Blog's not dead

You can try and make the argument that the heyday of blogging is over. You can say that Instagram killed blogging and that Facebook and Twitter ruined all of our lives. Just because you say something, doesn't means it's true, but I am pretty sure that Twitter did make at least a couple attempts at destroying all of us. It's fine. I finally deactivated my long-abandoned Twitter account a couple weeks ago. We'll call it a failed social experiment.

Instagram did not kill blogging, it just stole its lunch money. The Instagram story (yet another potentially harmful social experiment) was probably the biggest culprit in all of that, but the long caption is a big offender as well. Remember when everyone was so offended by the long Instagram caption that you felt self conscious putting anything longer than half a sentence? Don't pretend you didn't care.

In a season of life where there is such limited capacity to get the basic things done (I have yet to clean the windows that are so dirty we can barely see through them in our new house that we've been living in for five months) prioritizing is key. Blogging is not what I need right now. I can't put proper words to everything that's going on right now. How do I talk about a terminally ill family member while respecting their dignity and not over sharing? I don't. I hint at it on Instagram. If you know me, you know what's going on. It's not a secret, but it's not up to me to spread it on the internet right now.

So I Instagram. I don't have the capacity to spend an hour at the computer writing right now in the evenings or on the weekends. It will never be like it once was, but I will probably always come back here. There are other things I need to focus on right now. But Instagram isn't the time sucker that blogging is.

I love to write and someday when we're not deep in the think of it I will do it more. But right now, if you want to know where I'm at, I'm probably sharing a picture of my coffee or kids on the IG.

I've had to deal with some of the strange dynamics of internet friends this year and it hurt a lot more than I expected. So I unfollowed a lot of accounts. I don't read as many blogs. Time is precious, I just can't spend it on things that hurt or don't bring as much joy. I think the same goes with what I post. Sometimes I rethink it, and sometimes I need to realize that my identity has exactly nothing to do with what people think of my pictures.

I want to encourage and care for people. I want to be myself. I want to bring levity to life. I want to leave long captions on my pictures. I want to accept that we're all different and love each other through that. I don't want to waste energy on pursuing things that don't matter, but I want to continue to work on relationships, whatever that looks like. We don't always have to agree, but shared history is what makes us connected. I never want to discount that.

So you're still here (maybe). I'm still around. I'm in other places, but this place still matters.

Blogging's not dead, it just lost its lunch money to Instagram. Beaten, but not defeated. You have to evolve to survive, and it's not going anywhere. It just might be a little dormant.