Breaking the Ice

A journal from my mom for my birthday

So yeah, this old thing. It’s still here, waiting patiently for me to put words into it. I’ve spent the past few years making empty promises to it in my head but none that stuck.

And reader (if there are any), I’ll tell you a sad secret–It’s not that I write for fame and glory, but I miss the old blogging times when I just ranted and spewed about whatever was on my mind, and because I did this on a regular basis, I developed a community, and we would have conversations in the comments section and it was cool.

And then I got married and got a house and went to school, graduated and went to Europe and got a job and acquired extra cats and when I wasn’t busy with those things, I rode my bike to awesome places and took pictures that I didn’t have time to post on the Internet and Twitter happened and suddenly, I couldn’t write anything that took longer than waiting in line at the grocery store and here we are.

And every time I think about this post, the one no one is going to read1 because I dropped out of blog land, my brain says Hey at least your mom will read it, because that’s the classic joke right? She’s the one who put your kindergarten art on the fridge like it was Picasso, and kept the first tooth you ever lost in an envelope stored in a trunk in the basement for 34 years and is mandated by law to think everything you create and put into the world is the cat’s’ pajamas.2

Except of course MY mom won’t read it, because she’s been dead for 5 years, 8 months, 24 days and 3(ish) hours. And I’m still stunned sometimes at how much that continues to suck. And because she loved reading my writing, it tends to crop up whenever I think about getting back to writing.

So I’m just gonna plop that out there so I can move past it and get on with the good stuff. Because I have so much to remind myself about 2012, 2013 and where things go from here. This is the year I repair my broken relationship with the reading and writing of words.

It starts here.

 

1. At least one person will read it
2. YMMMV (Your mom mileage may vary but mine was awesome)

 

6 Comments


  1. I also suffer from a hesitancy to blog, because I fear nobody is reading.

    I miss the heyday of LiveJournal, when there was a vibrant community of people who would read each other’s detailed posts and have good comments. Facebook, with its emphasis on short posts and sharing pre-fab information, just isn’t the same.

    For whatever it’s worth, I’ve subscribed to your blog with my RSS reader.

    Reply

    1. Thanks Chris! I paid a visit to your blog as well. I need to do some serious bankrupty on my old RSS feeds. It’s littered with crap I never read. Once I do that, I’ll subscribe to yours. Maybe we can bring back some of the good ol’ days. I don’t really mind that much if nobody reads my blog since I also do it just to remember what the heck I’ve done over time, but community and dialogue is more fun. The awesome thing about LJ was the privacy settings and being able to curate your audience so that you could be reasonably sure the comments section wouldn’t devolve into the level of YouTube degenerates.

      We’ll see what, if anything happens blogging out here in the big wide world. For now I have moderation on new commenters and then once you’re approved, you’ve got the run of the place.

      Reply

  2. I just subscribed to your RSS feed, too. Thanks for the tip!

    I want to write more this year, too. I was never on LiveJournal, but I blogged random-life-thoughts in a similar way on my personal site. After I got married, I suddenly had a whole group of in-laws Google stalking me before we got a chance to meet and get to know each other, so I felt like I had to start being careful about what I say. And Facebook and Twitter happened. Nonetheless, I want to use my blog as a way for me to share more of my thinking and be visible in the opinions I hold. We’ll see how it goes!

    Keep on writing, let’s do this together!

    Reply

    1. Yay accountability! Speaking of which, I just called out my friend Heidi, who said she wanted to blog twice a week and is an amazing writer.

      Your relatives are disturbingly savvy! I’m pretty sure most of mine are trapped inside the Facebook vortex.

      Reply

  3. I’m reading. 🙂

    I miss the vibrant conversations on LJ, too. I had hoped I could still carry on that kind of relationship with other bloggers while blogging from my own domain, but that hasn’t been the case. People are reading, though; some of them email me with responses.

    Reply

    1. Yeah it’s sad how the web has become a bunch of walled gardens with APIs to connect everything, if we’re lucky. Have you heard about Thinkup? It’s an app that you can host yourself that aggregates all your social media posts on your own server, under your own domain. I installed it way back when, but haven’t touched it since. I might need to take another look at it. d

      Reply

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