A few years ago, I decided to deprioritize the blog... for several reasons.
First, my life was all cancer all the time, and I really just didn't feel like I was writing much worth reading that wasn't about the cancer and the impact it had on our life.
Second, and more relevant to the current state of social media, is that in large part, people stopped commenting on blogs... They would comment on twitter, or facebook, or reddit, or wherever they found the post, or had the post shared with them etc... but they wouldn't actually comment on the blog itself.
... The discussion moved away from the platform... and that killed the entire point of blogs, which was to actively engage with readers and commenters. Otherwise, it's just a web site... or worse, a livejournal...
So, I moved my primary social media activity and most of my new writing, from this blog, to other social media... Mostly facebook, with a little bit of twitter, and eventually a little bit of MeWe.
... I still occasionally posted, as my loyal readers hopefully noted... but often I went months at a time between blog posts.
However, I am generally a long form writer... I've got several blog posts exceeding 10,000 words, and at least a couple exceeding 20,000 words... and across the last 15 years that Ive been writing in this space, I've managed to write a couple of series of posts exceeding 100,000 words, which is entire book length.
... And Facebook isn't exactly well suited to long form writing... though I've still managed to write a fair few long form posts anyway.
Well... For quite some time now, a lot of my readers and friends have asked me to start posting my longer FB posts back to my blog... at the very least because FB makes it extremely difficult to save and find posts later, and it can be difficult to link to or excerpt a post when you want to etc...
As it happens, I had already decided to do so... and few days ago I mentioned I was already in the process of doing it... But, you have been following both FaceBook AND the blog all along, you may have noted I hadn't done so yet (or at least not until a few minutes ago).
I haven't forgotten about doing so... I'm just in the process of collecting, cleaning up and re-writing in blog format, and then scheduling those posts to come out one or two at a time, so i'm not flooding the blog with tens of thousands of words all at once.
... So... why now?
Well, a few reasons... For one thing, I've noted that some people are starting to engage with long form writing and blogs again. Also, my life, while not exactly great at the moment, is at least no longer all cancer all the time, so I feel like I can write more about what I actually want to write about.
... But there WAS something specific that prompted me to act on the notions that have been stewing for months, where I was hesitating before now...
For the last 10 years, I have suffered from what I, and other cancer warriors call "cancer brain"... I have had long and severe bouts of overwhelming fatigue, lack of clarity and focus, writers block, and even readers block, where I literally can't concentrate or focus enough to read, sometimes for months at a time. I have spent days, weeks, months at a time, going in and out of what those of us who suffer from it call "brain fog"... where I can have seemingly normal function, even be reasonably intelligent and clever and seem to write reasonably well... but it's not me... it doesn't feel right, it doesn't... work... It's not good work and good writing, or at least not good enough. I try to grasp ideas and work with them, and they just slip away. I try to write the proper words to say what I really mean, in the way I want to say it... and I just can't.
... But there have been moments when I came out of the fog, and WAS able to do good work... even some things I thing are great. Among the best I've written... They're not common, but they have been happening more and more, as I recover more and more.
A few days ago, I managed to write about 20,000 words, on several different subjects, in just a few hours... I think maybe some pretty good ones, as I have strung them together.
My brain started working close to how it should for a few hours... Waking up after a good quality sleep with less pain and no reflux (for the first time in days) was undoubtedly a big help there... but sometimes, in the midst of the fog, I hit a clear patch, and can think, and write, and be productive, at least a bit like I used to.... And hopefully will again.
And in that clear patch, I wrote wrote couple of the best things I've written in a good long while, as well as a couple of linked posts that are...
...Let's call them interesting seeds, that will hopefully grow from possibilities in peoples minds, to interesting realities in peoples lives.
So, I decided that I would stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and at the very least, post here, whatever I may write that I think is good... or that may plant interesting seeds in peoples minds...
...If I can achieve that... it's something worthwhile... And you can't hope for much better than that.