. Texting has replaced all that. I journaled too. Tens of thousands of spiral notebooks. Congrats on the milestone. And how fun to step back and reflect on how far this blogging journey has taken you.
Congrats on 5 years of blogging and all it has led to, including LTYM. What a lovely piece about your passion for writing, in all its forms…
Do you have any of your old notes? Not long ago, I found some of mine from high school. Funny and mortifying at once.
(Thanks for the book, too!)
This makes me cry, I can’t help it. If you didn’t start this blog, I would not have found you on my own grey, cold, lonely January morning, when I googled “Wisconsin bloggers.” I found your site, I couldn’t believe there was a mommy site that was funny, I followed your commenters to their homes and oh my gosh but more funny moms! marinka, wendi, becky, maggiedamnit, and from then it snowballed in the best most accelerated ride that changed my life. No exaggeration, my life changed, via deciding after reading your blog for 10 months to create my own blog and then the listen to your mother show came my way from my own written words and now, TheMoth, all because Ann’s Rants came into my life. It amazes me, one action to another, that has taken me from lonely, isolated, not finding my people, to finding and loving so many of them, that they are my life posse. THANK YOU, Ann Imig, for writing. I do love you. Happy 5 years, and I love your words.
“My drive to crack you up in study hall remains”. Ahhhhh, yessssss. So happy that it is stuck in Drive. And you do crack. me. up. Happy five years, dearest Ann Imig.
Happy blogiversary! I can’t imagine this world without your words. I heart you with a mandatory shine indicator!
I love the mandatory shine indicator.
I love this so much. I was an inveterate note writer too…and a couple of years ago my high school best friend showed up at lunch with a big bag she’d saved of all the notes I’d written her. There is a YA novel in there, we both agree. Those scribbles become habit forming and those habits make a writer. We’re lucky you heard the word “blog” and opened up the notebook for us.
SSS.LLL.
P.S. Yay Well Versed Mom! She’s so cool!
Lovely. And your so darn good at it too 🙂
Thank you for WRITING them.
Oh my gosh I loved this! (You have to read that fast because that’s how it is said in my head)
So beautifully put. I’m so glad you’re here.