The Return?

Tap tap...is this thing on?

I doubt anybody noticed but at some point in the past few years, I locked this blog. My last post was in 2017, about immigrating to the USA. I was looking forward to writing about the move. However, after moving, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, as I became increasingly self-conscious of my blog. I moved to Michigan on the heels of Trump taking office for the first time, and felt like the nostalgic navel gazing of a middle-class white woman didn't need to be occupying space. More important conversations were taking place and since I typically don't have anything worthwhile to add to the discussion of current events, I stopped posting. A few years later, I locked it from public viewing. I was content with this decision for several years.

At some point maybe a year ago, I started toying with the idea of opening the blog back up. While I hadn't missed the persistent albeit mild pressure to post entries, I did miss writing for an audience, even if it was an audience of one or two. I continue to write in my (more or less private) Livejournal but writing for an audience flexes a different muscle. Has the political world improved since 2017? Hell no. I don't even need to expand on that. I guess I naively thought we'd eventually put this dumpster fire out, but now that the trash-scented flames have enveloped us all, I've mostly lost hope of the world ever going back to how we used to know it. That's not to say that I find absolutely everything to be shit; there is still good in the world. I just feel like, at some point, it's time to carry on and do what brings me joy.

Dumpster Fire GIFfrom Dumpster GIFs

I also started thinking about how I only have a few friends on Facebook who post anything of substance, and how much I enjoy reading literally anything they have to say. Sadly, two such friends passed away this year. I miss them and I miss reading their thoughts and stories. I thought, maybe my friends feel the same way about my writing as I feel about theirs. Maybe there is space for my stupidity stories. I don't regret privatizing my blog for a few years, but I do regret some of my posts, so I've taken some of them down. Some of them are so cringy to me, part of what has taken me so long to get back on the horse has been the fear I'll end up regretting the posts I make going forward. Then again, the fact I find them cringy means I wouldn't write the same post today. All I ask is that if you read something of mine from years ago and you're tempted to judge me negatively, go ahead, but please recognize I might have something different to say on the topic now. It's been 10 years(!!) since I wrote here regularly.


I just realized writing here again creates a place to post my favourite relevant memes and whatnot. That's exciting.

I can't and won't commit myself to writing regularly, but I'd like to have the platform to do so when I feel like it. In the words of Oasis, whom I was lucky enough to see three times this summer: hello, hello, it's good to be back.

Post-mortem:
Anthony: [seeing my computer screen] Oh boy, Unexpectedly Jaime!
Me: Yup, I'm opening the blog back up!
Him: What are you going to blog about?
Me: Returning to blogging.

Him: Very meta of you.