Why would I do such a thing? is a reasonable first question. For one thing, I love, and want, to write. More specifically, I love, and want, to blog.
Also, I have things to say that I hope people will relate to, because I would if someone said them to me (and I wish they would). Things like… well, all the things I realize I’m doing “wrong” in adulthood (like not going to bed early even though society demands that I get up early every morning, which I hate) but have decided to embrace because fuck it. This is me. Also “wrong” isn’t always wrong, it’s often totally ok but gets tripped up by societal constructs and dubious ideas of morality.
So, here we are.
It’s kind of an existential challenge to choose a course of action that seems doomed to fail. I’m a pretty risk-averse person; I would NEVER open a restaurant, for example. Granted I’m not risking much financially here, but time is valuable too. Before embarking, I decided I needed to better understand why I was so compelled to blog in a TikTok world. Also I love doing research.
Turns out, I was intuitively aware of what makes blogs unique, I just didn’t know it. In case anyone actually reads this and also isn’t aware, I’ll pull a quote that references now-defunct Gawker that I think explains it beautifully:
“Blogging was fun, and it broke the rules. As founder Nick Denton said in a 2013 interview, “The basic concept of Gawker was two journalists in a bar telling each other a story that’s much more interesting than whatever hits the papers the next day.” Which is another way of saying Gawker tried to harness the conversational informality of blogging, the way the medium bypassed the codified rules of print journalism.”
Jeet Heer, The New Republic
Blogging IS fun, because it IS conversational and informal. It’s also unique for precisely those reasons, filling a niche that is most definitely NOT filled by Instagram, TikTok, or whatever.
To me, blogging is THE means of longer-form communication and engagement, and maybe that’s why I feel compelled to do it. These days we live in a post-word world, where no one even cares if their pictures are worth 1,000 words because no one cares about communicating that much anyway. But I care.
Sigh.
I’m not trying to be a mommy blogger, or a feminist blogger, or really any current kind of blogger.
And I have my reasons, which I’ll explain. But mostly I just want to write real shit and hope that it makes other people feel seen, on a platform that’s not filled with Pinterest links and paid endorsements.
I am not slaying.
Nor do I feel like a #girlboss, or actually any kind of #boss. Mostly I am riding alternating waves of empowerment, uncertainty, crippling anxiety, and exhaustion-fueled apathy. Occasionally a seagull shits irritability into the mix.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t believe in empowerment, inspiration, or the value of influencers (the good ones anyway, and by that I mean genuine and non-evil). On the contrary, I religiously follow a certain influencer whose energy and enthusiasm helped me decide that blogging could be worth a shot.
I, however, am not one of those people. For a while that really bothered me, but it’s just not what I bring to the table. Not at this particular moment in time anyway.
Maybe this blog is. I guess we’ll find out.
