Alison Garwood Jones

The scariest post to write

My best posts are usually the scariest to write. I’ve found that the more scared I am about the content, the more likely I am to connect with my readers because we all struggle with the same stuff. But there’s a fine line between tacky confessionals and honest storytelling. Maybe that’s the source of my fear: misrepresenting my emotions and experiences. Being tacky and flippant is easy. Being real is hard.

And it’s never easy writing about members of the opposite sex when you’re simultaneously trying to attract them.

The wackiest post

Shortly after I got my new iPhone.

The fluffiest post

I love talented illustrators.

The most ‘Wow, life is awesome ‘ post

Travel is like a “big bang” explosion of the heart and mind.

My most popular health post

Sleep deprivation is huge.

My most popular design post

Bruce Mau has a lot of followers.

My most misunderstood post

Looking through the feedback to my site in Google Analytics I discovered that people thought I was saying, “Feminism is bad” and “Feminism is wrong” (these are just two examples of  key word search terms typed in by readers). What I was really trying to say is that feminism is as flawed and occasionally misguided as every other form of human expression. It’s a work in progress.

And this post was my attempt to say that female empowerment is more tied to the spirit than the flesh. When Sheila Heti wrote in How a Person Should Be that “Every age has its art form. The nineteenth century was best for the novel, but today we live in an age of some really great blow job artists,” she captured something true about the tenor of our times.

The post with the most comments

Talking about my Mommy, as I liked to call Catherine G-J, was the easiest post I ever wrote. It didn’t require coming up with an idea. I just remembered. You may be wondering, how is your mother? “The same. Worse,” is how my family has taken to describing her when friends and family ask. Every time I visit my mum in hospital, she has sunk deeper into her wheelchair. This Christmas made me cry even harder. I can’t hold her hand anymore. They’re bonier than ever, and she has them locked together in a nervous knot. It would take a wrestler to pull them apart. With hands clasped, eyes looking skyward and her mouth wide open, you’d think she was praying or in some sort of religious ecstasy. Whoever said life is a wheel was right. We get on, go around and get off so someone else can take our place.