A reasonable question might be how does one celebrate a TurtleSloth birthday? And reasonable follow-up questions might be, is it the turtle’s birthday, the sloth’s birthday, or both? The answer to the first question is, with great irreverence, of course. As for which came first the turtle or the sloth… does it really matter so long as there’s cake?
For better or worse, three years ago I restarted a blog that I had registered several years prior. I can’t remember if I had published anything the first time around. I know my intent was to focus on long-form writing as a way to get my dwindling attention span back. In it’s current incarnation, it’s been an attempt to get better at using words while also getting comfortable with having slices of my thoughts and feelings out in the world for anyone to consume. I’ve never been terribly comfortable with the public display of those thoughts that most people keep to themselves or in a private diary. I’ve tried, but have never been able to fully answer the question why publish it. I can only say that in some respects, it allows for a level of authenticity and ownership that I might not otherwise feel or experience.
The blog has caused me plenty of headaches and anxiety… which has also been a reason to pursue it. I’ve often been worried that family, friends, exes, and colleagues would read it – which became part of this battle to live fearlessly and honestly. At various times, all of those people have read it. For a while my ex-fiancee and her boyfriend at the time were reading it. He posted a bunch of comments – initially suggesting I was a sap for harboring feelings for a woman who seemed callous towards me… More than anything, I think he was trying find an ally while also trying to communicate with her (she had left him too). That all played out around the same time that I lost my job in Memphis… that was a fun time.
In addition to feeling anxious about being “discovered” or how this information might be used against me, I struggle with the fact that I am never 100% transparent. I have lots of things that I don’t write about and in not doing so, I feel like a hypocrite. I’ve had lots of struggles at work that have never made it on to these pages. I’ve had personal challenges that I’ve kept to myself as well as aspirations and desires. And I know I’ve held back because of that whole audience thing – which was supposed to be one of the things I was working on getting over…
According to my dashboard, I have 512 published posts on the blog, 99 drafts, and 141 private posts. Some of the private posts are poems I’ve written. They’re hidden because some journals consider that to be a publication and will reject them. The other private posts are posts that were once live. I hid them with the intention of re-reading, editing, and re-publishing… so much for intentions, good or otherwise. That means I’ve averaged over 200 posts a year… that’s a lot of bullshit to write about. Site stats, depending on which service I view, tell me I’ve had over 12,000 page views or over 13,000 page views with my best day being 147 views. I used to watch this data pretty closely, but it’s never terribly accurate. Over this entire time, fewer than 10 people have told me they’ve read my blog… which creates its own weird dynamic: if I’m uncomfortable sharing, readers may be even more uncomfortable having read it.
I have no future plans for the site. Maybe one day I’ll want to write a memoir and this will be fodder for that, but otherwise, I’m content to continue to work out my thoughts (philosophical or emotional) here on this canvas. I suspect if I ever start publishing out in the real world, traffic might pick up a bit, at which point, I may need to clean the place up a bit (or not).
You might have noticed that I’ve switched over to a new look… a new theme / design and a few new features. That’s the combined birthday present for the sloth and the turtle. For one, I’ve added a widget that’s supposed to show posts from previous years from on or around the current date. It kinda works… it doesn’t seem to be showing the very first post I made on 9/17/2019 – I’m not sure what that’s about. I’ve also changed the picture. I love the Memphis sunsets over the Mississippi River, but the coffee and poetry books in the morning sun feels more appropriate for where I am and what I’ve been doing.
More to come… always more to come.