I haven’t really told anyone I’m blogging again… I’m not really doing it for anyone but me and all the avenues I used before to drive traffic to my blog (message boards, online groups, business newsletters) are pretty much gone from existence. I’m typing this on my cell phone for goodness sake – something I’d never even be able to think about when I started this thing over twenty years ago (but since I was pretty prolific back then you can read about me waiting in line for the first iPhone).
So obviously times have really, really changed since the early days when my friends (IRL) had actual conversations in my comments and EXCHANGED PHONE NUMBERS THERE (an actual thing I realized happened when I was going back through all my old posts and comments). That just seems so whimsical and early internet doesn’t it? I had thought about it for years (Bj saying… do we need to keep paying for this – meaning the domain mostly), what am I going to do with the blog? Hundreds of entries that would cost thousands of dollars to print and more if I wanted to include the comments. I couldn’t image one getting rid of the kind words people posted on the girls births for example. I also wondered… had I written things I’d regret? I was so young then, and not quite aware of the longevity of things online (yes if you’re reading this and you had a blog in the early part of the century it’s probably still around in some form – check the way back machine).
A few years ago I started going through the oldest entries in earnest. Trying to repair the damage done by a few blog moves (from Typepad – RIP) . Figuring out what pictures where missing, where sentences were cut in half and all of that. I also checked content and it was… fine? I complained about being two small for clothes I liked at one point (115 pound me – there are worse problems). But then I worried about what I had written about my kids. Did I use too many details? Did I exploit them in any way? And most importantly do they care about the content? Well it turns out children change quite a lot in the ten years between being a cute toddler and a fantastic teenager. They didn’t mind the old posts at all. Still I hemmed and hawed. Did I need to have a some big reason to blog again?
I asked Bj if it would be annoying to do all this work and then I never made a dime from the blog. His response was to ask me if I ever was trying to make money from the blog. I guess I wasn’t really. I had a few businesses and I did like to try to drive some traffic there from the blog but it was minimal. I think I’ve gotten less than $100 in all my years of Amazon affiliate links (if I ever figure out how to have an Amazon store with my favorite things I’ll put it here).
*Related to this. I wrote a novel a few years ago. I really missed writing. I had just come off a year of reading 400+ books and I wanted to take a stab at it. When I was done I had one friend offer to read it. I asked another one if she wanted to and she said, “I will when it’s done.” It was done I told her. “No I mean when it’s published,” she said. I explained I wasn’t planning on doing that. She asked why I wrote the book… just because (shrugging lady emoji).
A lot has happened, while some things remain the same. I’m still in my cottage and I still have my sweet family (Bj did have a couple super close calls that left him disabled and without an esophagus and it turns out those things are SUPER useful, trust me when I say you don’t want to be without one). I often pull up my blog to search for recipes or projects I’ve documented before (and have had friends tell me they do the same). In the end I figured the worst I ever wrote was repeating some of the things grandpa said to me. Some of my posts still have messed up pictures and I’ll slowly fix that as I come across them, but for the most part I just left everything. The path of least resistance and all of that.
I think I have lots more to say and if I’m the only one who ever reads it that’s ok with me. It’s like an a log of events that I’m putting on the web… (origin of the word blog here).
