Everybody’s Blogging Like it’s 2005

by | Apr 9, 2019 | All About Me, All of Us, Blogging Life, Redefining Perfect

Once upon a time, when I wrote my first post in, oh 2006?

*runs to check dates….make that 2007*

Blogging was HOT. I came in late on the trend, for sure…mostly because I’m always late to the party. However, I was still early enough to be on the fringe of some of those bloggers that went on to become hot names.  Pioneer Woman (I won my KitchenAid stand mixer from her), The Bloggess, Brittany Herself, and the like.  They, and many others, paved the way for smaller bloggers.

Over time, blogging became oversaturated. Facebook killed blogging in many ways (shorter, faster, gotta get their short attention spans!!).  Some bloggers kept plugging away for years (Like the Bloggess, Brittany, and Burgh Baby), and years, and years. They never once stopped.  Some of us (like myself) would pop in with a series of blog posts on occasion, only to stop again…but our blogs remained there. A testament to the good times.  Others blogs were shuttered for good. Closed down, just…gone.

Our lives went on. We kept chattering on FB.  Friends found in blogging divorced, got married, had more kids, emptied their nests, turned into raging misogynistic lunatics, we lost too many good ones (even one is too many, isn’t it?).

We mourned, laughed, cried, hid away, screamed and complained in Facebook snippets.

Instead of the wide-screen movies of our lives, we watched it all happen in Polaroid moments scattered across an increasingly commercial ad-ridden timeline where businesses with big bucks got top billing over our friendships we’d established long before we liked a companies page.  Much like blogging went the way of commercial (so.many.blogs.hawking.product.O.M.G.), Facebook has taken the same turn, but even more aggressively.

*~*

Two years ago I heard the first rumbling of bloggers coming back to life.  A post by Ali over at Cheaper Than Therapy caught my attention, and sparked my own post on how we needed each other still, if not more so now. I made it through a few months then, bug once again ceased blogging for no good reason for a while.  And even then, when Ali posted that…it was mere rumblings. A person here, a person there…

Now, I dare say I think the rumblings are turning into more.  A few months after I’ve started really feeling driven to post with some regularity again, I’m finding others are blogging it up again.  My friend Karl (who I’m sure I met because he was a friend of a friend) has resurrected his blog from the ashes…and in doing so has reached out to find out who is still blogging.  I’m finding new blogs, rediscovering old ones.

There is a resurgence of the O.G. blog crowd to get back to what brought us together. REAL stories, REAL connections, ACTUAL comments.

Rebuilding friendships out of the ashes of sound bites into real, true threads of discourse.

One common thread I’m seeing is people ditching “persona” for true self. Another is all of us that blogged b/c we had wee ones are now facing teens (crazy common threads woven through so many blogs).  I also see a lot about US now. Since the kids are older, if we ever blogged about them we have to blog about ourselves now because our kids can say we aren’t allowed to talk about it.

Also…maybe call it a mid-life crisis, but I get a sense of evolution from most of the blogs I’m reading.  People searching for what defines THEM now, becoming better people, treating ourselves better.

It’s fantastic!

I love seeing the community stir back to life, reaching out to support each other again.

Of course, that means I need to clean up a bit around here.

Make up one of those new-old-fangled Blogroll things.

Who wants in on my Blogroll?  It’s gonna be the latest thing.  Come on down!

No, seriously. Give me your blog.  I may already have it on my list, but share it anyway for those that don’t know. 

It’s time to get back to where it all began. Everything old is new again!

We Still Need Each Other – Maybe Even More

by | Dec 9, 2016 | All About Me, All of Us, Blogging Life, Community, Redefining Perfect

blessing6We started when they were little ones – infants, babies, toddlers and grade-schoolers.

We stepped tentatively into the community with a post. Reached out to find others. We formed a bond.

We formed a community.

The world was a bit smaller for our camaraderie, our shared triumphs, our ‘misery loves company, our cheering each other on, and maybe just a wee bit of shadenfreude.

Our kids started to grow, and so did the community and the eruption of social networks, viral feeds and competition for STUFF.

000aOur kids are now rapidly approaching those teenage years (or, as in my case, I have one that is exiting them). They aren’t as cute or adorable, and the stories are more difficult to tell in their search for privacy, and our confusion and pain and sense of loss as their youth turns into a searching grasp toward grown-up-life.

Social media has reduced our sharing to sound-bites on Facebook and Twitter (or not – does anyone use it anymore?) or Reddit or…okay, I admit it, I’m a social media dunce…what do people use now?

I can’t remember the last time I saw a blog post in my FB feed…and if I even clicked on it.

That all ended 3 days ago when a real, honest-to-goodness BLOG POST came across my feed. I’m not sure what it was about it, or why I stopped…except maybe that it was a BLOG POST! From an old friend I used to read all the time.

Whatever it was, I stopped. I clicked. I read a post by the fabulous Ali over at Cheaper Than Therapy (check it out, it’s awesome). Thanks to the click I made and the ensuing Facebook conversation it sparked, I realized something.

We still need each other.

Speaking from experience, teenage years are HARD.

I mean, brutal.

In so many ways I feel like we barely made it through the teen years with Denver, and we have two more coming up…worse, they’re girls.

I could use my community now even more than I did then – I think we all can.

Parenting never gets easier, and it takes more than sound bites.

I hope we can share again, I know I plan to. I have a list of posts waiting to be written.

I hope you’ll join me, and Ali, and the rest of us still struggling through this parenting gig.

We’re stronger together.