Two Years Later
A month or so ago I put a password on my blog while I recovered from annual year-end burn out and figured out next steps for my little online life. I knew it’d been a bit since I’d posted, with most my content living on Instagram and most of my social media brain dedicated to building a global brand at work. Instead of giving me relief the expected, however, the itch got deeper. I was shocked to see that it’d been two years since I last wrote a blog post. The easy math lines up with my motherhood journey jumping from one to three kids but I had no idea I’d been away so long. Mostly because I remember taking a little break because I was feeling lost as to where I really belonged on the internet these days and two full years later I feel exactly the same way.
It seems to be a common thread around my digital generational circles; us “elder” millennials tired of the relentless miserable Instagram audience (and algorithm) but exhausted by the idea of baring even more of our souls in the insatiable world of TikTok. Substack feels tempting, a nod to the days of Blogger but with a community built in, but the idea of maintaining yet another platform (in my case – for what? I have to be able to answer that to justify even one more thing on my plate) feels overwhelming.
Tired, exhausted, overwhelmed – when did this happen? Many of us, young professional women (at the time) in particular, found ourselves sharing on social media as a creative, meditative hobby. I’ve always said social media follows authenticity, from Facebook as a college-only kids club to the birth of Twitter, and then Instagram whenever the platform benefits started to prioritize brands and advertising dollars. It’s still true now, and I will say it's refreshing to see platforms like TikTok and Substack with algorithms and ad models that benefit the creator + community first (much like the early days of YouTube), but it feels like you have to spread yourself thin to be present everywhere.
Niche is the name of the game right now but what if I’m just here to show up as myself? I’m a wife, a mom of three, a global executive, a homeowner, a slave to a good moodboard – but none of those things define me. I am the sum of all of those parts, the percentages titrating up and down over time as I grow, age, learn and explore. In the world of the internet this feels like the ultimate peanut-butter spread – a little bit of a lot of things, the combination of which is both too niche to appeal to an algorithm and too small to drive scale with the secondary audiences. There are other considerations for this approach too – I have a career now, a young family to keep safe – I’m not willing or interested in sharing at the cost of privacy, the one remaining to algorithmic success for the “lifestyle” genre.
Writing it all out, my place in this space felt grim. I kept asking myself “for what?” and I kept answering “I don’t know.” Community, creativity – I always start here but once I layer those values on top of platforms I am immediately fatigued. I don’t do this for a living, I’m not looking for validation, I’m too old to care about criticism but don’t want it buzzing in my ear, either. I’m not a “content creator,” I capture what’s happening, what I’m thinking or what inspires me, keeps me up at night, what brings me joy, what I can help with, what scares me. I’m.. a blogger. Two years later and my journey lead my right back here, where no one else owns the space, where there is no algorithm to cloud my inspiration.
But “for what?” For me… it’s for me. It’s for my family to read back one day when they grow tired of the omni-present Cloud that’s over-captured their livelihood and instead want to sit down with a cup of tea browse what life was like. It’s for you, too, if you want to be here for the right reasons, for your own “for what” if it aligns with my little bit of everything, one part of it or all.
Welcome back, to both of us!
