It was twelve years ago that I first started blogging. The reason why I started? In a word, it was stupidity.
Back in 2005, I was working a completely terrible job: I was a cashier at Walmart. Before you ask, yes, all those stories you hear about Walmart are in fact true. It isn’t the other associates who make the job unbearable; it’s management and the customers. I wish I could say that I was kidding. My poor husband was dead sick of hearing me rant about the idiocy I had to deal with on a daily basis, so he finally said, “Get a blog. I order you.”
I took his advice and hit up Blogger. On this day in 2005, I made my introductory post. It ended up a bit wordier than I had originally thought but I was pretty proud of it. So my blog journey began.
My updates on Blogger were infrequent at best. I only posted when something spectacularly vacuous happened to me. Working at Walmart, things of that magnitude did happen. Asininity was a pretty regular occurrence there. However, the more I blogged, the more my blog changed. I started to cover geekier things, like Pokémon and Transformers. I started writing BotCon reports. My blog went from simply being a place to complain about my horrible job to being a part of myself.
I’ll be the first to admit: to a degree, I miss my old blog. It was simple. It started out as one note but it was fun. Basically, it was a place for me to rant about all the things that irritated me to no end at the rather ghastly job I worked. I did expand things a little; I started to include some geekier posts, a little bit of politics, the occasional current event. It became a bit more varied than I had originally intended, which is probably why that blog lasted as long as it did.
Sadly, I didn’t have the dedication to updating and posting on it as I’ve had here. There are large gaps between posts; it took two years for me to crack a hundred posts in any given year. That is due to the fact that it was so focused; it was meant to be a “This Space for Rant” sort of blog. When I expanded things a little, the posts seemed to be trending upwards.
Then it all came crashing down around me a few years later.
Once my old high school “friend” tracked me down and started following me, things began to slow down. Blogging wasn’t as much fun anymore; I felt that if I wasn’t careful, she’d look over my shoulder, wrinkle up her nose and shake her head in disapproval. I started backing off but then, I made a post about Transformers: the Movie.
At the time, I was angry. The reason? I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that my childhood wasn’t as normal as I had once believed. When you discover that what you lived through wasn’t normal, that it was abusive, you begin to mourn. The process of grieving is not a pretty one; you will feel depressed one day and angry the next. Or you’ll feel both emotions with a denial chaser. One day, you’re feeling pretty okay and the next, you don’t want to crawl out of bed. It isn’t pretty.
However, my friend took offense to that and posted some, shall we say, “interesting” words on her own blog. Yes, I read them. When I was done, I honestly struggled with the decision to keep my blog running; the urge to simply delete everything and move on was very high. This has been a bit of a cycle between us, honestly. She’ll be warm and friendly for a while, slowly begin to become critical, then she will outright attack. Once she’s done with the attack, she starts the cycle again by being nice. So I left my blog, more or less.
I updated a few times. But the posts were few and far between. I felt no joy in blogging, didn’t want to face someone who had become a critic rather than a friend. Even worse was the night after I posted an update and I was cornered on Yahoo!Messenger by this friend who dragged me into a lengthy “We have to talk about your ex” conversation. I had information that I neither wanted or needed shoved down my throat. That was more or less the end of my stint on Blogger.
As the years wore on, I realized that I missed having a voice. I did enjoy sharing my thoughts–however crazy they might be–with the rest of the world. On a whim, on a day in early July of 2015, I started posting here. Rather than do the usual introductory post, I simply dove in, feet first, as I’ve done this before. I was used to it. The introduction could come later and it did.
To be honest, if things had been different, if I hadn’t been subject to that screed, if someone who I thought I knew had actually read my posts rather than skim them and judge, if I hadn’t been ambushed after updating and given information I neither wanted or needed, I wouldn’t be here. I’d still be updating my old blog. I’d still be chugging along. However, the asininity that I would be documenting would be different; I’m not at Walmart anymore. Costco can have some moments were things get crazy, but the culture is very different. I’m not dealing with management who wants to fire me. I’m not dealing with as many upset and screaming children. Again, the culture where I am now is absolutely different; I don’t think I’d be posting rants there about how my job sucks anymore. It would have to be something different.
But the way things are now, I’m sure I’d have plenty of material.
Will I ever go back? I honestly don’t know. I’ve told my hubby he can do whatever he’d like to the old blog; he hasn’t taken it up yet but we’ll see. Me, I don’t think I could ever return to Blogger, as reaction gifs don’t work well there and the templates aren’t exactly all that customizable. I have more freedom here. But it’s a little surprising that twelve years ago today, I took the steps to get where I am now. It’s been a long, strange trip and for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d change much of anything.
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