Category — Blogoversary

It is my blogoversary.  For seven years, I have shown up in this space.  I write pretty much daily.  I post about 5 times per week; sometimes more.  I leave about a quarter of my posts in draft; completed but unpublished.  There is no rhyme or reason to what I choose to post vs. what I choose to leave in draft forever.

I’ve seen blogging change a lot.  When I started, blogs were like little lights flickering from mountain top to mountain top, sending a signal across the land.  Now there are millions… billions?… of blogs.  Seven years ago, the blog was it, the end all and be all, the place you could find me.  Now, we’re expected to spread ourselves thinly across multiple platforms, keeping up with dozens of social media sites.  Or we’re encouraged to drop the blog and go ephemeral — throwing our thoughts into the fast-moving rivers of Twitter or Facebook instead of chiseling the words into slow-moving, semi-permanent blog posts.

Over the last seven years, I’ve seen memes come and go, trends take off and fizzle.  I’ve seen the blog be declared dead more times than I can count.

Which brings us to the most important piece of advice I have to give at this point:

Wait.

If you love blogging, if you get what you need simply from putting words on a screen, tune out the “experts” who tell you that you need to do this or that to be “successful.”  What does that even mean anyway?  Why measure yourself by someone else’s definition of a successful blogger?  Those blogging talking heads aren’t Merriam-Webster.  They do not get to define what makes or breaks a blogger.

YOU get to decide that.  We all individually get to decide that.

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Every few months, a new trend is floated into the blogosphere.  If you want to have a successful blog, you have to go visual!  You have to have images!  You have to be pinnable!  No… wait… to have a successful blog, you have to be on Twitter!  You have to have a lot of followers!  No… wait… to have a successful blog, you need to make your blog look like every single other space out there, so it doesn’t reflect your personality at all and instead drops you neatly into a single niche that you can present yourself in as an expert.

When all those ideas are floated by me, I nod.  And then I wait.  Because those speakers are anxious to make something happen, to make something go viral or find the next big thing.  And I’m happy to just be trucking along, putting words on a screen.  I get everything I need to get out of blogging; I don’t need to change this space or the way I write.  I like where I put my words.  I like the speed in which they come as well as how long they stick around for readers to find them.

The reality is that if you keep chasing all the things you’re supposed to do with your blog it will cease to be YOUR space in the same way that if you spend your life trying to be like someone else, you will miss you on being you.  I didn’t really get that when my parents would tell me that when I was a kid, and I was moaning that I wasn’t like this person or that person.  But I get it now.

So if Twitter is your thing, go do Twitter.  And if Facebook is your thing, go spend time on Facebook.  If you’re a big fan of hangouts, Google+ is for you.  Images make you happy?  Then there is Pinterest or Instagram.

But I like blogs.  I like reading them, and I like writing one.  So this is what I’m going to do, year after year after year, plodding along with the same thing and waiting when people tell me about the next big thing I need to do in order to be successful since it always changes anyway.

Thank you for being here for seven years.  Some of you have been here since the beginning.  Some of you have found this space quite recently.  And I’m grateful for each and every one of you who pick up my words, consider them, and share your own.

Six, with massive apologies to A.A.Milne

When it was one,
My blog had just begun.
When it was two,
Each topic was still quite new.
When it was three
It was hardly just about me.
When it was four,
It was not much more.
When it was five,
It felt barely alive.
But my blog is now six,
(though it’s rarely that clever,)
I think I’ll keep writing for ever and ever.

My blog turned six today.  Six years ago, I lay on the sofa and allowed Josh to set the whole thing up.  At the time, he said that he was going to write it with me.  But I don’t think there has ever been a post by Josh on here.

There are over 2000 posts.  I write pretty much every single day.  I post about 90% of what I write.  I write when I don’t have any time to write.  I construct the post in my head while I’m showering, and then I quickly scrawl it out in moments throughout the day.  I’ll write a paragraph and then need to leave to do something.  And then I’ll email myself two sentences from the yoga mat before I turn off my phone.  And finally, I’ll finish off the post and leave it for a few hours to marinate.  Sometimes I’ll think of something to add in the middle of the night (it takes me a long time to fall asleep), and I’ll add that before hitting publish in the morning.

I go through stages where I need this space like water, and other times when I can take it or leave it, and other times still when I don’t want it at all.  In the past, I’ve thought about walking away from it, creating a ghost blog, more than I’ve thought about hitting delete.  This is a post about why I haven’t, and why I don’t really even think that anymore.

Writing here every day used to feel like something. I. had. to. do.  Like weeding a garden.  You can’t expect to have a garden if you’re not going to maintain it, and you can’t expect to have your blog read if you’re not going to maintain it.  When I thought like that, I sometimes went through periods of stress where I scrambled to think of what to write.  Or I’d be going somewhere and I felt like I needed to post something really good to carry the blog until I got back (and if I couldn’t write something amazing, became stressed about that).  I spent a lot of time feeling like my space owned me more than I owned my space, which I think is true of some houses as well.  There are some houses that seem to own the owners, that are constantly intruding on the owner’s personal time and causing the owners undo stress.  This blog at times was like that sort of house instead of being a harbour, a cozy space where I could curl up and talk.

At some point, I don’t even remember when, I stopped the constant tugging at my blog and owned it instead of allowing it to own me.  When I sit down to write, it is with a different mentality.  I remind my blog that it is here for me, that I own it and not the other way around.  It is a place I like to visit, that makes me happy.  It’s a place where I can have a conversation.  Where I can have my say.

Actually, I think I know when it changed.

My friend’s father, before he died, used to get coffee every morning with a bunch of other men at this water ice store near his home.  We went to the same water ice store at night sometimes with the kids, so I could totally picture the scene as he described it.  The men would come every morning to get coffee that they could have brewed at home; nothing special — just hot coffee from a press thermos served in styrofoam cups.  And they’d sit at the table and talk for a while before they all went off in different directions to start their day.  They called their group something like the Coffee Club.

I loved the idea of that coffee group and wished I had something like it.  I’m sure sometimes it was stressful to get there in time, and sometimes he probably had other things he wanted to do more but felt the social pressure to show up, and sometimes he was sick and missed his group.  It wasn’t perfect, after all, it was reality.  Reality is messy.  It’s hard and wonderful and it’s a timesuck and a harbour.  I don’t know if the group still meets now that he’s gone; I can’t imagine that if they do, it’s the same without him.

After he died a few years ago, I stopped allowing this space to own me and I started to see it as such a gift, a place to have a cup of coffee and talk in the morning.  Or, it was more accurately an ever-shifting coffee club that could be formed whenever I needed it to form.  I usually prefer it in the morning as a way to start off my day (I probably publish at least 75% of posts in the morning).  It’s this touchstone before I set off in a multitude of directions.

It’s never wasted time, it’s rarely stressful time.  There are times when the blogosphere affects my mood — how could it not? — but the drawbacks are infrequent and the company is warm and engaging.  You all make think.  You push me sometimes to look at why I think something or why I do something.  Sometimes you change my mind.  Sometimes you make me dig my heels in harder.  You are my coffee club.

So I will keep writing here.

Sometimes I need this space — as I said — like I need water.  But more accurately, I need it like I need a vitamin.  Sometimes I don’t really need a vitamin at all depending on what I eat, and sometimes I need it very much, but I always take it nonetheless because I believe that it might stave off problems in the future.  I write something every day because it exercises my brain.  Because it makes me look at myself and really see myself.  Because I may catch a problem within myself while it’s still small and easily fixable.  I write here because humans need a coffee club.  We need to connect and be with one another.  We need to know that if we slip away, we’ll be missed.

Thank you, for six wonderful years, for being my coffee club.

Josh left this fantastic comment on the blogoversary post which a lot of people commented about.  Yes, my husband reads my blog.  Every once in a while, he comments.  Sometimes he will bring up a post over dinner.  But most of the time, it’s just this small comfort to know that he is quietly out there, noting my words, and we don’t need to talk about it.

I know some people keep their blog from their partner because it’s their space, a private swatch of the Internet where they can place their thoughts.  But I have such oral diarrhea about my feelings that I feel the opposite — I wouldn’t want to write this space if Josh wasn’t reading it.  He is the one who told me to start it, so really, if you want to thank someone for this space, it should be him.

What people didn’t know when they read that comment is that it came on a day when he was running around like crazy to get a gala into place.  It took an incredible amount of work on top of his normal job, and he was stretched thin.

At the gala that night, they brought him and another man onto stage to thank them for their work on the evening.  I was speaking to the mother of the other man during the cocktail hour and she said, “did your heart explode when they brought Josh onto the stage to thank him?  Because my heart was out to here seeing my son up there.”

And the only thing I could say is that my heart explodes every time I see Josh.  Period.

It explodes when I see him being honoured on stage, and it explodes when he’s washing the dishes.  It especially explodes when he takes all the night wakings from the kids so I can sleep.  It explodes when he’s trying on t-shirts at Old Navy and it explodes when he’s telling me about something he heard on NPR and it explodes when he’s patiently pausing Battlestar Gallactica and explaining something to me for the thirtieth time.  And yes, of course it explodes when he accomplishes something amazing like having his play performed on stages around the world or when he’s asked to present at a conference.  But my heart explodes.  Period.

The best way I can explain Josh is using this idea that a friend told me about the medication he takes.  My understanding based on piecing together snippets of explanation is that when he isn’t on it, he feels like there is this enormous chasm in his brain, this dark blot that holds his attention more than the outside world.  It has a pull, and that pull makes him focus on it instead of relationships or tasks at hand.  It makes him anxious and depressed because he is well aware that there is life outside the blot, but he can’t drag his attention away from that dark hole.

The medication literally plugs that hole, is the missing puzzle piece that slips into place, effectively covering up the dark blot.  With the medication in place, he can be this completely different person, one who can look in multiple directions and pay attention to details.

Perhaps that isn’t the most romantic way to describe my husband, but it is the most honest way.  I feel like most of us are born with this missing piece inside of us, and either we find that completion or we don’t.  Perhaps the luckiest ones are born without that need for companionship, but I also count myself amongst the lucky because I have found my missing piece, that person who slips quietly into my brain, plugging the dark blots of life so I can concentrate on being my best self.

I knew from the first date with Josh that he was the equivalent of what this medication was for my friend because I literally felt like a different person talking with him.  I felt like a better version of myself.  I felt like even though it was night time and winter, it was somehow sunnier.  I just felt better, even though, if you had asked me before I walked downstairs to get into his car, I would have said that I felt fine.

Because I did feel fine before Josh.  I just feel better now with Josh.  Just as there were people in my life who I could have married and made a life with and they would have been fine.  They would have been a decent fit.  But Josh is a perfect fit and therefore, in finding that completion I feel better than fine.

This particular fish needs a bicycle.

So thank you Josh, for reading, for commenting, for being you.

This is the second part of a two-part blog post.  As I said before, one post simply grew too long to contain everything I wanted to say.  The first part can be found here (containing Takes One, Two, and Three).

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Take Four:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  The twins were still babies.  I was so confident that we’d have another child.  I didn’t know how we’d pay the bills.  I wanted to be a writer, but the only thing I thought I knew how to do is be a teacher.  I had a small circle of friends.

The twins are turning seven this summer.  We don’t have that third child and I don’t know if we ever will.  I’m able to work out of the house and be a full-time parent.  I have two books published.  I miss teaching from time to time, but it doesn’t feel like the only thing I could do with myself.  I know people around the world and my friendship circles are like rings, many deep.

There is a saying in DC that if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.

(Yes, I’m aware that other cities also have this saying, but it actually originated in The Washington Post on March 4, 1934.  So there.)

The same can be said about life.  Whether or not you like the figurative weather, it’s going to change.  That can be bittersweet when life is good.  And it can be a huge relief when things are bad.  It will not always be like this.

The same can be said about blogs, which is why I rarely unsubscribe from reading one.  Even if I don’t like the post I’m reading today, I may like the one the person writes tomorrow.  Chances are, if I took the time in the first place to subscribe to the blog, that more interesting things will percolate to the screen at some point in the future.

The same can be said about writing a blog — the stats of today, the comments of today, the readership of today — it will all be different tomorrow.  That can be a bad thing if you’re enjoying a creative period and the posts are flowing.  The readers are coming and the comments are being left.  Because that will dry up, sad to say.  It won’t dry up entirely, but we all have our good blogging days and our bad ones.

But it can also be a good thing if your blog or your readership or your comment levels aren’t where you want them to be today.  There is always the chance for a change in the future.

That is what makes life — and writing — interesting.

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Take Five:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  Every year on my blogoversary, I give myself a word to concentrate on for the year.

Year One (which ended up describing my first year of blogging): Connections
Year Two (set on my first blogoversary): Action
Year Three (set on my second blogoversary): Listening
Year Four (set on my third blogoversary): Tune
Year Five (set on my fourth blogoversary): Own

This year, I thought the word would have something to do with the Prompt-ly list since it is absolutely the project I’m concentrating on this year.

But I had to write a letter this week to someone who means a great deal to me to explain why she means a great deal to me.  I had to take this very emotional thing — love — and put it into words.

In trying to pinpoint it, the best way I could explain why she means a great deal to me is that she recognizes that the world is inadvertently a cold place.  That while we may do caring acts from time to time — helping an old lady cross the street or listening to a friend for an hour — our day is mostly spent in bubbles where we focus solely on ourselves even as we perform tasks for others.

We don’t mean to shut each other out, but we do it (and sociologists could probably explain why it’s actually necessary for humans to do this in order to survive and thrive).  Someone asks us for a favour, and we ignore them.  Someone admits they’re lonely, and we don’t reach out to let them know we’re listening.

So we shut each other out — albeit inadvertently (most likely due to the constraints of time).  At the same time, it is our relationships that make the difference in this world, that heat this cold world.  We notice those moments that people leave their bubble to enter our own because those moments are what makes the difference between people feeling supported and people feeling alone.

Humans are not meant to be alone.

Think about the emails you’ve saved because someone said something that meant the world for you to hear.  Or the times when we’ve gushed about how someone took the time to converse with us or read our blog.  We have such gratitude for human interactions — even the small ones.

Yet even knowing how good it makes us feel to have someone interact with us; to reach their hand into our life and let us know that we’re not alone, we don’t spend nearly enough time doing this.  Perhaps out of survival — we need to focus on ourselves in order to keep moving forward — though I can’t help but think this is counterintuitive.  Wouldn’t we go so much farther if we all spent more time focused on interacting with others since it could come full circle and have people interact with us.  Don’t we accomplish more together than we ever do on our own?

So, my word for this year, for year six (on my fifth blogoversary):

Pop.

As in, I’m going to take this year to try to pop my bubble each day.  To be conscious of reaching out to others and making that connection count.  To engage in conversations.  To help where I can help.

Even if I only increase my time outside by bubble by five minutes a day, that’s amounts to 1825 or over 30 hours of time each year that I am engaged in community by actively interacting.

Will I be able to always pop my bubble for everyone else who needs me to pop my bubble and focus on them?  Of course not.  I’m a human being who needs to practice guitar for at least a half hour each night, do my job and volunteer work, and spend countless hours trying to come up with new and interesting ways to annoy Josh and the twins (please, that takes A LOT of brain power).  So in advance, I’m sorry if you slip through the cracks and my bubble doesn’t pop.  It isn’t on purpose, though I know that’s cold comfort.

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Five takes for my fifth blogoversary.  Five years ago, I started this blog.  And I am so happy that I did.  And so grateful that you are here.

And you better not leave this post bare of comments just because you used up your blogoversary wishes on this first one!  Pop that bubble!

This is the first part of a two-part blog post.  One post simply grew too long to contain everything I wanted to say.

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Take One:

Five years ago, I started this blog.

The end.

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Take Two:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  When I read about blogoversaries back when I first started this blog, I couldn’t fathom celebrating my own.  Certainly not my five-year one.  And while you eight- or ten-year bloggers may scoff at my piddly five-year marker, those who are just starting out are probably looking at this number the way I did five years ago.  How the hell does it happen?

How does someone open a post box and write a new post, day after day after day?  I have never stepped away from the blog for longer than a few days.  How do you blog the same holidays year after year?  Life keeps revolving — years are circular — but blogs are linear.  They keep moving in a straight line of events while life circles back around, the same themes constantly surfacing, the same foibles revealed, the same struggles fought.

You feel love, you feel love, you feel love.

And you need to keep writing this linear project, keeping it fresh and interesting to yourself because if you’re bored, then what is the point?

You reach a five-year anniversary, you write several thousand posts, simply by doing it.  By falling in love with your blog and taking all that comes with that relationship.  The sweet moments when the comments are high, the dry moments where you can’t think about what to write.  The blog posts that bring you nothing but tears.  The blog posts that you would cry about if you ever lost.

Because love is never easy.  Love is messy; and it’s wonderful in its messiness.  And if you love your blog, you too will one day look at the calendar and realize that you are celebrating a five-year blogoversary.

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Take Three:

Five years ago, I started this blog.  People have asked me before if I’ve ever thought about walking away from it.  Of course I have thought about it.  I think it is natural to be in a mood and take out that mood on something or someone you love.  You know who will be forgiving and who won’t be.

You probably just made a face and thought to yourself, but a blog is an inanimate object.  It’s like saying that you’ve taken out your mood on a dish.

But you’re not inanimate, are you?  Every reader is a living, breathing human.

(You are human, right?  The aliens haven’t arrived yet, right?  I am a little freaked out from the Falling Skies opening episode.)

Therefore, you take a chance when you take out your mood on a blog because it’s like coral — you think you are standing on a rock, something that can’t feel pain or react to the pressure of your foot, and then you discover that coral is actually a living organism, capable of dying.

A blog is quite similar.  If you think of it as an inanimate object, you’re being careless.  Blogs are living organisms with very real people attached to the word core.  People who are affected by what you choose to place on the screen.  They will laugh or they will cry or they will think; but they can also walk away angry, frustrated, or filled with grief.

I am human, and I lash out just like every other human from time to time.  I take out my mood on this blog, and I think about walking away from it.  But like all good relationships, this blog has the elasticity to bend without breaking.  You pull away.  I pull away.  And then we regroup and come back together.  And I write yet again.

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Takes Four and Five coming soon.