>Subject: You’re famous
Until the emails (and phone calls!) started coming in yesterday I had no idea that the article was actually going to be on the front page. There was no way I was going to let another minute go by without seeing it for myself. Sarah and I biked down to the pharmacy to pick up a copy. I showed her the photo. She laughed and laughed. I’m still a bit unsure about the photo (is that really me?), but I do know one thing. When I set out to start this blog back in 1999, I never thought it would come to this.
Anyway, yes. That’s me. And if you’ve arrived here via the article, welcome.
I feel a bit silly at the moment, like I’ve just opened the door wide open and am welcoming 20,000 strangers into my kitchen, but I think the feeling will pass soon enough…
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ETA:
Finally, here is the text of the article:
Digital diarist
Exploring life inside ‘the fishbowl’ with Westboro’s leading blogger
by James Hale
If you want to find a contemporary equivalent of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf – women writers who capture the social mores and manners of village life – you might want to look online rather than at a bookstore. Today’s literary diarists are blogging, and their observations of life around them are unfolding for all to read.
A case in point is 36-year-old mother-of-two Andrea Tomkins, whose keen impressions of Westboro are the central topic of her blog, ‘A Peek Inside The Fishbowl’ (www.quietfish.com/notebook).
A web developer, photographer and freelance writer who has lived in the neighbourhood since 1997, Tomkins writes unself-consciously about her love of new sheets, her urge to tell teenaged boys to hitch up their hip-hop jeans and her dislike of cell phones. She provides tips about great new stores in the neighbourhood and puts out calls for help for Thanksgiving supper recipes. One senses that she’s connecting with other young mothers as she muses about prom dresses and the awkwardness of bumping into ex-boyfriends.
A tall, animated graduate of Carleton University’s journalism program, she says that she occasionally pulls back from an unspoken line, and uses her journalistic background as a meter. “I’ve never been one to write about things that I wouldn’t say to a person’s face. I don’t think that’s fair. Even if I’m upset by something I have to sit back and say, ‘Would I say this to their face?’ The answer has to be ‘Yes’ to go ahead because my name’s attached to it.
“It’s like writing an article or a letter to the editor; putting your name on the blog gives it both a sense of authenticity and objectivity.”
The same isn’t true of those who write back, and she admits to being stung a couple of times by comments she has received. Some people took offence at a scene she painted of some middle-aged men ogling young girls at Westboro Beach, while someone else took her to task for teaching her daughters to drop messages-in-a-bottle off the Champlain Bridge. She chalks it up to the price you pay for life in the public eye.
Her blogging adventures began in 1999, as a way of sharing information about newborn daughter Emma’s early months. “I didn’t want to be one of those parents who was always foisting pictures of the new baby on unsuspecting friends, so I’d post photos of her on my website and write about things that she was doing, and suddenly people I didn’t know were commenting on photos of her or providing advice and encouragement. This started providing a much-needed creative outlet for me, and there was always something going on with her that I could write about.”
Surprisingly, she wasn’t someone who obsessed over a diary as a young girl. “I was never good at it. I tried, but I was never good at keeping it going. I was never into scrapbooking. I hate scrapbooking, which is weird because a blog is really just a digital scrapbook. I mean, I’ve got years and years of funny stories and anecdotes of things we’ve done as a family stored on there now.”
Unlike bloggers like Emily Gould – whose misadventures in exposing dark corners of her life on her blog ‘Emily Magazine’ landed her uncomfortably on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in May – Tomkins is wary about shining the light too brightly. “Would I want someone reading something truly sad or personal about my family? Sometimes it is just a case of too much information. There are some very successful bloggers who write about their lives warts and all, but I don’t know if I could do that or want to do that, because it does have an impact. It affects the way people view you, and – although it may be cathartic to write about – there’s a real chance you take by putting yourself out there like that.”
What she is enthusiastic about doing is revealing how her young family interacts with a neighbourhood that is increasingly teeming with activities geared to people her age. A board member of the nascent Westboro Community Association, she is passionate about issues like the flourishing of so-called ‘monster houses,’ and is joyfully moved to blog about a new sushi place or the arrival of Roots in Westboro.
“What has changed with blogging is my ability to get information in the whole Kitchissippi area. There are some really good local bloggers like Miss Vicky (Vicky Smallman) and Bob LeDrew. I think the blog is a great way of sharing information about the neighbourhood that mainstream media just doesn’t cover and it’s a great way to get information out and get information from other people. It’s a great grassroots way of sharing things about where you live.”
