For the past six months or so, I've contemplated shutting down my blog. I've done a great deal of soul-searching about my motivation for doing it and whether or not it's worth it to me to continue. I might be fine to just turn what I normally put on my blog into a series of endless tweets or Flickr stream or Facebook entries. Why bother blogging at all?
I started blogging in 2005, right after a trip to Louisiana to bring needed supplies to families hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. I was President of our local Parent's Club at the time, a group with 2,000 members, a volunteer position that was more like running a corporation than a playgroup. I started a blog because what I observed in Louisiana profoundly touched me to my being's core. I felt that that the stories of the people I met there deserved to be told. I started a blog because many people supported my trip there, people who would have gone themselves had they had time and resources to go. I felt I owed it to my community to record what I saw and how the money, the air mattresses, the cribs, the clothes, and all the $300,000 worth of items they donated were received. I wanted them to know that the $30,000 we raised in a one-day bake sale for the Red Cross was going to good use. It actually didn't occur to me that anyone who didn't know me would read my blog.
After writing about the trip, I realized that I loved writing. I loved the process of putting thoughts to words, to finding the right phrase or word to describe an experience or an emotion. I have always been a writer and a storyteller.
As a lawyer, much of my job is writing documents that clearly and concisely show the intent of the parties to a contract, or to reach a compromise using the limited tools of the written word. It's a very different style from writing first-person narratives about daily life, or analyzing and advocating a position that you are passionate about, or writing about how your ethnicity affects your place in the world. What was missing from my professional life, the need to be heard as an individual with a singular voice, I found by starting a blog.
I started writing my blog in earnest after my first BlogHer Conference in San Jose. There, I learned that in me was the soul (if not the skill) of a writer. Spurred on my what I saw and heard there, I started to write more and delve into other blogs as well.
At the next BlogHer in Chicago, I met people whose blogs I had read and admired, people I laughed with, cried with, and learned about on a daily basis. I learned that you can meet someone online and call that person a friend, even though you've never met face-to-face. I met friends that year in my own community through blogging, who became an integral part of my life. I was inspired to start MOMocrats with two members of my local blogging community, and we expanded our tribe to like-minded, passionate women all over the country. The MOMocrats are now my dearest friends, the ones I go to on an almost daily basis for inspiration, support, and laughter.
At last year's BlogHer, I was a speaker, and I found that my voice did not have to be limited to the voice on the page. I found that what I had to say about my life experience, people actually wanted to hear. There, I unmasked the woman behind the curtain of the computer, using my words to offer encouragement, inspiration, and support. I bonded with my online friends there and later, at the Democratic National Convention, another experience that I had dreamed about since childhood.
I didn't go to BlogHer this year, but what I took away from each of the three past years has been something of a personal revelation for me. None of it had anything to do with making money or swag or sponsorships. None of it had anything to do with the type of detergent I use, or where I want to spend my family's hard-earned dollar.
Over the years, advertisers and marketing folks have noticed me (why, I don't know), and offered to send me things. I was invited on two very wonderful trips to Johnson's Baby Camp and Disneyland. I was honored to be asked to both, never expected to be asked to either, and would not be surprised if I never went on another trip. I have taken any offers for ads or product reviews on my own terms, and never felt that I owed anyone anything, nor did they owe me.
Over the past year, I became somewhat disenchanted with blogging and to some extent, bloggers. It may have been the bitterness and nastiness I experienced because of the election, both directed toward me, and emanating from me. I got swept up in the passion of wanting so desperately for the tide to turn that I probably said things that were more harsh than I meant them to be, and got angry much more often than I normally would. I blogged infrequently, and when I did, I felt uninspired. Blogging became more of a chore than a passion, and though I used to look forward to comments, I started to ignore them.
I also noticed that in that time, a seismic shift occurred in the zeitgest of the mom blogosphere, in which "the product's the thing" became the norm, and well-crafted stories took a backseat to giveaways, product reviews, and recounts of conferences, trips, and cool gizmos. To be successful in the mommyblogger game, I was told by various people, work on your personal brand, develop followers, short posts were better than long, and travelogues are boring and nobody reads them.
The message was clear: if you make enough connections with the right people, you will be rewarded with fabulous... trips to exotic destinations? free detergent? tampons? That part was not clear. The brass ring of the momosphere was no longer friendship and commiseration, but an actual! brass! ring! with TV appearances, corporate sponsorships, and a celebrity A-List. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to write professionally, needs income to help their families, and found a clever way to do so through blogging. What bothers me is palpable resentment by some who feel slighted when not invited to the latest blogger boondoggle, and concerted efforts made to undermine well-intentioned sponsors who make the wrong assumptions.
What used to be a fun place to hang out with witty friends became one long, dry stretch of ad copy disguised as real life. It seemed to me that whatever I was doing, I was doing it wrong. I started to loathe being labeled a "mommyblogger," though being called "mommy" and "blogger" are two titles I cherish.
I witnessed a kind of competitiveness about who's in-and-who's out that I found distasteful. It was the high school cafeteria writ large, with the cool kids at one table purposefully (or perhaps inadvertently) taunting the wannabes. Like in high school, we crave being noticed and appreciated for who we are. We stumble around until we find the table with the other kids like us. Sometimes, we sit alone and hope no one notices.
Now, instead of being identified as brainiacs or drama geeks or stoners or jocks, we're at the virtual lunch table with people based on our sense of humor or politics or hobbies or ethnicity or location. We sit at the lunch table and eavesdrop on what the other kids are talking about, snarking about them when we think they can't hear us. We also create a little drama, at perceived slights or when one of our tablemates comes under attack. I have your back, sister, is the message we post, no matter what the issue.
Over the past six to nine months, I've been largely absent from the blogosphere. After the election, I felt burned out, worn out, and a little disgusted. I didn't want to write my own blog, contribute to other blogs, or read or comment on blogs. I dropped out of the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, even though I was one of the first 5 writers to contribute there, and Jill, Beth, and Pamela are dear friends to me. I handed off most of my editorial duties on MOMocrats to other writers who kept the flame lit. I felt I had run out of things to say that would add value to any discussion, and frankly, I didn't want to hear what anyone else had to say, either.
Twitter played a part in this. As a person with limited writing time, it's hard for me to keep up with a blog. I try to put thought and effort into my posts, writing, rewriting, editing, choosing photos -- all of it takes time. Putting a pithy thought into words in 140 characters does not. I like to tell people that Twitter is the place where the voices in my head go out to play. The random thoughts and observations that I might collect over time for a blog post, I can just post on Twitter and be done with it.
This blogger depression, or blogpression if you will, was challenged on this last trip we took to China, Japan, and Korea. On that trip, I realized how much I missed telling my stories, regardless of whether anyone read them or not. I realized how part of the experience of travel has changed for me since I started blogging. I now look at the world through the filter of how to tell the story. I take photos to illustrate and illuminate what I can't put into words, the exquisite colors and textures written in a visual language that written words fail to capture.
Through the process of writing, I realized that I'm lucky, not just because I get to see and experience so much of the world, but because I am in a position to let other people see it with me. You may never have thought a solar eclipse would be a worthwhile thing to see, but if you read my blog, maybe you do now. You may never travel to Kyoto to try kaiseki, but now that you know what it is, you might seek out a Japanese restaurant in your town.
Writing about this trip brought me full circle to why I started my blog in the first place. Simply put, to tell my stories to anyone who cared to listen. What I have to offer the blogosphere is uniquely mine and mine alone. I don't need to be like anyone else to be successful, or follow any rules. I just need to do what my mother told me to do in high school, "Be yourself. The people who should be your friends will be your friends, and everyone else is missing out."
I have said before that I like to think that my blog is one long love letter to the future, to my son and his future children, who will inhabit a time and space I won't know. I want him to know that his mom was an ordinary woman who lived a life that was anything but ordinary. I want him to know that I lived an extraordinary life full of optimism and hope, that sometimes gave way to despair and anger. I want him to know about the joy and sorrow I've experienced in my life, and what informed and shaped who I am. I want him to know that I watched, I learned, I participated, I hoped, I dreamed, and I acted. Ultimately, that is my personal brand, the mark I leave on the world.
I've decided to go back to my blogging roots. To tell the stories of my travels, whether to the top of the world or to the corner store. I'll write about the people, the places, the food, the experiences, the things I learned that might be useful, and maybe, a cool product or two. I'll be honored if you share this journey with me, but won't be offended if you don't.
So the answer to the question, should I continue to blog? Definitely, definitely yes.
