I wrote my first
entry for YumYumCafe at a time when blogging was still in its early bloom. I
had contributed to a few other blogs, but eventually I decided to create one of
my own. My idea was simple: a place where family and friends, scattered across
the globe, could peek into my life.
Of course, there
were other motivations too. First of all, it was an exciting time in the
blogging world. Web 2.0 had arrived, and suddenly people who weren’t
professional journalists could publish their own stories. I remember reading
first-hand accounts from war zones, or artists peeling back the curtain on
their creative process. It felt as though we were being invited to stand like a
fly on the wall, watching people make sense of the world in real time.
For the first
time in my life, I felt part of a wide community. And I didn’t just want to be
a consumer or a commenter. I wanted to create.
This shift was
thrilling. Up until then, the internet had been something you consumed, but
blogging opened the door to being a maker. I also had a strong sense that my
young children would grow up in a world shaped by this technology, in ways I
couldn’t yet imagine. So, it seemed important, even in my small way, to join
in.
The irony is that
my family and friends weren’t the least bit interested in my blog. Not then,
not later. But other blogger and strangers were. Over the first decade, I
developed deep friendships with some bloggers. Charlotte,
for example, became a dear friend, and Ronnie was a kind of mentor for several
years. These connections felt more personal and honest than many of the
relationships I had with neighbours or colleagues. Back then, people wrote
straight from the heart. They weren’t branding themselves or curating their
image. Ronnie, for example,
wrote about growing old in America, and it struck me as a voice that needed to
be heard.
Blogging was
never without competition. First came MySpace, and then Facebook and the
others, which blew the wind out of the sails of the blogging community. For me,
the real death knell came when Google shut down its Reader. I had spent years
building a library of newspapers, journalists, and bloggers to follow. And
suddenly it was gone. I never found a satisfying replacement. Slowly, I stopped
following other blogs, though I did keep writing my own for a while.
About five or six
years ago, when work became overwhelming, my blog began sputtering. I told my
family I was thinking of closing it down. To my surprise, both my daughter and
my son urged me not to. They said it was part of my artistic legacy, even if
they weren’t reading it themselves. (In the meantime, both Julien and Sara do
read the blog.) That gave me a second wind. Since then, I’ve been writing more
regularly again, and I’ve come to see the blog as part of who I am. Not
necessarily what I produce, but the process itself: a daily act of expression.
And that is precious.
I know Blogger is
clunky and outdated, and I’ve often thought about exporting everything
somewhere else. But I cling to it, partly out of loyalty, partly out of
laziness. Thousands of entries later, it feels like an archive of enthusiasms,
obsessions, and half-baked ideas. Sometimes I think I should tidy it up, delete
obsolete posts or broken links. But Julien told me to leave them. It doesn’t
need to be polished. It is what it is: an ongoing, growing archive of a life
lived out loud, in public, with whoever cared to read along.
And, against all
odds, I think I’ll continue.
