Remember Blogging?

Photo by Jess Bailey Designs on Pexels.com

Remember blogging? When I first started, most people in my hometown had barely heard of it. Now numerous people have started blogging, stopped, and already moved on to Instagram or some other social media. It is difficult to follow how quickly social media has caught on, and moved on, to the next new platform. Everyone is on board now. Our children think they invented it. Mellenials are going around owning it like we Gen-Xers only had black and white television or something. Nevermind the fact that computers began before either of our generations, as I was reminded last week when I read Grace Hopper, the Queen of Computer Code by Laurie Wallmark and Katy Wu to my fourth grade library students. Not that my grandparents would have known much about computers. They didn’t have access, so they still had to write with pencils and pens.

When I was a kid, my grandmother loved that I wrote stories in notebooks and kept a diary. I had a computer in high school with a DOS Prompt, but I couldn’t take it home with me. They weren’t even portable, yet. When I moved across the ocean she wasn’t all that thrilled that I got married so young (she knew stuff I didn’t – but that’s another story), but she was possibly the biggest letter writer besides my little sister. I kept up letter writing for a long time, even after my grandmother passed away. I wrote to my parents, friends, nieces and nephews, my little sister, and occasionaly to my aunts. Sadly, I got out of the habit. I am not sure what happened, but I think I can blame technology for a big part of how I began to communicate with friends and family. Even journal writing changed. But then came a new way to journal. Remember blogging?

I loved blogging, at first. It was like writing a column since it was public, but less formal, like a journal. When I first started doing it, I had lots of heartfelt things to share with my 10 readers, but nothing lasts forever, as they say. I got a book deal, and while I lived out my dream, some things didn’t change for the better. For one thing, I am still not dripping with diamonds, go figure, but I also didn’t become a prolific writer. Even my library kids recently asked me why I only had 5 books for their moms to read, when I’ve been published since 2008. A question I have asked myself many times. But seriously, there was something about being published that made me feel like I was writing on demand. There wasn’t time for talking about everyday life in a simple blog, anymore. My publisher wanted me to use my blog to promote my books, and then came other kinds of social media. At some point, many of us kind of forgot about blogging.

I would like to see blogging make a comeback. Or has it already, and I missed it? After all, I AM a Gen-Xer, so perhaps it’s back in style with Aqua Net hairspray and nobody told me. Kind of like the fact that I am still wearing skinny jeans even though today I read that they are supposed to be out again.

Anyway, I still remember blogging. Maybe I’ll start doing it again.