Ten Years

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Today I’m marking off a decade of this blog (albeit a few months late). To have this blog for ten years was an ultimate stretch goal and it feels like both such a long and short period of time. Hoorah! If you’ve been reading from the start, thank you. If you’ve just started, thank you!

I was thinking about what to write today. I’ve really been pondering the future direction of this site for some time, and it’s interesting that it happens to be the 10th anniversary. I’ve made great friends here over the years and have had wonderful conversations. And I want to express that nothing will be changing for now – I still plan to post twice a week, Monday and Fridays, with rare exceptions. That said, I do think about how and whether this will continue for the long term. I’m a very different person now than I was ten years ago, and five years ago, and two years ago. For some time (well many times) I have been tempted to go back and delete all my old entries. But now I feel that I’ve aged to a point where I am happy just to have a record of how I thought and am no longer embarrassed…it’s just youth. Right? I think?

The internet is a wild, maddening place. There are wonderful souls, and also petty ones, which I think pretty much reflects humanity (aren’t we all a little wonderful and petty?). Someone who writes you a nasty comment one day might send you a nice email the next week. Which has happened, and it was lovely! But there are also the really tiring parts of it. And, if I’m being honest, tiring interactions. I expressed some of my political sentiments this year and had some really frightening responses, especially on social media. It was to the point where I was worried enough to take down some of my posts, which then made me feel like a coward, but to be honest, what overrode that feeling of cowardice was fear mixed with exhaustion. The internet is often where we let loose our worst impulses and I just feel too old and tired to manage that aspect of it. As I write, I realize this is truly exactly how I feel. Old and tired.

So…I don’t know how this blog will change, if at all. It might just stay as is. But it might change to something else…maybe with less frequent updates…or a newsletter format, or something I haven’t thought of yet. I hope you know I deeply appreciate your readership and I am not expressing this for attention or compliments! Because I am so thankful to you all for reading, and what I’m writing today is just a continuation of what I’ve been doing for the last ten years…sharing what’s in my head. Which often isn’t the most organized place.

But. No matter if and how this site changes, I do want to say that in writing, like in nearly all creative expression, you are putting a little of yourself out there. And in exchange you are exposed to both the worst and best of people, but truly, the VAST majority of people I have encountered have been in the “best” category. They’ve truly been wonderful. And you are all wonderful too. Thank you so much for being here on this journey.

PS: If you do enjoy this blog and my writing, I would so appreciate a pre-order of my novel IMPOSTOR SYNDROME, which will be out in a few weeks! Thank you, thank you, thank you.