January 29th, 2019

Why the hair, why the pearls?

The title of this post is a line from the Simpsons. If you don’t recognize it, because you have better things to do than remember mid-nineties pop culture, it’s from a scene where brainy Lisa, who has odd hair and wears pearls, has asked her father one too many questions about some stupid plan he has. Defensively, he replies, “Why the hair, why the pearls, why anything?” In my house this has become a shorthand for “let’s just not bother with an explanation because there might not be one, ok?”

I have been blogging for–full disclosure–18 years. Up until 2007, it was under a nickname and just for friends, as a way to keep in touch–back then, everyone was doing it and I was part of a little network of friend-blogs. That year, I realized that with some stories published I might get googled so I should have a blog under my real name for everyone, so I made the blogspot blog, the first Rose-coloured. I got some more readers, and eventually got this blog with my own URL, personalized design, hosting, real-professional-like. Through it all, what have I been doing? Yammering, for the most part. Entertaining myself, keeping some version of a public diary, playing games, writing about whatever was bugging or entertaining me.

There was a period around 2009-2011 where I had the most readers I ever had, which wasn’t very many, but still–if you knew approximately who I was maybe you also knew I had a blog. Crucially, you probably wouldn’t have read it–you just knew it existed and maybe if you also started a blog, asked me to mention it here, which I dutifully did to almost no effect. Even that has dropped away until now, when the loyal few readers I have are a) people who know and like me in real life and thus the people who were likely to have read that first secret blog way back when and b) random googlers, who stop by once or twice.

Kerry wrote this lovely post, The Back to the Blog Movement, when she describes the joy in blogging: “Right back where we started in Web 2.0, with stories and voices in a range that the world has never before been able to read, voices not in chorus, but not so polarized either. Connected, but not in a thread, more like a quilt, if we’re thinking in textiles. Niche onto niche, something for everyone. With room enough for stories, and questions, and nuance, and reflection, and changing your mind. And also for changing the world, in the small and subtle ways that blogs have always mattered—turns out I’m not ready to give up on that one just yet.” 

I thought that sounded so promising and I was really looking forward to whatever Kerry would do next–but then Melanie wrote a Back to the Blog post, and Julia wrote one and Lindsay wrote one and then I realized “Ohh, it’s a movement, you have to participate!”

So here we are. What are blogs for, to me? They are for thinking aloud, and for hearing what others think and yes, for connecting, in those little networks of friend blogs that still exist, a little, per above. It’s nice to yammer and nice to be read, but it’s also lovely to know what it is entertaining and bothering others, especially other people I like. It’s what I always want to do. 

I have never had something I dreamt of so fully come into reality as blogs. When I was in high school, I dreamed of having my own newspaper column, only it wouldn’t be about any one thing–it would just be about life and things and experiences. It was called–don’t laugh–My Dining Companion–because it was sort of a parody restaurant review column where the whole world was a restaurant I was reviewing and everyone I met was my dining companion. Stop laughing!

I was a very lofty teenager.

But I got my column! Everybody did, who wanted one, and it suits me. I like blogs that have a personal lens on the universe more than the ones that are just about a specific subject, even if the subject is one I’m interested in. I like book blogs and recipe blogs, but I tend to dip in and out depending on whether I want that recipe or am interested in that author–however, if I’m interested in the *writer*, if it’s the personal journey through food or books that I’m following, it doesn’t matter that I don’t want to eat/read whatever it is. I’ll follow a human being I care about anywhere. 

I’m always sad when people abandon their blogs, even though I think some of them have a natural arc and end to them, like episodic novels or something, and other people are just bad at this format. My Blogger reader, which I still check, is full of ditched blogs but I still keep them in there, just in case–sometimes people come back. If you had a blog once but gave it up eight years ago and then you write a post tomorrow, I will see it in my reader and click on it–I’ll read it. I’ll follow you anywhere, friend.