IT'S BEEN REAL.

About 20 years ago I wrote an occasional column for the Australian Jewish News. Do you know how long ago that was? It was so long ago, email wasn't invented. I did have a computer though, and a printer, so I would print out the hard copy and take it to the AJN office myself.
It was about the stuff that is now so common place, it's a total yawn, unless it's really, really well done. About life and things that happened and my philosophies and my family and my experiences as a mother and wife- a lot like this blog actually.
After a few years, a new editor came who knew not Joseph, and some of my hand-delivered columns just kind of disappeared. And I got the hint. I also was doing a bit of what I laughingly call 'stand-up'. Yes, it involved being funny in front of an audience with a microphone in my hand; but it was always for some sort of Jewish benefit or charity or something, and of course I never got paid or anything like that. And my children mock me when I say 'When I did stand-up yada yada' so I don't seriously think I really did stand-up comedy. Even though I was. Standing up. In front of an audience. With a mike. Being funny. I have no pretensions.
Anyway, it turned out that all the stuff I was writing to service this non-stand-up I was doing meant that I couldn't really publish any of it because then, everyone would know what I was going to say, and then they would be bored, and maybe heckle, and, I don't know, maybe I would have said something spontaneously angry, who knows, or worse, said something stupid and boring. So I didn't try to publish any of my possibly humorous observations of life.
And then, well, things happened in my life which I won't go into, and it was like suddenly my sense of humour just disappeared. Poof. There was nothing there. So it was a career that spanned but a few years. In the city of Melbourne. For the Jews, mainly. Lucky I was only an amateur, and that my real training is in Medicine, hey?

But right from the beginning, right from the first by-line in the AJN, I realized that I had made a colossal mistake. I had not published anonymously. I had not taken a nom-de-plume.
Because when you put anything out there, and you put your name to it, then everything you say is meticulously examined by everyone who knows you and every member of your extended family, and everyone has something to say about it. This is incredibly inhibiting to the creative spirit. It is like walking around while constantly looking over your shoulder; you can't see the path ahead. You live in a mild state of paranoia. You have to have the skin of a rhinoceros. And on top of everything, Melbourne is a shtetl, so that even people who don't know you know someone who might know you.
Once my name was out there, I represented my family, my kids, my shul, my kids' schools, Orthodox Jews, Orthodox women, etc etc etc and I had to watch every word that I wrote and said for fear of bringing it all into disrepute.
It's not just a matter of being thin-skinned; I'm not THAT delicate. It's like the superheroes' secret identity; the anonymity protects others. Who then have to bear the brunt of someone's reaction to something I said or wrote. And the other thing is that I have to live in this town. And the comments can be wearing.

SO. History is now repeating itself, as it will for those who have not learned the lessons of history. I did not publish this blog anonymously- though I don't know if I could have anyway- and here we go again. People getting upset. People getting offended. People basically projecting their own crap on what I write, and getting offended over that too. People making negative comments to my friends and family. And you know what? Screw it. Maybe Joan Rivers could deal with that, and more, times a million, but I can't, and I'm no Joan Rivers.

This is the 100th published post on my Doctor Booba blog, and right now I think it will be the last one.
So long from the Booba, nice knowing you, my faithful 17 followers. It looks like Melbourne hasn't grown much in the last 20 years.

I might write again if the demon possesses me, but for now, peace, out.