17 January 2021

Long time, no blog

 Let's face it: it's difficult to blog when you don't have internet at home. It's also difficult to read and respond to emails. Or even to send them. To remember to send the photo of that thing you told your mom about on the phone - to remember to take the photo at all - when the connection to the internet just isn't there.

It's been a year. It's been more than a year. I haven't regularly updated this blog in ages, certainly not since we moved to a place without internet access. Certainly not since I've copped out and shared my life in single-photo snippets on Instagram that I can automatically forward to my Facebook without ever having to look at anything posted by anyone else. Efficiency. Is that really what this is about?

Just a couple days ago I started reading "Do Nothing" by Celeste Headlee and I'm pounding through it because it's resonating so much. It both stings and salves. The reason I don't take the time to write blog posts anymore is because I have made my sharing of life an internet chore to be checked off a list, the more efficiently, the better. There are ways I could compose blogposts and share them without taking so much of my limited connectivity time, but I don't do them - because they would take time on their own. Writing a blog post takes so much more time and energy and craft than making quick edits to a photo and slapping it on IG/Fb with a clever sentence or two - or even just a single word or emoji.

I have lost the beauty of my words, longhand, scrawling across a page. Written (typed) for myself just as much as anyone else, with the knowledge that my blog views are generally in the single digits and almost never receive comments or feedback. It has been months since I've reflected on the public-presenting story of my life in-depth and crafted a post on it. This reflection was just as much for myself as it was for my friends and relatives who wanted a window into my long-distance life. And lest we not forget: the earliest posts on this blog were just as much nature writing as they were autobiographical vignettes. 

As I continue to read this book, I continue to reflect on my current life choices, especially with regards to social media, and I believe that in the coming days and weeks we can expect to see some changes in what I post, how I share what I share and where. And maybe, just maybe, I'll start writing proper blog posts again.

Until next time!

No comments:

Post a Comment