Tag-team Blogging March 24, 2009
Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Great Onely Activities, Secret Lives of the Happily Single, single and happy, We like. . ..Tags: blogging as a team, importance of friendship, single friends, single people, we love being single
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When I told a friend of mine about Onely, he said, “Does anyone ever mention how funny it is that there are two of you writing a blog together about being single?” No, no one ever does. In fact (says Christina), the irony hadn’t even occurred to Lisa or I until that friend of mine mentioned it.
And it is ironic–on the surface. While Lisa and I are jumping up and down on our respective couches yelling about the benefits of solo living, behind the scenes we’re running Onely sort of like a marriage: we are a small team, bound together through common interests and goals, but also through logistics (shared copyrights and creative license, server bills, etc). Like in a (good) marriage or standard partnered romantic relationship, each of us has a built-in safety net in our co-blogger, someone to cover our butts when we’re too sick, tired, or busy to care for the blog. If I have a crazy week, Lisa writes extra posts and monitors the stats and comments. If she gets bogged down by real life, then I cover for her in the cyberspace. So yes, it’s kind of ironic that our blog empowering the single life needs two of us to keep it up and running.
But if you think about it, a singles blog run by friends is really an apt metaphor for the broader life experience of a single in today’s world. Because we don’t have a Seepie (Sex-and-everything-else-partner), some daily life chores are just tougher for us (here’s an example). So single people tend to have and rely on larger networks of friends and extended family to help us take up the slack and batten down the hatches as we sail through the storms and lulls of life. (Or something like that–my latest writing teacher loathed my metaphors: too bad for him!)
That said, all the other singles blogs we’ve seen so far (check out some of our favorites on the blogroll and in our Some Like It Single series) are run by individual bloggers, and they all maintain great sites with regular, interesting. What do you one-person bloggers out there think when you imagine yourselves co-blogging?
Perhaps the activity of co-blogging isn’t really the subject of this post after all, but more the importance of friendship and extended family and the unique ways we maintain and strengthen those ties as single people. Before beginning this blog (says Lisa), Christina and I had been friends for six years but only talked on the phone once every two or three weeks (at most), and we had only seen each other a few times since she moved from DC to the midwest. Today, we send each other multiple emails per day and usually talk on the phone at least once every week. Shortly after starting the blog, we even took a vacation together!
Our co-blogging represents for us, I think, one of the many ways in which friends can and do enrich one another’s lives and provide essential support for single people (a theme we’ve ruminated on before, here and here). And it’s just icing on the cake that we have a whole community of readers who get to partake. 🙂
Copious Readers, which activities do you find most valuable to maintaining your friendships and/or family ties?
— Lisa and Christina
Onely.Org 
I love this post and I have thought it fun that you two blog together. I can’t seem to have enough in common with any one friend to embark on a project such as this. You are both not only single, but happily single and writers and you’re both *gasp* reliable people.
But I am learning a bit lately about asking for help and relinquishing some control: I was given a carload of mulch from Bosslady’s husband. This prompted me to finally begin (next week) a long awaited garden in my backyard (which now looks like a muddy wasteland of dog poo). Of course, I was thinking I would do it all myself but my mom told me to get my roommates to help. Well, one of my roommates works for a garden store and when I proposed the idea to her, she was very excited! She even said that she had been thinking about starting something anyways! I’m not really *friends* with any of my roommates. We get along well but the only time we spend together is when we end up in the living room or kitchen at the same time. But lately I’ve been bonding with one roommie because she is fostering a puppy (her first experience with a dog) and I am mentoring her (I have fostered several dogs and work with a rescue).
I’m looking forward to putting in the garden and the relationships (and lush green food-producing plants) which will grow from the collaboration.
Hm, that’s funny, I was planning on mulching this weekend too–I guess ’tis the season. Good on you and your roommate for fostering pups! I used to foster special needs foster cats. One of them peed on my tax envelope to the IRS. (I mailed it anyway.) I hope your roommate will be as lucky! = ) CC
Lori here-I changed my comment-handle to something more cool like the others….
Interesting thoughts, because while living solo is preferred, I too have a community with whom I share closely: I live in a 75 year old house, on a large corner lot. We are 3 in the house, (me, D + boyfriend) but in two separate living spaces. Mine is the larger main floor/basement and hers is the second floor. We share the basement and garage for storage so she has her own key for access when I’m not home; the big area we collaborate in is in the gardening & landscape planning and maintenance (if D can’t water her half, I do and vice-versa); we alternate plumbing emergencies, vacation cat care, occasional shopping. Our Halloween decorations are so blended now we joke that we can’t ever “divorce”.
We were strangers before I moved in, but we’ve become a sort of family since; most evenings in the summer are spent either in the backyard or on the porch and are generally inclusive to all, so that our friends have now blended as well. On the flip-side there are stretches when we veer off into our own worlds, and so have achieved a great balance of autonomy and community.
I dread the day when either she & boyfriend outgrow their smaller space, or we have to move for some other reason (our old brick house will fall down in a strong earthquake).
Thanks for the reminder of how fortunate I am- and reaffirming that being single is anything but being alone like people assume.
AH that porch sounds GREAT. Jealous. = ) CC
I don’t want to comment on this post. I want to comment on the snack post and say that I stress about company snacks versus onely snacks too (Occasionally I eat ravioli for breakfast too. I don’t think that’s acceptable to anyone else)
But the post has disappeareddededed! Bring it back, it was funny.
Shannon,
Ravioli for breakfast is fully acceptable. Let’s even call it sophisticated and forward-thinking! I sometimes eat spaghetti for breakfast, though I like your ravioli idea because spaghetti tends to require a certain level of dexterity that I don’t always have in the morning.
Not sure what’s going on with the post. We may be having scheduling shenanigans. Don’t worry, it will come back soon, and we’re glad you liked it. = )
CC
haha, how appropriate that you make this comment on a post about tag-team blogging, Shannon! The behind-the-scenes glitch was (ahem!) caused by me.
Don’t worry, the post will be back tomorrow. it IS funny (and I can say that with pride b/c Christina wrote it!)
…. anticipation builds …
L
Try as I might, I can’t find anything funny about the two of you blogging together about being single. I think it’s wonderful! You guys are lucky and blessed to have each other.
I mostly interact with my friends online and over the phone. I make a point to get in touch with them at least once every two weeks. I wished we saw more of each other, though…..
I would love to co-blog with people….and I applaud your fellowship. there is something about a community coming together with a common theme and tying it together. 2-3 entries a week is perfect. Different voices, different perspectives, that rocks….perhaps we should start a site together????
I see another kind of irony here. Single bloggers trying to unite and spread the word about singledom, trying to bring together single bloggers in a united effort, a united cause, yet there’s an irony in single bloggers uniting to blog? An irony within an irony? 🙂
[…] written in the past about the importance of friendships when living as a single person, particularly about the […]