When I started this blog, I was 23. I lived in Chicago. And at the time, I apparently liked to be thought of as an “art girl,” although now I’m not really sure what that means. I blogged everything.
Today, I’m 28. Shaun and I just moved to Ann Arbor to enjoy a lower cost of living and raise Lila closer to her family in a city with good public schools. I work hard. I love deeply. I give a shit. I am definitely not a girl; there’s something about giving birth and feeding someone from your boobs for over a year that makes anything less than “woman” laughable. I love art and I will always have an active creative life.
I miss blogging at times, but not the persona that somehow invariably builds up around a person known only through writing. It’s freeing to just let life happen and not to be filtering it through “blog goggles.” Although, I’m not even sure I could if I wanted to: I haven’t thought in essay format for a while. There is no beginning, middle, and end to my experiences. These days, it just feels like I’m beginning, beginning, and beginning again. It is only in retrospect that I notice anything has ended. I suspect this is what happens when you live with a one-year old, although I’m sure there are other forces at work too. Current modes of social media (Facebook, Twitter) force us to think in the “now.” We become a series of action verbs. What is the big picture? What is the context? I worry about how these modes of communicating will shape our thinking as a society, but participate nonetheless and am shaped by it more than I probably realize.
Recently, a few bloggers from Xanga yesteryear reached out to me via Facebook and I couldn’t have been happier. I don’t think any of us blog much anymore and I wonder why not for them. For me, I’m full. My days are busier than they’ve ever been and if I have the luxury of free time, I’m probably over the moon with the possibility that I could finally get laid. Sorry to be crass, but those of you who work your ass off career and parenting-wise know that finding time to unwind with the person you find sexy enough to conceive with in the first place is really not as simple as it should be. So if I’ve managed to get through a day feeling great with even an ounce of energy left, sitting down at the computer is pretty low on the list. But tonight, I can’t sleep. So here I am, a moment to myself, wondering whatever happened to this blog and what kind of blogname I’d come up with to define myself if I started one now. AnnArborArtWoman28 just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
