Death to Blogging

February 9, 2008

Photo by author

It’s been 37 days and 6 hours since I last blogged. And every hour is painful. This form of creative expression started for me very innocently back in a hostel in Rome, Italy in 2002. After sending the obligatory mass emails to friends I gatewayed into asking for writing/story feedback from strangers online. And then it happened:

“Why don’t you start a blog?” I needed no more of a push.

Six years later, at least 5 different blogs (1 on Western Europe, 1 on Taiwan,1 photo blog on San Francisco, 1 blog that never made it off the ground about Buenos Aires due to having entirely too much fun, 1 on Guatemala, and possibly some that I started and tore down quickly) have been created, massaged and now are being torn down.

“Why?”, you ask.

You would think that the reasons might be the 2 (yes, 2 separate) stalkers I accumulated over the years. Or, maybe it was my inability to think before I hit the ‘post’ button like when I prematurely and single handedly ended a cozy romantic relationship due to blogging details that were best kept private during a fight with the man in question. If not those reasons, then maybe it was the detailed and jabbing criticism that I sometimes received about my posts. And finally, if all else fails, we can blame this self imposed hiatus (nonononononono, I mean stoppage) on the times I received emails from long lost ex-boyfriends who, although they weren’t keeping up with my life via communications with ME, made it very clear that they were following my blog religiously.

Although all of the above happened and they were not shining moments, they are NOT the reasons that I stopped blogging. Yes, it’s true that I got lazy keeping in touch with family and friends since I thought I was writing for everyone. I never wanted this to be a personal substitute. I never wanted this to be so private. Somewhere between creative expression and providing information to those getting ready to travel, I lost part of my personal life, to my online persona, ‘Travel Goddess’.

I can hear you now suggest, “Hey, why don’t you just write an anonymous blog?“ True. I could (finally) wise up and do this, BUT I know that I would want credit for the hours spent pounding away on the keyboard, so in theory this is a great idea, but in ego, it would never work for me.

What I realized recently is that what I am missing from blogging is a focus, a deeper insight into the points that fire me up and tingle my toes. Blogging all at once gave me a voice, honed my writing skills and helped me ramble my way out of a professional writing career.

I will forever be grateful for the strangers who read my blogs, zines and such. Forever. This instant gratification writing experience helped me to break out of being far too careful about my writing. It also helped me get an idea of where the intersection between what I am passionate about and what people like to read about meet. And this is priceless. Vale la pena. It was worth the pain.

But that’s putting it dramatically, because all in all, even the weirdness that came from being too personal in my blogs was never really all that painful. I learned how to protect my online self. I enlisted readers to bombard stupid people with emails when they crossed a line from rude to threatening. I wrote more about the places I was going to than about the personal experience. But I could never completely subtract ME from the equation. For awhile this annoyed me. But now I see that it as one of my strengths. I once read Pico Iyer, my writing hero, say that travel writing is about the process inside as well as outside and with only one of these aspects the story is missing something.

In the months and years to come, I will learn to embrace this idea. I am already flowing over with creative energy due to my usual release of blogging having been stopped. And, it is working. I am reviewing my previous ‘work’, compiling the themes that move me, researching and submitting my pieces to online and offline publications. From now on, I want to write in focused, meaty pieces. (Insert chewing sounds here).

About the author: Stephanie has traveled and lived overseas more than at her home base of San Francisco, California for six years now. Her key goal, no matter if it was scrubbing toilets in hostels in Western Europe or teaching English in Asia to fund this intense cultural curiosity, has been to let the local culture seep into her mind, body and soul. She recently moved to Bogota, Colombia.