USA: I miss the glory days of blogging

Just an OG blogger with some regrets, trying to make blogging great again

Back in the day

Blogging was like breathing for me in the early years of this third millennium.

Anything and everything that happened or even crossed my mind had the potential to become a blog post. Looking back at my old Google Blogspot, with the now outdated title of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom, I realize far too many of those random potential posts did make it into print—at least digital print.

At the beginning, when blogging was new and even high-speed internet was still a bit of a novelty, I posted nearly every day—often more than once a day. Sometimes I was clever and witty. Occasionally I was appropriately contemplative and deep. Frequently, though, I just rambled—or worse.

But it was fun. Oh, was it fun.

I had a solid community of writer friends and family members on my blogroll. Remember that term? Perhaps your little blog is in this list.

None of us tried to monetize. We didn’t run analytics to track our readership or study up on ways to attract more subscribers. We didn’t know anything about affiliate links. We just loved to write. And we were willing to learn some HTML code to customize our templates—like amateur website interior designers. We all faithfully read and commented on each other’s work. We were close. We were funny. Insightful. A tad arrogant, perhaps. And we overshared—at least I did.

Like my blog’s namesake, Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, my old blog flowed along on the stream of consciousness. Thoughts entered my head, skipped most of the filtration systems possessed by people with some level of self-control or a touch of introversion, and flowed down through my arms and out my fingers, spilling all over the keyboard. I wrote a lot.

I like running stats, so humor me a bit here. By the numbers, my blog looked like this:

• 2004 - 202 posts (starting at the very end of May)

• 2005 - 224 posts

• 2006 - 198 posts

• 2007 - 220 posts

• 2008 - 247 posts

• 2009 - 52 posts

• 2010 - 51 posts

• 2011 - 108 posts

• 2012 - 26 posts

• 2013 - 3 posts

• 2014 - 3 posts

• 2015 - 1 post

• 2016 - 3 posts

Between the middle of 2004 and the end of 2008, I averaged just over 20 posts per month. Four to five per week—no small feat.

Between the start of 2009 (when I first began using Facebook) and the end of 2012, that figure was reduced to five posts per month. That would still qualify as prolific in most circles.

For the last four years of my blog, 2013-2016, I averaged less than three posts per year.

I wish I could say my blogging tapered off because I began to realize the damage I was causing, but no. My blogroll friends and I just moved over to Facebook and posted our thoughts in smaller segments—status updates.

I remained oblivious.

We didn’t know (or at least I didn’t know)

I called my blog Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom. I thought it was cute and clever, even as the years dragged on and I wasn’t actually young by most standards anymore. Actually, I was nearly 27 when my first child was born, so technically, I never was a young mom, but I loved a good name. I played on an indoor soccer team for a couple of years; we called ourselves Postpartum Aggression. We didn’t win any games, but I loved a good name—that alone made soccer worth it for me.

The problem with trying to paint a written portrait of myself as a mom, young or not, is that, by its very nature, it must include my children. I wrote about myself and my own thought processes, yes, but I also wrote about my kids. I told stories about every funny thing they did, every poignant conversation we had, every creative activity we did together, even all the mistakes we made. It was all quite transparent.

I chronicled our family’s history on that blog, to a level most families will never get to access. I documented everything, and that is not, in itself, a bad thing. As a family, we have accessed that blog dozens of times in recent years to remember details of something that happened long ago. We have laughed together over memories that were preserved, frozen in time, and we have used the blog to piece together timelines that have grown fuzzy with age. It is a valuable asset for our family history. But through those very public writings, I also exposed my children to the world—without their permission.

They were too young to protest. We did not yet live in the age of consent. For a long time, they thought it was normal. They grew up with it. “This is going on the blog, isn’t it?” was as normal in our household as “What’s for dinner?”

I didn’t realize the damage I had caused until they were approaching adulthood. Finally, one of them bravely confronted me. I didn’t know it had been painful for them. They had grown up in a fishbowl they couldn’t escape. I should have known. Anyone who worked as hard as I did to be a great mom should have known.

I shut down public access to the site. It was too late, though. I couldn’t delete the years of quiet resentment. To my knowledge, and to their credit, my kids have forgiven me, but I still regret that I made public what should have remained in private journals.

I cringe now at the many video channels (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) that feature precocious little kids saying cute things—entire accounts created around these kids. Some of them are adorable and I watch anyway. Jacob’s Mammy, Along Came Abby—this is quality content! But those kids aren’t old enough to know if they are going to regret this. They don’t know how it will color interactions with their peers in the future. They can’t actually consent. What is ok here? How do you feel about it, friend? I would love to hear your thoughts in a comment.

“But I’m a writer,” she whined.

My experience with oversharing about my children’s lives growing up has me a little spooked about telling true stories at all. How much is too much?

If I want to write something that involves one of my children now, I know to ask their permission first. That’s a no-brainer for me at this point. Their stories are theirs to tell, unless I have secured clearance—and only then when I am attempting to tell my story, and it happens to intersect with theirs.

But what about people other than my own kids? In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott’s book about the craft of writing, she brazenly states, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Although I usually like much of what Ms. Lamott has to say, I struggle with this one. I am a writer, yes. But does that entitle me to tell other people’s stories—warmly or not—when the lines blur between my life and theirs? I don’t think so.

But I am moving into a life of full-time nomadic travel. As soon as we finish building out our expedition vehicle, we are hitting the road. Our motto is “Less stuff, more stories,” and I plan to write . . . a lot. I am still figuring out what that looks like.

Can I write other people’s stories with their permission? Can I paint the scene the way I see it, or must I be careful to make sure everyone and everything is presented in only the most positive light—even if that leaves out big chunks of the truth?

Can I just change the names and call it good?

Again, please comment. I am seeking conversation on this.

I recently went to Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, to visit some of my extended family I’d never before met. I began writing, Facebook-style, about the things I was seeing and experiencing, trying to convey a sense of place to the readers back home who have never been there. But if I mention the dusty red dirt roads full of potholes, does that somehow reflect poorly on the people trying to live their lives with dignity? Does it bring shame to my extended family, or does it show their impressive strength and tenacity?

I would love to hear your ideas on this. I am truly hoping this Substack can be a place where you are free to join the discussion and express your thoughts. Add comments, please, and I will reply to them. Let’s have a conversation.

Beauty and Truth

My creative life has long centered around a mission statement of sorts I wrote nearly two decades ago:

“I am a seeker of beauty and truth. Beauty is not always truthful, and sometimes the truth is not a thing of beauty, but I seek out the intersections where I see them meet.”

This Substack is designed to do just that. We will undoubtedly find lots of great stories as we travel, and some of them will make it onto our official website, NomadicMidLife.com, but some of them will fit better here—the stories not so much of what we did and where we went and what it’s like to travel the world slowly in a big truck, but the things on my heart, the stories of the people we meet—either with their permission or without their names and photos—as well as the changes that happen in our own hearts along the way.

My hope is that I get to recover the joy of blogging here, but in a way that is respectful and sensitive, when other people are involved. And I hope I don’t just ramble. Please call me out if I do. I plan to post once a week, though the day may vary somewhat until I get into a groove. While we prepare to hit the road for our travels, each post will likely be just a singular story. As we are surrounded by new experiences, though, this may turn into more of a newsletter with several different articles each week. We’ll see. Stay tuned by subscribing. You will get an email each time I post. Thanks, friends.

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