Lessons from the blog
Last week I was reading through an old blogspot blog where I wrote when I was homeschooling my children. I started it in 2007 and ended in 2015.
I was struck by a few things.
First, cell phone photos back then were so bad! Those were the days of the most basic flip phones. In one post I mentioned that Abbey (now 32) was going to get her first phone, a Chocolate. Remember those? They were thin and narrow, and the top half slid up to reveal the manual keyboard, where you texted using T9-Word. And it had the little scrolly wheel to navigate the menus. And it vibrated! All the cool kids had them . . . except me. I was not the cool kids.
The second thing I noticed on the old blog was that I almost never wrote anything of substance. It was basically a journal of “here’s a rundown of the mundane things that are happening in my very average life today.” It was a public diary. Once in a while you’d get a story of us ripping the back half of our house off right before a whopping thunderstorm rolled through (I'll share it here someday), but mostly it was errands and going to the gym and orthodontist appointments and kids in college and the questionable decision to get a second dog that shed masses of hair.
But here's the most important thing I noticed: I had a community of faithful readers. We found each other through homeschool websites and it was nice to know we weren’t in it alone. We commiserated and encouraged each other through algebra and world history and driver’s ed. We read each other's blogs and prayed for each other and laughed and cried together. We were friends, sitting on the digital front porch snapping beans together and sharing life. Blogs were our group text.
I actually met one of those friends in real life! Michelle lived outside of Atlanta and we met for lunch when I was down there with Leah when she had an outpatient surgery. I wish I could have met all those women. We shared a lot.
So what happened to our little blogosphere community?
Facebook.
Facebook was just beginning to catch on, but it was mostly college students that used it. When we older people started infiltrating, my son, then a college junior, commented on my introductory post, "Is nothing sacred?"
Apparently not.
So the friendly chatting we used to post on our blogs became the drivel we posted on Facebook: where we went, what we ate, the things our toddlers (or teenagers) screamed about, how we were feeling that day. And, at least for me, blogging died.
When I tried to come back to it a few years later, I found it was a completely different world. No one cared about the dozen random thoughts I had today; they wanted actual content. We stopped being a community and had to become "content creators" and boy, did that feel fake! It's hard enough to get through the day-to-day without having to take one event and make a meaningful life lesson out of it. Back then I posted an almost-daily stream of consciousness. Now I'm lucky if I can put together two posts in a month.
So here we are.
I still love to write. My husband and (at least one of) my kids still ask me to write. Two or three of you still read if I post a link to Facebook. But I'll be honest and transparent here and say that sometimes it's not as fun. Back in 2007 it was easy to write about the day's happenings and make it funny—it WAS funny!
Like the time I was bringing Pete out of the vet's office and he was terrified of the little Papillon in the parking lot. I opened the back of the van and Pete hurled his 70 lb self at his crate, which, sadly, was still closed, so he bounced off back into the parking lot, then ricocheted between my legs and the bumper before I could get his crate unlocked, then launched himself back at it, smashing the door in, and then sat, trembling, all the way in the back of it, begging me with his big brown eyes to please lock the door. He had anxiety issues that were not dependent on his size.
It's hard to make that anything other than a funny story that just tells about real life as it's happening. There's no deep meaning there, except maybe that I once had a nervous dog to help me recognize my own anxiety problems.
So what's the point?
Maybe I'm looking for an excuse for lazy writing or lack of deep thought. I just know I miss the days that were more like chatting with friends. I miss the friends.
Every once in a while someone posts on Instagram reminding creatives that they don't have to dance and lip-sync and create reels if they're not comfortable doing that. Well, thanks, because that is me 100%. I appreciate the reminder to just be me no matter where the pressure comes from.
I've listened to a few podcasts for writers lately that explain how to get more readers, grow your base, blah blah blah. And while I would love people to read my writing and get something out of it, I don't want to make it into a job that includes performance evaluations. If there's one thing in life I want to keep for the pure joy of it, it's writing.
I do occasionally have a deep thought. But more than that I have real life: dumb dogs, wayward cows, garden planting, fence running, house building, grandbabies, laughing about our enneagram numbers, and dealing with the aftereffects of a traumatic experience. It's good and bad, often both in one day. I don't need a bigger reader base to share that.
I'm convinced that what we need most in life (other than all of Jesus and a better phone camera) is to bear one another's burdens, to laugh and cry with each other, to build each other up and keep each other humble. We need community.
I would love to have you be part of mine.