When I created my first site, it was because someone said I should sell my crafts. Then, I blogged when I was active in the sewing community. I posted other non-sewing things to a tech blog. But I am all of those things, and none. I am a person with words too cooped up in my brain, needing spaces to expel the contents. But are those contents things other people want to read? Does it matter?
It’s easy to get caught up in the expected façade of being “a blogger” instead of just using a blog to write your thoughts.
Was the thing I made good enough to post? Was this recipe I tried or edited something I wanted to share? Does anyone want to know what I thought about a movie or a book or the weather?
WHO. CARES.
I work for basically THE blogging company, I should probably do the thing.
But what if no one reads it? Who cares.
Is an audience even the point of blogging? I guess that’s a discussion for another day.
Why am I doing this today? Well, I have a lot going on in my life, a lot of thoughts in my head, and not a lot of people in my physical world to yell them at. It seemed like the thing to start on a Sunday night at 11 pm?
Why else? I’ve recently finished Geraldine DeRuiter‘s If You Can’t Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury, which was a book I didn’t know I needed. If you don’t know Geraldine DeRuiter, you should. Not sure what prompted me to follow her once on Twitter years ago, but her wit is what led me to refollow her on other platforms (now that Twitter is a shitshow) and recently to buy her book. It’s a book about food, feminism, blogging, travel, love, life, loss, and a million other things. It hit me at the right time when I’m going through some big life things, and somehow just another person exclaiming their exciting and mundane and in-between life experiences was… cathartic? Like listening to stories from an old friend? It was altogether unexpected and a read I recommend.
A section of the book goes into a well-known review of a cinnamon roll recipe, and everything about the chapter is hilarious and horrifying and what happens when women exist on the internet. But among the crumbs is an interesting detail about the world of blogging when one is just putting themselves and their words into the ether and not knowing what will happen next. Some posts are spilling your brain guts onto the page and no one cares. Others are viral sensations or encourage death threats. (If you’re a woman on the internet, there are probably death threats.)
Among the million other thoughts I had (hello, ADHD) while reading this chapter, why didn’t I put content on the internet on my blog? Is the internet so precious that it can’t take some 11:38pm ramblings? (OK, yes, some of the internet is that precious and triggered.) In this year, I’ve done a lot of things to change my outlook on how things are happening in my life – I’ve accepted I’m in perimenopause and started taking hormone replacement, I’ve accepted that along with my ADHD I have some anxiety and depression that’s better controlled by medication, I’ve accepted that I have things to talk through and see a therapist. There is more, but this is what I’m comfortable with the ether hearing for now. I feel more self-assured than I can recall in my entire life. Yeah, there’s still a crapton of doubt and imposter syndrome feelings, but I’m working on it. And so, who cares if I ramble imperfectly on a website that has my name? No one. I can be imperfect. No one has the right to demand that I be perfect, even me.
I have more thoughts about the book that I don’t have 11:54pm brain to explain. I resonated immensely with a chapter on a friend of the past, reflecting on my past best friend and how that friendship ended and the loss it brought. But this isn’t a book review. I can’t do book reviews, I’ve just gotten back into reading this year now that my kids are old and I am medicated. Reading was hard when kids were small and also I couldn’t focus on a page. I don’t expect to blog about books, but who knows? (I’m currently on The Ministry of Time because Barack Obama and Wil Wheaton both said it was good. It is.)
I’m no Carrie Bradshaw (wait, is she blogging?) or even that Dog with a blog (that’s the best other example you can think of brain, really?), so I have no idea what’s happening here. Maybe I’ll make it a task in the Finch app to trick gamify myself into this.
To sum up: Life exists and is messy whether it is blogged about or not, so probably I should just blog. And you should just blog. Also, if you have no local friends you can go out to a wine bar with and gossip, you might need to blog. That one might just be me.
