It seemed ironic that yesterday's prompt at Sunday Scribblings was "the end." After taking a blogging break over the weekend, I've decided that I'm going to step away from this blog. I don't know in this moment if I'm abandoning it completely--if it's simply time to move on--or whether this will be more of a hiatus. (I suspect the former.) What I do know is this: I've come to dread posting here, and that's not a good thing. And judging by the comments (or lack of them), I think my so-called audience would agree that it's time to move on. ;)
I started my first blog exactly four years ago. (I don't remember the exact date, just that it was Labor Day.) For the first few years we lived in the tropics, we didn't even have a computer, but eventually we bought a laptop. I vividly remember that Labor Day four years ago, lounging on the love seat, legs dangling over the edge, the laptop on a small table at my side. I remember it so well because I've often thought how a hasty decision in that moment completely altered my life.
I was surfing the net and I came across an article on blogging. I knew zip about blogging. The article mentioned Blogger and how anyone could start a blog, for free. As I continued to read--and began to comprehend the tiniest bit what a blog was--blogging suddenly seemed like a good solution for the guilt I'd felt at abandoning my 'island update' emails to family and friends back home on the mainland. For three years I'd been writing lengthy, fairly regular emails to update people on our life in the islands. But the emails I'd get in response had greatly diminished in number. Yet every time I wrote that I was thinking about not sending the updates anymore, I'd get a flurry of emails asking me to continue, with people writing that they were getting a big vicarious thrill out of our island life (even though the only thing exciting about our dull life was that it was occurring in an island paradise). Blogging seemed like the perfect solution. I could put the info out there and the onus would be on them--they could either read it or not. At that time, Blogger didn't offer comments on its free blogs, so it's not like I thought blogging was going to increase the responses. I didn't care--I just wanted that damn email monkey off my back. And in that moment on Labor Day 2003, I made the decision to start a blog. I'll bet I didn't think it through any longer than 2 or 3 minutes.
A year ago, a meme about blogging went around and one of the questions was, "Do you think there is any real benefit to blogging?" My answer was, "You mean beyond completely and utterly changing my life?" There is no way I could have possibly predicted what blogging would give me over the last four years. I have met so many extraordinary people and made so many surprising connections through blogging. Best of all, I've made friends. Real, honest-to-goodness friends. And don't let anyone tell you that blogging friendships aren't real.
This is my second (main) blog, although I've had several ancillary blogs over the years. When we made the decision to move back to the mainland, I felt it was time for a new blog to go with the new locale. I've been blogging at California Fever for 2-1/2 years. As I told Sheryl, who created the banner here, I feel like with this blog, I found my tribe. But lately I've been feeling like I've lost my voice here. I can't even remember the last time I wrote a 'real' post here. Bloggers develop personas on their blogs, whether we like it or not. And over time, I began to feel trapped by the one that was perceived to be mine here. So much so, that the thought of stepping away and putting my blogging energies elsewhere began to feel like a relief.
Unlike my decision to start my first blog, the decision to step away from this one has not been a hasty one, believe me. I've been toying with the idea for months, but I thought I was just going through one of those blogging cycles all long-time bloggers experience. Sometimes our voice dries up a bit or we lose the enthusiasm for blogging as a medium or 'real' life gets so busy that we don't have time for it. But, for me, this felt like something else. It felt like it was time to free myself up a bit. And if I'm to be entirely truthful (and I'm only just now beginning to bounce back from this), some stuff went down at my workplace a few months back that sort of crushed my (work) spirit a bit. And that may be a part of why I'm craving some real blogging change.
It's not easy to step away from a place that's given me so much love and support, but as someone who's led a very transient life, I'm a big advocate for the gifts of change. But I'm not abandoning blogging--on the contrary! I'm just freeing myself up to experience the blogosphere in different ways. So I hope we can stay connected. I'll still be visiting your blogs. And if you'd like to visit me, for the time being, you can find me at...
Vox - The Land of Moo
poetry - Moojo Cafe
If you're on MySpace, let's be friends!
One of my current faves, Twitter.
Flickr (And now that I have a camera again--courtesy of the enormous generosity of Eve--I can start posting to Flickr again.)
And, as always, you can find Jill and me at Bloggers for Darfur. (Now maybe I'll be a better Darfur advocate--have hardly spent any time at all lately blogging about that.)
One of the most remarkable experiences of my blogging life has been the opportunity to meet some bloggers in 'real' life. Last Friday night, I had that opportunity again, when the delightful and fabulously talented Linda and her husband Tom came to Jeffrey's gig in the City. You can read about it at Linda's. And that, my friends, is just a glimpse of the gifts that blogging has given to me.
I'm not leaving...I'm just (hopefully) morphing a bit. Peace and love. Or as Mari says, Love and Happiness.
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