Comparisons = odious

This morning I got an email from someone at The Baltimore Sun, a person working on a new parenting blog for the paper, giving me a heads-up about this.

I'm always humbled and grateful when someone takes the time to recognize my writing, and certainly I realize that this person intended her post, and the comparisons drawn therein, to be received as favorable and flattering to me. But honestly, my gut reaction to this when I first saw it could be summed up in four words: PLEASE KILL ME NOW.

Because though I understand that Dooce is something of a phenomenon, and that it is easy to see her influence weighing heavily on parenting blogs everywhere -- particularly when looking through the eyes of someone not intimately familiar with the vast scope of the parenting (gag!)blogosphere(gag!) -- let's be clear: I am not an iteration of Dooce. She's swell, and more power to her, but no. And no thank you.

Friends, I have had my dusty old blonde bob well over ten years, and my sailor's mouth far longer. I have been taking photos all my life -- showing them in museums and galleries back in the early 1990s, in fact. I started blogging about motherhood before Heather was pregnant with her daughter. And with all due respect, my dog can't balance a goddamn thing on his head.

I know it's tempting to draw these kinds of comparisons. That it is, well, easy. But that easiness at times seems to slide nearer and nearer to just plain laziness, and -- when positioned relative to everything I do here on Sweetney -- can feel a little reductive. Mildly insulting, even.

Hi, I'm Tracey. My blog is Sweetney. I'm not the most original or special person in the world, certainly. But I'm ME.