A few weeks ago I was pushing myself to clean out my Gmail inbox, something I attempt and fail every day, when I bumped into an old email from a long-forgotten Tumblr account. It was an automated congratulations note for having had a blog there for 11 years. The email itself was more than two years old--I had saved it so that, down the line, I could find the link easily.
Good for past me, recognizing that I was growing more digitally disorganized by the day. She left current-me a breadcrumb trail not just to an old blog, but to a person I barely remember being.
Except that I do remember her now, because I clicked the link and proceeded to fall into a vault of old-self that day, and the next day. Did you know I had four Tumblrs, most of them secret? Or not "secret" but at least not something I shared with abandon. They were places for free writing and playing with language, for finding and sharing snippets of poetry or images before I became serious about writing. They are sort of sloppy but also joyful and inspired. They feel so young now, although I was in my late 20's when I was doing that experimentation. Not so young. But, not so old.
Through those Tumblrs I found the link to this page, my "real" blog, which I must have started when I was gaining in confidence as a writer and wanted to share words more readily. At the time I built this page, well over a decade ago, I was obsessed with it. I remember the background design, the layout, the photos, the taglines, my freaking obsession with Google analytics, how deeply it all mattered. To be honest the general vibes of this blog feel more like me than most things in my real life; it was so curated and careful and freaking honest.
I'm not done with re-reading all of this yet, but even this morning, when I found the area where you write and post the blogs (relearning is hard, guys), I was blown away by hidden drafts, you all. Hidden drafts! Where I was just starting to say something, or had written something too tender to share, and here they all are, waiting for current April to bump into them on a random overworked weekday during business hours in the year of our lord freaking 2024. Over a decade later. A decade!
Does anyone use blogger anymore? My understanding is that all of literary earth is on Substack but perhaps that makes me vintage. Also, it's adorable that I named this blog after Mary Oliver back then, which every new writer probably does, but my lord, I am moved by my own earnestness, my passion. Embarrassing, sure, but it's so honest. How did I get to be so honest a person? I still don't know.
I see it in my beautiful daughter though--this same river of earnest passion. She is a child who watches the same movie over and over on repeat to memorize the lines, to study the way the actors' bodies move, their faces shift, how they brush their hair out of their eyes, and then she acts it out on the floor, on the couch, in the doorways, staring with dramatic longing out of the windows. She doesn't just like something, she loves it, she lives for it. And while part of me wants to protect what will surely be a vulnerable heart--you don't have to love so big, so hard!--I know I never will, because being passionate and earnest is also being honest, and honesty is beautiful, and also, I am sure, she'll be a child close to the shine of wonder. We should all be closer to the shine of wonder, especially in this darkening world.
I stopped writing in here a decade ago. Sometimes I feel I haven't done much, or at least not enough, with my life, but when you look back at a whole decade it's easier to see the forward motion. In that time I went to an MFA program and graduated from it, and then promptly had a child. So my primary change is becoming a mother, but there are so many other primary changes. My family left our beloved brownstone in a beloved city and became suburban homeowners; that was fucking new. We lost a Pepper and gained a Daisy-puppy.
We survived a pandemic. I mean, come on.
I still work at the same company but that's all that's the same; the entire organization has changed so completely that I effectively have a new job, with new colleagues and new bosses and a new vibe. My work went from being largely pleasant and manageable to highly unpleasant and impossible, and that's probably exactly why I forgot these blogs existed.
In this decade I dropped out of choir due to my inability to balance that plus graduate school, and somehow didn't return. How? Does it matter that I sing more now than ever before, for and with and because of my daughter? I think that it does.
I finished the MFA and published a story, then an essay, then won a miracle of a grant, then did a novel-writing fellowship year, then got signed by my agent (an actual miracle), then published a few more stories and essays, then re-drafted the novel, won another grant, went to California twice in one month in 2023 for writing conferences that lit me up inside, went back to Bennington as a fiction fellow, and this March will travel to Tuscon to be on a winner's panel at a book festival for a story that took first place in a literary award. A week after that, I'll go to far west Texas for two weeks with writing friends for a hard-earned residency, an actual dream from back in the original blog days come true--to be alone writing in the desert. Under a big sky.
It's funny - I haven't yet finished a novel so it never feels like enough. Nothing feels like enough. And yet if I am honest with myself, in the paragraph above all I can now see is someone who fucking refused to quit. I still refuse to quit. Fuck quitting. I am so blessed to have writing and language as my North Star. Without fail it guides me home.
Is this thing even on? What a world...
