The Girl I Used to Be

One thing about having blogged pretty regularly for more than 18 years (!!!) is that I can look back and know almost exactly what I was thinking at any given point. Sometimes, I purposefully left out stuff -- some I remember and some I wish I'd included because I have no idea -- and sometimes I talked around things, like a particular relationship difficulty, or a relationship altogether because the person I was with didn't want it known.

But mostly, there's a record of almost two decades. If you journal, you know what I mean... but mine's semi-public. I actually shut down the oldest part a few weeks ago when I read something political I'd written and realized I never ever EVER wanted anyone who doesn't know me now to read it without present-day context.

There are other things, too. I've written about religious faith with a confidence I don't have anymore. I've linked to articles and songs that meant so much to me but that I no longer believe are even valid.

And the flowing language I used to talk about James when we first got together? Gross! Don't get me wrong: I'm ridiculously enamored of him. But the limerence is hard to take. I guess that's what happens when you have someone who actually loves you after having been in contentious relationships for so long. Still... gag reflex engaged.

Oh, and other people's kids? I guess in the beginning, I knew it was just my immediate family keeping in touch through the "online journal." I complained about so many people's children! Over time, of course, I became sensitive to how public this milieu is. But also, I had a second kid who embodies a lot of the characteristics I used to hold against other parents!

I used to do a lot of reviews, because when I had a bigger reader base, it made me feel like people cared about my opinion in a mere substantial way than anyone probably did. So I wrote with authority and finality about my experiences. Weirdly, the two most viewed reviews to this day are the McDonald's steak and egg bagel (DELICIOUS!) and L'oreal's Couleur Experte (??!) hair color. Like people still find those through whatever search terms they're using to this day. But I don't think I've done a blog structured like that in years. Because, really, who do I think I am?

WAY OFF TOPIC ASIDE: The name of L'oreal's dye always annoyed me. And this skit sums it up perfectly.



Finally, I notice that I used to do a lot of long-format, photo-rich posts. They were coherent and cohesive in a way that I feel like I need to excuse myself from the house and sit somewhere alone for hours if I'm going to make that work now. I blame this on two things: First, I used to have a fairly self-sufficient only child who didn't tax my brain so much that there was nothing left over for literary creative pursuits. Second, I didn't used to have anyone to really talk to, so everything came out in my blog.

Whereas I used to craft narratives with a beginning, middle, and end, now I'm perfectly aware of how often I end with "Welp, gotta clean the bathroom!" or "It's three days later. I guess this post is over." You wouldn't believe how many unpublished drafts I have just because I started something substantial with a head of steam, had to stop, and then a few days later just didn't care about. I just looked: it's 40 over the past three years. More than once a month I've thought, "This needs to be said and I'm the gal to say it!" until I ran out of craps to give because my aging brain can't keep up with verbing and a small child.

It is fun and humbling to look back on the things I've felt mattered enough to write AND publish (although I can also see the stuff I didn't publish... and the 6 of you can't, so ppppthh). I laugh, I cringe, I have amnesia about some of it. But it's kind of amazing that, in one form or another (first Diaryland, then Wordpress, and now Blogger), I've been writing about both day-to-day minutiae and big-to-me ideas fairly consistently for nearly two decades.

But, really, I have been doing it for even longer than that. Way back in the olden days of dot matrix printers, I used to make newsletters using templates from a word processing program we had. I'd select appropriate clip art and compose stories about what was going on with our family, what I was looking forward to, and what my friends were up to and send them to classmates, my grandma, and basically anyone who would read them.

Over the years, I've written some things that have made me money, and that's sweet, but think this encyclopedic volume of random thoughts and happenings is both the best and worst thing I will ever have completed. As they say, writers write. And it doesn't matter that no one asked me to, or that few people read it (including my kids; my mom used to worry that D would be offended by my honest expressions of frustration about parenting an infant... and D has zero interest in this blog on any level!). I've left huge imprints of my truest self over several URLs on the World Wide Web, and that's pretty cool.