JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Yesterday Anita Rowland mentioned my review of Exploring the Matrix and then she commented on what it is like to read both Ted and me.

I get an interesting perspective by reading both Julie’s weblog and that of her husband Ted Leung (mostly tech with a few personal posts). I wonder what impressions folks get if they read both me and Jack?

For a while now I’ve been reading Anita’s LOL site but I haven’t been reading her husband Jack’s at Slashdot. After taking a peek, I think I’ll be back for more – this lutefisk post made me laugh!

The only other both-blogging couple I read are our friends Enoch and Tania. Like Ted and me, their blogs are different from each other. Tania’s scribbles are filled with poetry and passion. Enoch in his medmusings writes not only about being a physician but also about being a husband, father, foodie and singer. Enoch and Tania were friends of ours in college, but we lost touch with them for many years. It’s been great to get to catch up on each other’s lives and learn more about each other’s families through our blogs. And it’s made us wish we lived closer together!

Ted once posted about this couple, Troy and Gay , Puget Sound islanders like us. I like their two column style. But I can’t imagine it working well for Ted and me: seems better suited to interactive debate or dialogue, which he and I don’t often do.

Yeah, we’re pretty different in our blogs. More on that below. But to follow up with Anita’s question – anyone else out there reading both our blogs? If so, what do you think? I wonder too what kind of picture we paint together, what perspective is presented to the outside.

Reading the blogs from both sides of the marriage too, I think, would reveal at least a little of what it was that brought the two people together, how they fell in love, what they like about each other. To me, that’s part of the fun of reading the two perspectives!

Anita’s post also brought to mind the question: what is it like to have two bloggers in the family? This reminded me of some posts I read in October, one on Lisa William’s site:
Your weblog and your family, Part II: Do you get new information about your family by reading their weblogs, or not? which I found via Enoch’s post .

Like Lisa, “I actually learn things all the time from my Dear Husband’s blog.”
For example, yesterday, I learned Ted had gotten a new job
Seriously, Ted’s “mostly tech” blog teaches me about his world. Reading it helps me understand more about Open Source, Apache, XML and other passions. I won’t claim to understand everything, but it helps me feel more familiar with the territory, and to know more about what he’s discussing, thinking and dreaming. Unlike Lisa, though, I don’t think I can find out what my husband wants for Christmas from his blog.

Ted has told me that he likes reading my blog too. I think sometimes what I write is new to him, but sometimes it is simply my perspective on something we experienced as a family. Most of the time our blogs are quite different. I write poetry. He writes python. I write about children. He writes about Chandler. But once in a while we serendipitiously or intentionally blog about the same topics – anything from nonprofits/foundations to the Matrix (look here tomorrow!). For example on Sunday we each described our family’s adventures at the ice rink: Ted as skater, me as mom/observer. And yesterday we wrote about Ted’s new position at OSAF: his announcement and my two bits of perspective about it.

I think blogging has been good for our marriage. I can see, should one get consumed by it, that it could be counterproductive and competitive for the relationship. But for us, as we sit for a little while each night, as we each are doing right now, separated by a wall in our house, me at my kitchen desk and Ted in his office, hearing each other type away on keyboards, we are communicating and sharing. Then we often like to show each other what we posted. Ted of course has helped me a lot with my blog and we’ve had fun talking and working on them together. It’s something we do separately as individuals with our own opinions and perspectives, but it is also something we do as a couple. Blogging goes into the category of ice skating, guitar, photography and other interests we are beginning to share with each other as husband and wife, building more in our marriage.