I’ve been blogging in some form or another since college.
Despite being an early 2000s high schooler, I missed out on the MySpace/LiveJournal days, only because I was too uncool to have any reason to get involved in any online social shit – I wrote in my ActualJournal and read books and spoke with people in person (in my space, theirs, or some neutral territory).
But when I went away to college and found myself with too many emotions and nobody to share them with, I started writing long, detailed emails to friends and family. It was sort of a Substack, I guess, especially as it was shared and the list grew organically – I think the older people in my life enjoyed reliving the angst of their youth.
Then, when I had too many body feelings and nowhere to put them, I started a blog about my experience with Gastric Bypass surgery and the positive and negative effects it’d had on my body and my brain.
When I first moved to London, I started blogging on WordPress (I think I deleted that one a long time ago), then started a baking blog (which is still around and holds some of my forever-favorite recipes, although I update very rarely). I actually put a lot of time and effort into that one, even going so far as to buy a DSLR and some other photography equipment to try to make my photos match up to other popular food blogs. But it was a timesuck and I had a job and a partner and – oh, yeah – a bunch of other blogs to keep up.
Eventually, I started this here website, as part of my MA program(me), and for the past 10+ years I’ve been focusing most of my blogging energy on this linked blog. It’s been a great place for me to keep my thoughts, and for some of you to find and connect with me. But the times, they are a-changing, and my blogging habits are changing with them.
Please don’t roll your eyes when I tell you I have a Substack now. I did it because I wanted to make sure that anyone who wants email updates from me can get them easily, and I was struggling to figure out how to make that happen (in the tiny slice of time I was able to cordon off for this kind of unpaid, non-writing, nonetheless-necessary admin) easily and straightforwardly. So I turned to Substack, like so many others, and I have to say: I love it. If you’d like to hear from me monthly, about some of the things that have been bringing me joy during these difficult times, please sign up. It’s free, of course.
I’ve also been writing on Medium, where my work is sometimes published by literary journals and magazines – including the one I started! So you can find me there too. And of course I’ll still be writing on the body blog whenever I have health- or weight-related things to talk about, which is unfortunately pretty often, these days.
All of which is to say: I probably won’t be updating here very often. If I have announcements, I might post them on the blog and link to them from the home page, but I’m more likely to share on Twitter or Facebook unless it’s something really big (please, god, let there be something really big someday soon).
Thanks for sticking with me. I appreciate you <3
Right on!