Why do you keep blowing up your blog, Mrs. Wilson?

No, YOU keep blowing up your website.

I have a bad habit. Every time I feel way too insecure or exposed, or every time I have a semi-complete nervous breakdown, I blow up my blog. I have no idea how many times I’ve done it. Yearly? Every second year? So, like, 32 times by now?

Sometimes I miss the beginning days of blogging, which for me were back in 2004. I wrote because I needed an outlet. I wasn’t looking to “grow my readership”. I had exactly one reader and I wasn’t looking for any more. My blog was just my journal, and it just happened to be public for all the internets to read if they so chose, and if they could find it, since I changed my old blogspot URL every month or so just for fun. Because I’d think of a name I liked better. Most were lines from Dashboard Confessional songs.

The thing about having a blog and writing about your life/feelings there is you have no idea who’s reading it. I mean, not a lot of people read my blog, and that’s completely ok with me (being famous comes with way too much responsibility and way too much criticism), but I don’t have a list of who is reading it, not like Facebook, where the list is limited to 231 of my closest “friends”.

I blew my blog up this last time because I just plain didn’t want to post any more. It felt like a chore. And my life is so different from what it was when I started posting nine and a half years ago. Why do I do it now? What is the point? My kids are getting older, and writing about a toddler is much different than writing about a 12-year-old. I know she has no problem with me writing about her, but at the same time, she doesn’t understand the internet like I do. It’s public. And what’s out there is out there and can never be taken back, even if you hit the delete button. And kids are mean and can twist things and I don’t want to give any kid ammunition on my kid.

The way blogging has gone in recent years is less about writing what you want to write about and more about writing what the advertisers/brands/sponsors tell you to write about. I ditched ads a while ago because I didn’t like the limitations they put on what I could write about. I didn’t start writing just to have someone enforce rules on me. Writing should be free, right? And by “free”, I do not mean “feel free to write mean things about other people”, becasue oh my word, can we shut those sites down yet, please?

So, I basically have no idea what I’m doing, but there is a day every once in a while where I miss this space, and I guess I want to have it available? I dunno.

Making the blog live again is basically terrifying, but here’s to not being a total wuss. Here’s to not hiding when I feel vulnerable or self-conscious. Here’s to less self-loathing and more therapy through writing. Here’s to closing the laptop and walking away so I don’t delete this post.