A few weeks ago, while migrating old posts into Realmscapes, I opened a folder on my computer called Old Blogs. This was less like opening an orderly archive and more like excavating a settlement whose inhabitants had repeatedly changed their minds about the municipal color scheme. There were old posts, notes, logos, abandoned plans, and color palettes from websites I had nearly forgotten existed.
“Oh, I forgot that I’d done that.”
“Wow, I’ve done that so many times.”
And occasionally, “I can’t believe I kept that after all these years.”
Somewhere in that digital archaeological dig, I realized I’ve been doing this for about a decade.
In late 2015 or early 2016, before I retired, I took an online class called Blog Brilliantly. I’d already been thinking about starting a blog, but the class introduced me properly to a hobby I would keep abandoning and returning to for the next ten years.
My first real blog was called Working on Life. I had a terrible time choosing the name. I wanted something that captured a discovery I’d made about myself: even after career changes, raising children, buying and selling houses, and doing all the other things that supposedly turn a person into a finished adult, I still hadn’t figured IT out.
Whatever IT was.
I was still working on making life better. I wondered whether other people felt the same way. I never entirely loved the name, but it was honest.
At first, I was terribly embarrassed by the idea that someone might read what I wrote. This was inconvenient, since allowing people to read things is generally considered one of the distinguishing features of a blog. I kept the posts fairly general. I wrote mostly about knitting and the things I was making. I thought I might connect with other knitters, who would see my projects and want to tell me about theirs.
That never happened.
Later, when we were traveling frequently, I began writing about the places we visited. I also wrote stories, although I rarely put those online. The possibility that somebody might actually read them was far too intimidating. This became The Wary Wanderer.
The internet came with warnings in those days. Bloggers were told not to announce that they were away from home because robbers might be watching. We were warned that readers could track down our spouses or children and harass them if they disliked something we had written. I left names and faces out of my posts. For a while, I made the entire blog private.
I wanted to connect with people who thought like me, but I was also afraid that someone might connect. What would happen then? What if they were very strange? What if they were a pervert? The internet, as presented to new bloggers, appeared to consist mainly of burglars, stalkers, perverts, and three perfectly nice knitters who were already following someone else.
Still, I enjoyed making the website. I liked choosing colors, designing logos, arranging photographs, and seeing my thoughts organized on a screen. There was something deeply satisfying about turning a collection of ideas and images into a finished page.
There was also, if I’m honest, a small boost to the ego. I had done these things. I had thought these thoughts. Now I had made something out of them.
Over the years, one blog became another. There were gaps, although rarely more than a few months at a time. I would have more time or a new idea and suddenly think, I want to blog again. I’d publish enthusiastically until life became busy, my interests changed, or I began to feel that the theme no longer fit me. Eventually, I would realize I couldn’t remember the last time I had posted.
Then I would invent a new blog.
One of them was Still Round the Corner, inspired by my enthusiasm for The Lord of the Rings and the idea that something new was always waiting just beyond sight. I loved that sense of anticipation. I wanted to write about wondering what might be coming next.
I was still a little afraid to write about those things, though, so I mostly wrote about knitting, short stories, and places I had visited.
The websites changed along with me. When I began, website design was simpler, although considerably less accommodating. You bought a theme that did most of the work, then lived within its rules. You might be able to choose from several colors or fonts, provided you happened to like the ones somebody else had chosen for you. Adjusting the size of a text block or making something pop out in an interesting way could require negotiations with mysterious bits of code and possibly a minor sacrifice beneath the full moon.
Today, I can change nearly anything. AI can even help design a website, provided I know the right question to ask.
During those ten years, I learned a great deal about website design, user experience, and user interfaces, mostly by wanting to do something and having to figure out how. That became part of the hobby too. I wasn’t only writing posts. I was building places for them to live.
Going through the old folders now, I can see how much those places changed. More importantly, I can see how much I changed.
People tend to imagine there is a constant self somewhere inside them. Experiences accumulate. Opinions shift around the edges. Haircuts come and go, occasionally after making threats. But underneath all of that, we assume there is one continuous person who remains essentially the same.
Reading something I wrote ten years ago makes that difficult to believe.
Sometimes I read a post from five years ago and barely recognize the person who wrote it. Sometimes the same thing happens with something I wrote last year. Her interests were different. Her fears were different. She understood the world differently because she had not yet experienced everything that happened afterward.
I feel a great deal of tenderness for those earlier versions of myself. She was trying. Sometimes I’m amused by how naïve she was, but I’m no longer embarrassed by her. She was what she was. I am what I am now, and in an hour I’ll be what was.
Perhaps I’ll turn that into a story someday: someone with a very long life keeps a record for hundreds of years and eventually looks back to see whether any part of the original person remains. I suspect the answer would depend on what happened along the way, who influenced them, and what they chose to carry forward.
I’m much more comfortable writing openly now. I talk about my family and the places we go. I share existential thoughts because I’ve learned that nearly everyone has them in some form, and sometimes reading another person’s thoughts helps clarify my own.
I still have boundaries. I don’t write about politics or religion. Both can change faster than a person’s internal sense of self, and whatever seems perfectly obvious today may look very different once hindsight wanders in wearing its enormous spectacles.
I also care much less about whether anyone approves. I’ve proved to myself that I can blog. More importantly, I’ve discovered that I like doing it. I don’t particularly care whether every post pleases an algorithm or meets the latest SEO standards. Those standards will change too.
What keeps drawing me back is the finished thing. I like returning to the posts, reading the words, and looking at the images. There is a quiet pride in knowing that I did something, thought about it, and made a place where it could remain.
It’s like building a city one brick at a time. In my case, I suppose it’s a universe, one realm at a time. The buildings don’t all match. Some have been renovated. Some are empty. A few have extremely questionable signage. But they are standing, and together they show where I’ve been.
After ten years, that little corner of the universe matters more to me than audience numbers, algorithms, or the conversations I once hoped might appear.
I began blogging because I wanted to connect with other people. I kept blogging because, somewhere along the way, I built a place that connected me with all the people I used to be.
