Blogaversary

Today’s my 13 year WordPress anniversary. Wild.

I don’t think I have blogs going back that far here, but I’ve been using this account on WordPress for at least that long. And let me tell you, 2009 was a very different time on the internet.

Now, I don’t want to do a “back in the good ole days” rant-type post (though that would be exactly what I’d blog about back then), but I will say this: the internet used to be different. Yeah, I know you know, and I’m not saying it was better or worse, but I enjoyed it more then because I was younger, happier, and there was more to do in theory. I know there are technically more websites now, so it’s not really true, but I visit, like, three websites, and I used to go all over the internet, read interesting blogs, find funny memes before we had the word “meme”, play flash games, discover really awful truths about the world, you know, all that.

But things have changed, and that’s fine, but the existence of blogs has certainly declined since then. I don’t even use mine the same way. I used to post “humorous” rants and stories and “hot takes” and occasional fiction in hopes of finding an audience but mostly just to get my words out into the world. Writing things down is really an amazing way to flush feelings out of your system, and not even just the bad ones. Like, sometimes I’d have a thought that was particularly intrusive (again, not always bad), and it would just come back over and over until I wrote it down and set it free into the universe.

But blogs don’t work like they used to. They’ve been superseded by vlogs and Instagram captions and Tweets, and, again, that’s fine. It’s whatever. Attention spans have dwindled, and I am just as guilty of the six-second deficit as everyone else. But I do miss it. I miss actual reads and not just scrolling bots, I miss organic comments and not chunks of spam and a sea of nothing else otherwise, I miss shitty MS Paint cartoons and rough colored pencil scans and trying so hard to produce the best thing you could and having it look like trash but that was okay because so was everyone else. But I also miss the Spice Girls and platform tennis shoes and low-rise jeans, and it’s not like the world is better or worse without them, just different.

I did, however, find a suuuuuper old blog of mine and went back and read one of the very first posts from 2010, and guess what I fucking said in it?

I finally have my life figured out. That’s right–done. I am going to online tutor for moolah, I am going to write some blogs for a little more cash, and I’m going to write romance novels.

Me, the prophet

I was joking, for the most part, but here we fucking are.

ANYWAY, here’s a mood board I threw together this morning for the last book in my still unnamed fantasy romance trilogy.