I'd Like to Get Off the Stage

I miss blogs. I've heard tinklings of this thought rumble around in the past year or so...but no one is doing much about it. We start and stop and try and pause, but the beauty about blogs was their regularity. Here's the thing though, they took a little time. Blogs required work from the writer, and a little buy-in from the reader. It was kind of a conversation, but it felt intimate and solid.

I'm honestly bored of Instagram. It's almost too regular. It's almost too fast and too simple. Everything there (at least in my feed) is starting to bleed into each other. It sounds like one loud Christian women's conference. And, I LOVE Christian women's conferences! I do. I created one--and honestly it was born out of a unique moment on the Internet.

If I'm honest, I think we're approaching another unique moment on the Internet. Vulnerability is not novel. Content is all crazy well produced. And, it's coming at us with force and speed. Fake News is a thing, and everyone is on edge. 

Instagram feels like a stage to me, and maybe that's why I've been quiet there. It feels like a place you go to SAY SOMETHING. And, increasingly, you have to say it loudly, with specific calls to action or it gets buried within 10 minutes. 

If Instagram (and Twitter and Facebook) feel like a stage, then an old school blog kind of feels like a neighborhood. To find my little place in the world, you'll need to type in the address. :) You'll get to see the vibe of my place, and not just hear me shouting something at you. This is what I want. I desire this sort of arrangement as both a writer AND as a reader.

I miss blogs, and so every day I kind of putter over to Cup of Jo and Go Fug Yourself (which, despite the name, is not anything profane AT ALL!) and I might quietly tap on Erin's door. Sure, Joanna has contributors now and GFY is run by a duo, but Erin is still over there tapping out entries all on her own in the dead of stinking night. And, I know she tap taps the keys pre-dawn because I've hung around long enough and read deep enough (it doesn't hurt that we've talked over life and the Internet over slow brunches and over in Africa).

You know who else's blog I refresh allllllll the time hoping for a new post? Lindsey Kubly. She's the gentlest, quietest (in the BEST WAY), most helpful blogger around.

Anyway: I've got a book coming out in like 6 weeks. That's bonkers. And, it's all because of starting a blog a bit over a decade ago now. In the run up to the book, I'd like to create a new little home on the Internet. I think I've got a neglected, empty little place here...it's going to take a little more than flipping on some lights and rolling some paint on the walls. I'm going to have to show up here. And, you are, too. 

But, maybe we can find a little place to connect again. Somewhere more like sitting on a squishy couch together, cross legged with our fingers wrapped around mugs. I'd like to get off the stage, if that's all right with you? 

Tomorrow, I'm planning on doing a good old-fashioned "catch up" kind of post. Like a "what I did over summer break" of sorts. See ya then, I hope. xo.

PS: Would you leave me a comment like the olden days so I can know you here? That would make my whole day. I'm trying to cut a new trail here in the wilderness of the Internet. I'm glad you're here with me.