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No, we don’t talk to each other any more

July 17th, 2005 · 2 Comments

Instead Ted and I just take pictures of each other…

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Okay, I’m being snarky. Snippy. Silly. Whatever. The image above came from our Wednesday night at the park where Ted had fun playing with someone else’s camera. I’ve decided to stop organizing such gatherings, since the exposure to other bloggers often only encourages Ted in his dangerous desire to purchase expensive photography equipment. [joke]

In the title of this post I’m responding to a response Ted received on his post responding to Marc Canter’s wondering on proper etiquette for blogging about one’s spouse being blogged. Marc noticed that Ted blogs about me. Ted replied that he blogs about me because I have a blog (I was hoping he’d say I was cute or hot or looking for links or something ;-)). Then Dave Warnock asked:

But please, how about just talking to each other, how about getting to know each other so that you know something about the other, how they think, how they are likely to react etc?

If nothing else at least it should provide a topic for conversation.



Ted and I do spend plenty of time talking. In fact, some nights I don’t have time to blog because we have spent the evening hanging out on the sofa together, talking. Blogs (and blogging) do provide topics for our conversation, but we can also think of other things to talk about that won’t ever appear in our public posts…;-)

I don’t refer to Ted’s blog that often but I do when I can, when it relates to a post I am writing, when he blogs about our family. Although I first considered blogging anonymously, I knew I would forfeit the opportunity to write about our life together. So we do link to each other. And yes, sometimes we do discuss whom is linking to whom and when (have you finished that post yet?!)

Speaking of marriage, this week I noticed this article in the Tokyo Times on Marriage Maintenance via Global Voices. A Japanese businessman, Katsuhiro Takada, successfully applied principles from business books to his marriage and now dispenses advice to others.

So what exactly did Takada glean from his business books? Well, the secret to a happy marriage can apparently be broken down into seven manageable points:

1. Listen to your wife attentively at least once a day without asking her to hurry up or get to the point.
2. Share the housework.
3. Do not forget to say “Thank you” and “You are kind.”
4. Never look down at your wife.
5. Do your work together with your wife if you are self-employed.
6. Do not fight. Listen to your wife patiently at first, even if you think she is completely wrong.
7. If there is something you really need or want to buy, persuade your wife daily so that she will come around to understanding why you want it.

[Hmmm, #7 seems particularly applicable to the photo above…] I don’t know if these seven points contain the entire realm of marriage advice but they are good principles to follow! If business book principles can be applied to marriage, then perhaps business blogging principles (such as those outlined by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble in chapters like this one) can be applied to blogging about one’s spouse…?!

By the way, returning to Marc’s blog, I can verify that he does try to bring a database of family photos with him when he travels. Our girls happened to stop by his seat at Gnomedex and picked up a couple postcards of Mimi and Lucy. One is sitting here by my computer…a picture of a girl looking at a monitor displaying a baby’s face. Here it is on my laptop…(oops, can’t figure out how to rotate this photo, it looks fine in iPhoto)

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I too want to say Hi to Lucy, and to Mimi and to Lisa...see you, Marc and Lisa, at Blogher!

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