Post 3225, Which Count Includes 80 Drafts You’ll Never See

I didn’t mean to be gone so long from here. There is so much I want to say and I have no words. No, I didn’t get a book deal or a job. I’m not having another baby, or getting a dog, or buying a house. Those can all be put into words. That would be easier.

But also I don’t want to say any of it here. I’m not uninspired elsewhere. I am writing every day. Just not here.

In most TV dramas involving a doctor, there will be a scene where the doctor tries to revive someone who isn’t breathing. The doctor pounds and pounds on the patient’s chest and blows into the patient’s mouth and this goes on for far too long while dramatic music plays until finally someone else, often the doctor’s love interest, character foil, or nemesis says,

“Enough. He’s gone. He’s GONE.”

That’s how I feel about this blog.

Except it’s still here. Representing eight years of my life. Representing my 30s, I realize, as I prepare to celebrate my 38th birthday.

And I don’t measure time in decades, so it’s not that my 30s are ending and zomg what do I dooooo. It’s that this little spot I carved out and sat down on, back in 2003, has been slowly dug out around me and now when I look around all I see are the walls I’ve built. I can’t see anything outside the walls. Until I climb out of here.

I did the digging! And I’m proud of the digging I have done and the walls I’ve built. But writing about the walls you’ve built is, well, not very interesting. A writer who can’t see anything can turn as pretty a phrase as she wants and it will still be a pretty phrase about a dirt wall that everyone has seen before.

So, in the past couple of months I have visited here, looking at this body of work and appreciating it for what it is. Appreciating the growth that I see from the first post to the most recent. Loving the sanity and clarity it’s brought me over the years. The outlet, the writing practice, the escape.

The most wonderful thing it’s brought me is community. You people. (You are people, right? Because I’ve met some of you, but not all.) OK, well, even if some of you are Borg (I don’t understand the joke but I make it anyway)(it might not even be funny)(I don’t care) or really smart cats, so be it. I’ve made friends by writing words on the Internet. I’ve met people I’ve borrowed child-sized socks from and not (yet) returned. I’ve met people whose pants are in my closet. I met you all here. Talking about shoes and cheese and kids and stuff.

I never wanted money. So that’s a relief.

And if the cheeseblog is the patient being stubbornly attended to by a physician who refuses to believe that it’s over and time to move on to a new patient, let us say that this post about Anthony Wiggle is the zombie heart (again, does that even make sense?) that refuses to stop beating. An honourary slow-clap for the post about Anthony Wiggle, which keeps getting comments, including one from someone who knows his wife? or something? bringing it to FORTY TWO comments over the past three years. The most comments any of my posts has received. Forty two. The meaning of life.

If that isn’t internet success, I don’t know what is.

I keep wanting to write “I’m not quitting,” but I am. I am quitting. Not writing. Just this space. I will maybe — possibly — probably? want a new space. A new patch of ground to sit on, if there is any left in the world.

And when I do make a new space, there will probably be patio lanterns. That’s all I know for sure.

xoxo, Gossip Girl. Wait. No.