Wandering Scribe Blog

THE WOMAN

A homeless woman has been blogging about her life, living in her car in the UK at http://wanderingscribe.blogspot.com/ .

She has a law degree and writes about how she has tried to maintain her dignity while being homeless, making sure she showers when she can and dressing well in spite of her circumstances. She writes matter of factly and honestly. And there are moments of triumph and beauty to relieve the relentless struggle.

THE NEWS STORY

Her blog has been picked up by thousands of readers and also by the media - see an interview with the BBC at   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4923488.stm

THE BOOK DEAL

She now has a book deal and I am sure many of her readers, like me, hope that this will be a positive step in getting her out of her desperate situation.

THE AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

What has been curious has been the hundreds of comments by her readers, some of them apparently quite abusive, after the BBC told the world about her story. People criticized her for inconsistencies in her posts and passed judgement on her decisions - then more people rose to her defence and the comments section became a forum for heated debate between her defenders and her critics. And while she is struggling with her own tough circumstances, she has had to play arbiter and sort out their squabbles and deal with their judgements!

At the end of the day, she is just someone who has found herself in a dire place by a combination of error, bad choices or judgements and bad luck. She has weaknesses and uncertainties as well as courage and strengh - just like anyone else. She is alone in her car with no immediate support network of friends or partner or family that most of us rely on to help us through the tough times and to talk through decisions we make. She started the blog for herself, writing it in public libraries, and perhaps to reach out to others in her isolation.

Now, it is as if these readers who came to her via the BBC news story see her life and blog like just another reality TV show where they can give/ deduct points for her actions on some virtual scoreboard or vote her in or out of the game by calling/ writing in to her "show".

THE MONEY THING

One of her readers suggested she could ask for donations by readers via PayPal the online payment system. After some debate with herself, she decided to put a PayPal button on her blog. This seems to have been the trigger for all the ugly debate.

A lot of ordinary people (ie those with homes and lives like you and me) in America, Australia and elsewhere have blogs where they have a PayPal button. Readers are not forced to pay but if you like the blog and want to support the blogger, it’s up to you when and how much you drop in this virtual "tip jar". Not unlike dropping pennies into a busker’s hat. But some people felt that she was exploiting the news story about her plight to make a quick buck.

Um, hello? It’s OK for people to choose to go and make a public spectacle of themselves on reality TV and become celebrities and then make thousands, if not millions, in TV gigs and book deals but she’s judged for asking for a few pennies? It’s OK for writers to write books and be paid for it but it’s not OK for a homeless blogger to ask for voluntary donations? It’s OK for people with "hard luck" stories to earn huge sums for their memoirs so long as it’s in book form and it all happened in the past but it’s not OK for someone going through the tough time right now to ask for voluntary contributions to a live blog?

My take on it is: good on her for spotting a good business opportunity. That’s what we all do in our daily lives, isn’t it? Go for a better job, make that deal, switch to a cheaper mortgage, hunt out the best prices. That’s all about having more money left in our pockets and comes from the same instinct of survival.

It’s easy for us all to judge and pontificate - even as I am doing this now on my blog - while we have a home and live our own lives and read her blog out of curiosity, voyeurism, sympathy or whatever. Give the girl a break. She has to live her own life and work out the best thing to do for herself - just like we have to do for our own lives - notwithstanding the whole world putting in their tuppence worth (pun intended).

pic from flickr by b.e.n.; non commercial use only, no derivations