May 6, 2022

(A portrait of a lady on her blog with a mug promoting her blog)

and it's weird to think about how much of my life has been chronicled here over the years. I started this iteration of this blog 13 years ago and if I go into my blog backend I can see posts that I wrote when I lived in other places, loved other people, and was 

a different person in so many ways.

I've been publishing online since 2000 but jumped around to different hosting platforms as they came and went

at first I had a LiveJournal
then a DeadJournal
then I was on Blogger.com
then I was on WordPress

and now because I'm married to a software developer I use his custom CMS called Elefant and he maintains it for me 

which is a huge relief because HTML and CSS were never my strong suit.

The other day I was talking to a student and mentioned that I've been blogging all this time and she said 

"why? How do you still find stuff to talk about after all these years?"

and I said Well, I write about my life and I keep livin' it, so I keep writing.

How much I blog has ebbed and flowed over the years

there was a time when I blogged every single day and that was hard because sometimes it was a struggle to pull a thought or a story or a post out of the humdrum of day-to-day life

but it was rewarding because I got much, much better at my craft and found my voice in a new way because when you really think about it

this blog is an ongoing piece of art made of my words and thoughts

pixels on a screen organized into dates and timestamps that give me a sense of place and time and offer this strange little window in the things I was thinking, feeling, going through in that moment.

The posts on this blog feel like 

puzzle pieces of my heart
of my soul
of myself 

that I've worked on for years and years

creating a larger image that grows with me

a map of myself that I discover as I explore it in real-time.

Of course people have made fun of me for blogging over the years, rolled their eyes when I pulled out my camera to take a picture of dinner

(this was before iPhones and Instagram)

I've had people treat my blog like it isn't art
tell me it isn't "real" writing
or that it's not a serious form of self-expression

but yr art isn't for other people so it's cool if they don't understand it

or get jealous or petty when the thing you love to do and have done with love for years opens up opportunities for you.

Being known as a writer is why I have my company, why I've gotten speaking gigs and teaching jobs and been on committees and panels and been a spokesperson for causes I believe in

because Alyson Circa 2000 needed a place to put her feelings and stuck with it

despite dry spells
despite feeling dumb
despite feeling nervous, embarrassed, ashamed

this ever-evolving piece of art is something that never fails to make me

so happy.

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