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!