Blog Tales

 

 Once upon a time, there was a place I loved, a place I visited frequently, a place that felt like home, a party, and a gathering of like-minded people. It was often referred to as The Blogosphere and it was joy. I spent many hours crafting pieces for my blogs. There was the blog where I related tales of living in a place of chaos known as the Manor, with Lord of the Manor, Spawn, Minor Minion, Most Minor Minion, and a bunch of critters. That blog witnessed the coming of age of my offspring, my stepping out of the stay-at-home mom/spouse and into the workforce for the first time in a decade or so. It also witnessed the marriage of my eldest, the end of my own marriage, and the dawn of a totally new life. It was a fun blog, for the most part, filled with silliness and snark.

Somehow, while all that was going on, I sorted out how to use the platform of WordPress and started a writer blog and Selma (of Selma and the City) and I started doing story prompts. Oh, the joy of those days and all the wonderful stories that came of it. My memories of those years, while fleeting (the years, not the memories) are some of the best. So many amazing stories by lots of writers. I learned so much from everyone and found blogs to follow, which kept me so busy reading and writing, that housework didn’t just take a backseat, it never got invited into the damn car in the first place.

Then I wrote a book. I had it published and it was fun. I even earned a little bit of money from it and decided to get another blog going so readers of my book could follow along on the progress of the second book of the series. But, like my marriage and other wild adventures, that blog kind of went away. Actually, the blog is still there, I’m still paying for it, and I still want to finish the series and move on. I’ve since taken the book off the market to do some minor fixes that got past me and my editors, finish the second and third books of the series, then I’ll do what I can to get them all out there.

But, in the meantime life kind of blew apart and writing became more of an escape than a journey and exhaustion was a constant companion. There was the era of owning a business, being caregivers to my parents for almost two years, then bringing Tammie’s mom to live with us for another 18 months until she passed, and while that was going on, we closed the shop due to the 2020 shutdown and other disasters. After lots of back and forth, we realized we’d reached the age of retirement and figured after over 10 years of no days off (except when I had my heart attack, then I got my first “vacation” in 8 years when Tammie’s mom went to stay elsewhere while I recovered), it was time to retire.

In all that time, with all that stuff going on, I kept thinking of the blogs. I thought about the stories I’d read and wondered if the bloggers were still around. Most of us had moved on to a new social network that was supposed to be even better than blogs, and the fun thing where you had to make a story in 140 characters. Both platforms have changed a lot since their beginning, and not really for the better, but whatever. But the blogs… they’re still out there. They’re still telling stories, they’re still hoping people will come back to reading, commenting, and sharing.

It’s time for me to do that. I’ll probably keep my facebook stuff going, simply because I have made some amazing friends there, but… I want to go back to the blogosphere again. I want to dive into stories, ones I write and those written by others. I want to read the funny, the perplexing, the eerie tales pulled from some writer’s imagination. I want to dive into all the rest of what the community had to offer readers and writers alike. That being said, I’m going to attempt to make more than one post every other year, and see if I can awaken my alter-ego, Og for a few guest appearances. I miss Og. Maybe I’ll sort out my retirement activities and get back to being the writer I loved being, back in the heyday of the Blogosphere.