April 8, 2024.

My morning started off incredible today. I had energy. I wore my new dress, then changed into my new romper when the dress proved ill fit for housework. 

It feels like a luxury to have so many clothes. I wonder what life was like when they had two, maybe three changes of clothes to wear. Two daily outfits and a special one. 

It seems selfish that so many dream of more while I, in my privileged state, dream of less.

The world has become so noisy. We have media of all varieties, all spreading the same 2-3 narratives, pounding information into our primitive minds at all hours of the day. Every time you turn on your phone—our most used tool—you wind up longing for something you don’t have, or looking for new ways to spend hard earned resources.

Your time, your attention, what you listen to, none of it belongs to you anymore. Someone, somewhere, is paying for it. Always. I’m not convinced they care about us outliers who disagree. There’s no ‘big brother’ waiting to shut me down if I say anything. It’s the agreeable masses I’m concerned about. And that’s who they’re concerned about, too. As long as they can keep those ones contained, they’ll do the dirty work. 

I stepped away from creating and advocating in pursuit of what I preached about. The change starts in our homes. And it required me to stop inviting them into my home with this little device.

But I’m a writer, and I still like writing. 

So I wore my romper and folded laundry. Then I grew tired and put the laundry aside, because my cold from last week continues to siphon my energy. When I was done, I put on my yoga pants and a tank top and sweater and took my youngest to gymnastics.

Three outfits in one day. An entire wardrobe for some people, and more than that for others, in one day. 

Then, I returned home and my headache crashed in once more. Like waves, every time I bent over or moved too quick, it crashed through the back of my skull. So, I rested. I watched 1923, and texted my grandma in law who loves these shows. Then I started supper.

I made the potatoes and carrots, my husband made the minute steaks. My eldest hardly ate, my youngest ate three times what she was served. I ate my share, my husband his. Then the girls enjoyed their last slices of cake, and my youngest asked for cereal. Clearly, she’s in her next growth spurt and my eldest is out of her recent one.

Now, I bathe my baby as I type. Distracted parenting. Am I so wrong for it? Maybe. But I do love to write. Is it so bad to want to write while she draws all over the tub with the markers she was given? I wonder what life would be like without a phone at all. If I just watched her write.

That’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll put her to bed and miss her. And then tomorrow, we will start again. 

Hello

It’s been a long time since I flexed my fingers to type for Blogspot. I uncovered old posts from 2015, when I was still pregnant with my firstborn. So much time has passed. The luxury of Blogspot is that no one reads it, so I have no one to bring up to speed.

I can just hop on, type, and then resume everyday life.

Social media as a whole—including self-hosted blogs—has reached a stage where it feels too much like an alternate universe. A parallel to the one we’re living, manufactured not by the cosmos but by the law of man.

The standards are harsher than in real life, resembling more of a wild west type frontier than a real community. Only, instead of thieves and gunmen we have keyboard warriors and hackers. 

I miss the simpler days where you wrote for the theory of an audience—the idea that someone might be paying attention. Which is why, nine years later, I stand on the horizon of a barren blogspot. 

Ready to flex my fingers to the tune of a random schedule, perhaps hours apart, perhaps months or even years apart. An empty comment section, null in the viewer count column, and an entire blank canvas to throw words at.

Yes, I miss it here. I’m excited to be back. However long my return may be.