I’ve been thinking a lot about the “why” of this blog. Why do I keep writing it? Why, after long absences, do I come back here?
It’s not my first time trying to articulate my “why.” There have been many reasons why I’ve written over the years. In the beginning it was about working through the pain of my ectopic and the frustrations and fear of trying to get pregnant. Then it was about managing the insanity that is new motherhood (when none of my friends were going through the same). In those years I wrote my blog to be a part of something bigger that myself – the people I felt closest to were not in my physically proximity, but instead in my blogging community. I found meaning in my online space in a way I just don’t anymore.
That community is gone, it has been for a long time. I don’t really miss it anymore (it has taken me a lot of years to write that!) – and I’m not really looking to blog like I used to back then. For a while I wrote because I wanted to be a writer. I was writing and copy editing for a local mother’s group magazine and even taking some writing classes at Berkeley Extension. I started a blog under my real name so I could showcase my pieces (and my photos). But that didn’t last long. I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t LOVE the kind of writing that people might pay me for (a realization that helped me avoid asking myself the hard question of whether I could even write well enough for people to pay for my words).
As I let that dream die (it was peaceful, releasing), I started up this space because, well, I couldn’t imagine NOT writing. Stopping blogging altogether felt impossible then, I’m not so sure anymore.
Recently one of my friends found my blog. And then more recently some other friends learned of it. When they asked me what I wrote about and why, I struggled mightily to articulate my reasons. In the end all I could land on was, well I started for this reason and kept writing for these reasons and then… I just never stopped. That was the best explanation I could come up with.
“I just didn’t stop,” is not really a reason to be doing something. At least not if it isn’t bringing something tangibly positive to one’s life. I tell myself that this blog is a record, but when I returned to some early posts during the pandemic (to prove to my husband that we did NOT see my parents outside for Easter at the start of shelter-in-place!) I found nothing but matter-of-fact posts about what we could and couldn’t do and what we were were doing inside of those restrictions. There were no feelings mentioned, no emotions expressed, nothing messy written out to make sense of it. If I don’t use this space to work through the mental gymnastics of making sense of a pandemic, then what is this space even for?
These are questions I will need to answer, but I think maybe I already have. There are some posts I have banging around in my head, but I realize that I don’t write that anymore, honestly and without regard for people’s possible responses. Maybe I’ll write one of those and put it up and see how it feels. And even if it feels okay… I think maybe I just don’t have a lot of those posts to write anymore. I’m in a positive place in my life, and I have friends to talk stuff out with (which is amazing! I’ve wanted that my whole life and I finally have it!) Maybe my blog as outlived its usefulness.
Then again, maybe not.
Just wanted to pipe up that I rarely comment but I do always read and enjoy knowing what’s going on in your life since we are terrible at keeping in touch via text! I do miss blogging sometimes, but I’ve also moved on from most of those friendships at this point (a few of which sadly turned very toxic). It’s hard/odd to move on from something that was such a HUGE part of my life for years!
God, it was such a HUGE part of my life for so long, and during such a formative time. I don’t know what I would have done without my blog and that community. Love you friend! Thanks for checking in. 🙂
I for one do miss your blog! We used to follow each other, me under a different name. Since I stopped … OMG eight years ago with a couple random posts in the couple years after … I always continued checking in on you to keep that one sided relationship going 😉
I hope you and your family are all thriving and I wish you all the best!
Oh NO!! I just found your blog back in Jan 2020…And I love it! I have gone back (when I have had time, which lets face it, it very rare) and read past posts! I love your honesty! I really loved the post where you mentioned that you felt you had more responsibilities for the family than your husband and your husband mentioned he felt he did more. That was so relatable! That is what I go thru! I live on the Peninsula and am a working mom of a soon to be 10 year old so your posts can be so relatable. You are also a great writer…you blog posts draw me in. Please don’t stop. I have never commented before,
Thanks for commenting. It’s nice to hear that someone enjoys my writing. Sometimes it can feel like I’m talking into a void. 😉 But I read several blogs without commenting much (if at all) so I get it. I’m sure I’ll keep writing for a while.
I’ve really appreciated you writing during the pandemic, I had not found you before. I have not felt like many people in my real life have had similar experience last during the pandemic so hearing those voices on line has been really helpful.
Thanks. It’s good to hear my words were relatable and maybe even helpful. I appreciate knowing that.
Maybe some posts are fact recitals. But many others, not. And you occasionally create the opportunity for some deep discussions in the comment sections – with some healthy and sometimes heated disagreement, which is always interesting to read.
I would just say if you like it, do it. Even nothing more than simply publishing a post can be rewarding, no matter what it’s about. (If you feel that way!)
I like reading your posts that are more personal and, as someone else mentioned, especially the ones about issues in your relationship with your husband as I think many blogs avoid that particular subject. I will admit I skim over the more factual recounting of your doing this or that, but I still come to read anyway as I feel somewhat invested in you (one of those weird one-way relationships …) – and those posts likely have benefit to you either as a disciplinary writing exercise or, in the future, as you look back to recall daily life (or to settle disagreements about what actually took place, haha).
I would miss your blog if you stopped. Just don’t leave without an explanation though, if you do leave, that’s truly the worst!
Finally – a post on how you feel about IRL friends finding and reading your blog would be fascinating. There is nothing that would make me delete my own blog faster than someone I actually know coming across it!!
It feels like a lot of posts these days are fact recitals… and I’m not all that interested in those either! I think I write them because they are easier – they don’t require as much effort or thought. Sometimes I think there is nothing happening in my brain except a review of what we’ve been doing. Ugh. Boring.
It’s interesting the husband stuff is so popular. I guess it’s easier to write about your marriage when you write anonymously. 🤣 I could definitely write a post about that right now. Maybe tomorrow…
As far as my friends finding my blog… you may remember a lost (very important) friendship got entangled with said ex-friend reading my blog. The friendship ended because she stopped sharing important parts of her life with me, but she continued to read my blog long after I’d asked her to stop, which really felt like rubbing salt in the wound of our languishing friendship. I bet she still reads it today, even though we haven’t spoken in many, many years. Still makes me mad, if I’m honest with myself.
My current friend found my blog googling a very specific opinion about PTAs in SF, a specific opinion that we share, and she found a post I’d written where I shared that opinion and I put in too many specific details in sharing it so she figured out it was me. She was very nice about it, and I don’t think she went through and read anything else (there isn’t anything about her or our other friends I wouldn’t want them to see in here – I’ve made sure of that!), but I also didn’t ask her not to. The other friends (in our same friend group) just know about it, but don’t know the url. But yeah, when my friend sent me the link and asked me if I had written the post I freaked out. I have been so scarred by the experience with my ex best friend, I just don’t want people I know IRL reading my blog. Not at all. I’m lucky it only just happened the one time… (it being a person I know randomly finding my blog and realizing I wrote it).
You are not talking into a void (though I understand why it might feel like that sometimes).I have enjoyed following your posts over may years and would miss your updates.As I am in the UK and I enjoy hearing about the US experience of things (especially the pandemic in recent times) it’s another slant on things we all experience no matter where we live. Thank you for spending the time you do writing and updating.
Even if it didn’t feel (sometimes) like I am talking in a void, a blog can outlive it’s usefulness. But it does help to know people are reading. I mean that is part of why people (including me!) write. It’s an odd practice in any event (writing a personal diary but putting it out there for strangers to read) and I guess I just have to figure out why I want to keep doing it (if I do).
it is after 2 in the morning. Not a good night so I turned to you, again.
You ground me in reality. The posts that you talk of as ‘factual’ connect me to family life and the frustrations and demands involved, helping me remember perspective. I remember single parenting two children, surviving and flourishing. You keep me doing routine life, remind me of the beauty around me, give me hope, widen knowledge. These gifts of help to strangers is not a reason for you to keep writing. If it does not help/sustain/support you, if it exposes you or/and your family in ways that are not comfortable ~ that is not a good thing. I hope, selfishly, you stay and keep writing. But if not, please say goodby and let us know rather than ghosting away. Thank you.
Of course I will say goodbye! I would never, EVER ghost you guys. I believe I wrote a post about how messed up I thought that was, and a lot of people commented on that post saying I was being too harsh and that I should show people more grace. So if I just stopped writing here without formally announcing I was walking away, I would be the biggest hypocrite. And there is nothing I hate more than a hypocrite.
I think it can become unhealthy to focus on “raw, honest” and negative in any public persona. I think people who do that at some point start having the tail wag the dog. If life is mostly positive, it is healthy to embrace that. A negative post is sometimes just as dishonest as a positive one despite all the praise for honesty and bravery it garners.
Plus raw and dysfunctionally negative is sooooo 10 years ago—I read some article a few years ago about the decline of day drinking mommy blogs and thought that was a good thing.
I don’t think there are only two sides to the blogging coin – factual recitals or “raw, honest” and negative. Plenty of people write interesting, insightful posts that fall elsewhere on the spectrum. I just think that those posts take more effort and mental engagement, at least for me. Life is good these days! So I don’t need this blog to vent or process as much as I used to. I could still come here to write in other ways that feel meaningful, I just have to decide if that is my why.
I find it so interesting you went right for “raw, honest” (and then added negative) when I didn’t really mention any of that (maybe “emotions” and “messy” means “raw, honest and negative to you?). I also find it really interesting that you still read my blog even though you don’t seem to like me (or what I have to say) much, and even have declared me a public danger on occasion. I guess we all blog, and read other’s blogs, for strange reasons that we can’t always articulate.
I can go elsewhere! Didn’t realize this one would hit a nerve!
I mean I react negatively to self-destructive repetitive behavior (and glorification thereof) and you haven’t been that lately and this post seems to be saying that without that you think your posts are boring?
I will get out of your life from now on! You need never worry about me again.
I don’t worry about you, I’m just surprised you still read me. You have written about how much you dislike so many things about me over the years and how you aren’t going to read blogs that do {specific thing I did that you do not like} and then you’re always (eventually) back. And one of those times was just six months ago (when I was deemed a danger to society)! But I read the blogs of people I don’t particularly like so I get it. I guess I just thought you were better at staying away from things that didn’t serve you than I am.
And yes I’m saying my recent posts have felt boring. But I don’t think that means I have to go back to “everything is shit and despair.” I just think that writing interesting posts is hard. I don’t necessarily write “everything is shit and despair” posts because I think they are interesting. I write them because writing them helps me process the shit and despair. When I’m not needing to process as much, a good post is more commentary or insight and those are harder (at least for me) that factual recitals. I guess I thought it was interesting you assumed I’d go there, but upon further reflection that has been the tenor of this blog do a long time so it’s probably fair.
I think I found your blog through another infertility blog. I had just discovered infertility blogs. You may have commented on Keiko and then I clicked on your blog? I’m not sure. It was right around when you found out you were pregnant with your son and I found out I was pregnant about three weeks later. I think I then went back and read your posts about secondary infertility and then followed you to the new space. I read a handful of other infertility blogs but since I got pregnant soon after I found them I never dove in to that world. I remember there was one really beautiful one by a woman in her mid to late 30s whose husband wanted to separate after a few years of trying to conceive and I felt so sad for her. I still think about her and wonder how she’s doing. Does she ring a bell? I also like how you write honestly about marriage and I do think I agree with you a lot. I will miss your blog if you decide to stop writing but I understand why you may want to. For awhile you had a good blog friend who would comment on your posts. Did she disappear?
I’ve had quite a few good blog friends over the years. One became a friend IRL, and we became very close, but then she decided I was a horrible friend and cut me off entirely. Maybe you mean her? But I’ve had other friends that commented a lot but have stopped. I’m not a great commenter myself anymore – so many sites eat my comments on my phone and if I forget to copy them before I try to publish them I don’t have time to rewrite them.
I was just thinking if Keiko the other day. I looked through my Feedly ALI blog list and was trying to remember the woman behind each title. Some I could remember easily but others didn’t ring a bell. There are 150 titles in my ALI Feedly list and maybe 7 still post (some only very occasionally). There aren’t a lot of us from that blogging time still left.
It must have been her because you were definitely friends IRL. My fertility clinic had a blog which mentioned Keiko which is how I wound up learning about her and then everyone else! At that point she was already pregnant.
Did you read Big Friendship? It’s a pretty enjoyable book and you might like it. They talk briefly about Google reader and how it enabled all of these blogging friendships when it was popular. I thought you may be able to relate to that.
Hey now, I’m an old ALI blog friend turned IRL friend & still comment from time to time. 🙂 Just looked at my blog and realized I haven’t posted in 2 years though. I really do miss it!
I’ve been following since your blog before this one so… at least 8 years? You feel like an old friend at this point. Your kids are a few years older than mine but our lives have many similarities. I appreciate how you always keep it real – I get more truth from you than I do many of my IRL friends. I would definitely miss hearing from you if you ever stopped blogging.