Book requests placed! ("Requests" plural: when I did the catalog search I found she'd also done one on parenting the sensitive child-- yeah, anything I can pick up there might be useful too). Thanks for understanding where I'm coming from! It's hard to describe, because my loved ones are like "YOU'RE not invisible, you stand out because you did such-and-such!" and I'm like, "Yeah, I've DONE such-and-such, in my less-invisible moments. Which is why they stood out. Because they're anomalies." Also, I'm less invisible when I'm writing. My online self... is still pretty invisible, really, it's not like I have a huge FOLLOWING or am getting retweeted by strangers or whatnot. But it's a lot less invisible than my in-person self tends toward! And it IS me putting myself SORT of out there. I could be more. I could be making a point of building this as the sort of Blog people read for information. Or I could be trying to get paid for writing. But still-- I like my blog primarily because it IS my safe space where I can put myself out there.

In middle school our English teacher would always ask if any of us wanted to read our daily journal entry to the rest of the class, and I nearly always volunteered. Middle school is when I REALLY HEAVY DUTY started going invisible, but that was the ONE TIME-- the one time I really felt in control, like I had the power to truly share who I really was with my classmates. So I'd be shrinking away every other time, until asked to read from my JOURNAL, and then...!