JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

note: I wrote this piece on Saturday but by the time I was able to publish it, it was Sunday….

I am amazed and grateful. It’s not every week that I lead a session at a blogging conference. And it’s not every week I appear on the front page of the county newspaper The Sun and it’s local version, The Bainbridge Islander.

This morning, after dropping Ted off for an early boat, the girls and I stopped by the newspaper stand to buy a few copies of The Sun. The bottom of the front page features an article titled Caught in the Web
New Therapy: Turn online, tune in blog out. The piece quotes Janelle of OrangeZen and me, and includes a list of bloggers in our county.

A front page picture of me sitting with my lap top at my desk is titled Julie Leung of Bainbridge Island always finds time to blog.True!…just (don’t) check the time stamp on my posts… Intrigued, the girls wanted to read it right away, even while sitting in the van in their pajamas.

A slightly different version, including a second picture of me with the girls in the background, and a longer list of local bloggers appears on The Sun’s site.

Then this afternoon I discovered my face smiling back at me from The Bainbridge Islander, a local publication of The Sun delivered to mailboxes free each week. This version of the article titled The Blog hits Bainbridge concentrates on islanders, quoting Philippe Boucher and me, with a list of others. Also a picture of my beloved in his office appears in this one.

The inside title reads: Islanders grab hold of the Blog The increasing popularity of online journals make living on an island a little less isolating. I think this is true although the “grab hold” sounds a bit like football rather than blogging to me…

Here I am grabbing hold of The Bainbridge Islander…

photographer: daughter Abigail

Thanks to Jim Thomsen for his work on all these pieces. A few weeks ago, he came over to our home and spent part of an afternoon with Ted and me, but at the time I had no idea that the piece would be published in The (county-wide) Sun also, or during this week after BloggerCon. I’m grateful that the Islander and The Sun provided prominent space to promote blogging in our community. I appreciate the support and the exposure to a large local audience. I hope that the piece encourages people on the island and in Kitsap to begin blogging.

Being interviewed for the paper was a good experience for me. It’s always interesting to see myself reflected in the mirrors others hold up to me. That’s what happens in blogging. And it happened in this piece too. I may not agree with everything Jim wrote from his perspective. But it is good for me to see what I look like from his reporter eyes.

There are a few minor factual errors including our career histories. For example, Ted is now employed by Open Source Applications Foundation where he started working one year ago. And by the time I had Abigail, I had changed courses from medical research and started to pursue a path in nonprofit management. Perhaps I failed to explain well our histories to Jim. Maybe too I don’t write as clearly on my blog as I think I do.

But in general it is a great piece, positive and warm, integrating pieces of my story into the local community and the larger community of bloggers. The articles all mention the political as well as the personal aspects of blogging. I prefer the Islander version since it is longer and more thorough. But The Sun version includes some great quotes from Janelle on the therapeutic aspect of blogging. Also a quote from Ted on the “stupid and simple” technology. While the Bainbridge version reveals what Philippe Boucher believes is the future. Both describe the variety of my posts and how I am revealing slices of our life, whether it be marriage or meditation, on-line through the blog.

I’m grateful for Jim’s interest in blogging and his desire to write an article that would draw attention to local bloggers. I’m glad he took careful notes and great photographs of our family.

Through this experience I’ve also developed a relationship with Jim. This afternoon I emailed him about my reactions to the article and he replied. It was good to discuss it together. I would recommend that anyone who is the subject of a media piece should do the same. I’m glad we’ve gotten to know each other through the process and I hope we can keep in touch.

I smiled this week to read Betsy’s experience with the Swedish tv crew, Dave’s posing for Newsweek photographer while blogging in a coffee shop and Adam and Dave’s interaction with the BBC. I also found it funny to try to act as if no one were taking my picture. As I joked with Jim “I didn’t go to modeling school” and I feel silly posing and blogging (seems contradictory). My laptop, incidentally, does not accommodate modelling well, since it has neither battery nor wireless card…it is not very mobile…don’t look too close at the pictures..:-) They are great pictures though…

Much has been made of the tension between bloggers and journalists. I don’t want to delve into the debate but I will say that it was an educational experience to be a blogger and the subject of a newspaper piece. Also to see that piece change in different publications based on the constraints and interests. I feel I have a greater understanding of the debate.

In addition to building a relationship with a reporter, I think that this piece will also help build relationships between bloggers. Already Chip Gibbons, Mick Horan and Chris Holmes have commented on the article, linkng to me and others. (Chip posted the witty comment:Now she can subtitle her blog, “The Writings of a Woman, Wife, Mother, Pacific Northwest Native, Beginning Gardener, Former Microbiologist, and Cover Girl.”). I was grateful to discover some bloggers I didn’t know on the lists and I hope that we can all build community together.

Here’s a combined list from both the Sun piece and the Bainbridge Islander one:

The Bremerton Speakers Corner (Mick Horan)
Jenny On the Spot (Jenny Ingram)
Orange Zen (Janelle Hill)
Sports and Bremertonians (David Schmitz and Jeremy Muck)

Bainbridge Blogs

Busking the Cost (Chris Holmes)
Winslow Tomorrow: The Community Blog (Philippe Boucher)
Voice of Bainbridge: The Blog (Philippe Boucher)
Bill Knobloch: The Blog (Philippe Boucher and Bill Knobloch)
The Binary Circumstance (Chip Gibbons)
Ted Leung on the Air (Ted Leung)
Green Glass Turtles (Abigail and Michaela Leung)
Mixerguy’s Blog (Christian Heilman)
Real Lawyers Have Blogs(Kevin O’Keefe)

Thanks to Jim and The Sun for printing the lists.

As far as the article’s effect on our family…daughter Abigail this afternoon wanted me to take pictures of her posing with her toy laptop….

Thanks again, Jim. And thanks to everyone who stopped by here after reading his piece…please introduce yourselves…