Five years gone, or Why Blog?

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of when I started blogging, back when we first moved to Ridgecrest. It seems like it must be much longer, because so many things have happened since then, but no. My first post (to my old Ridgecrest blog) was on May 25th, 2009. It was a Monday.

I've been thinking about what five years of blogging mean. Why do I put so much energy into this activity? When I first began, I had idle thoughts of blogging fame. Other bloggers had hundreds, even thousands of followers -- why not me? I quickly realized that I was too late with that one. It's probably still possible to start a popular blog if you have something new and special to contribute. But I don't. I'm just me, musing about my life.

A while back I found a website where people go to complain about other people's blogs, including some that I read from time to time, and I was suddenly very glad not to be popular. Much much MUCH better to blog along under the radar. I'm also glad I decided not to "monetize," i.e., allow stupid ads to pop up all over the blog. Yes, we need money, but we can skip the few cents we'd get from something so irritating to readers.

The main reason I blog is to keep a diary. I'd kept a handwritten diary off and on since 1982, mostly angst-ing about boyfriends and what to do with my life, but after the twins were born in 2008 I pretty much stopped writing in it. Too busy. Too guilty about not writing down every single cute thing they did. I still feel guilty about that, just like I feel guilty about not assembling beautiful photo albums of their early life. The blog posts, with occasional photos, are not a perfect substitute, but they're something. I constantly re-read earlier posts, to figure out when we did what.

But I also -- let's be honest -- like the public aspect of the blog, knowing that a few people read what I write. Some family members read it regularly, also some old friends, and some people I've never met. So it's part of that human wish to reach out and touch the universe. I also like the fact that a blog is so undemanding. I don't mind if people drop in every six months or so to see what's been happening. No pressure. No need to comment. It's fun to get a comment now and then, but I blog happily along with or without feedback.

I do wonder about continuing to blog as the boys get older. I've seen this issue discussed online: what do you do as the kids grow up? I suppose you write more about yourself, less about them. Skip the embarrassing stuff. Post fewer photos. (Have fewer readers.) And what if I become a serious writer and have to have an official writer blog, with a calculated image and stupid short blog posts about where I'll be giving my next reading?

I'm just going to play it by ear for now. I don't ever want to cut this off cold turkey, though I realize that happens quite often in the blogosphere. One of my favorite bloggers ended her blog last summer, and I was so bummed. I still check it from time to time, to see if she might have changed her mind.

Which brings up another part of the question -- what other people's blogs mean to me. I read a dozen or so of them more or less regularly, occasionally dropping one or picking up another. I don't have a favorite "type" -- some are mom blogs, there's a reader blog, a writer blog, a music blog, a blog about how older women ought to dress (I read it with interest, but don't follow the suggestions). I think I choose blogs based on the voice of the writer more than anything else. If the voice feels comfortable to me, I read on.

Three of the blogs I follow are written by people I used to hang out with on a website for women trying to conceive. There was a section for older women, and within that an even more exclusive group for people trying to have a first baby over 40. Over the years I met a few of the women in person, but the three whose blogs I follow I never got to meet. Two of them eventually had children; one didn't. All three have experienced significant tragedies since I "knew" them, and (some of?) these tragedies have shown up, in bits and pieces, on the blogs. Sometimes I've written a sympathetic comment or two, mostly I just read. All three blogs have shut down for periods of time and then started up again. I check on them when they're down, hoping they'll be revived.

Recently I remembered another woman from that trying-to-conceive website, not someone I "knew" well, but she was hard to forget. She'd lost seven babies before finally having one that lived. Some were miscarried, one was stillborn, two died soon after birth. The website she set up for the lost babies is still up, but she also has a mom blog that I found. It sounds as though her life with her one surviving child has been good, though he has some issues, but she still sounds so crucially, integrally sad about the lost children. She stopped posting to the mom blog a few years ago, but in the last post or two she was talking about looking for a job and what could she do at her age, etc., etc.

Blogs in all their imperfectness, especially those that go on for a while, are such a window into other people's lives. A scary window, sometimes, but at the same time so interesting. People's lives, especially as we get older, are so full of sadness. It is pretty darn hard to avoid tragedy, since, first of all, everyone dies, and second, there are so many bad things out there that can happen -- disease and job loss and car accidents and mistakes other people make that impinge on us. And our own mistakes. At the same time, while dealing with disaster, we go right on doing cool things, reading good books and listening to great music, traveling the world and raising children, working and looking for work. (And then we die. I've read a few blogs where the last post is from a relative announcing the death of the blogger.) Blogs can show the randomness of people's lives, the misery and the joy. I think I blog to be able to watch my own life unfold more clearly, in all its randomness -- and if anyone else wants to watch, they can -- and I read blogs to watch other people's lives do the same.

And that's enough about that. Tomorrow I'll do a normal post about our Memorial Day weekend, complete with photos. Thanks, as always, for listening.