I haven't been blogging a whole lot lately. I've been blogging so little that people are noticing.
Since
my decline in post frequency was pointed out to me in December, I've
been thinking about the reasons why I haven't been writing.
It's
not because I don't love writing. Every time I start to tell a story,
words start to gush like a fountain, digressions sprout like weeds, and I
struggle to keep what I say down to an internet-approved length. But
that's for my fashion blog.
I can see that more of my writing energy has been directed there every
year, rather than this blog. In fact, for those of you who like
statistics (isn't that everybody!?), I'll quantify it for you.
Barring
the first year of The Unfashionista, when I was first getting on my
feet, I've posted a pretty steady average of around 86 fashion posts a
year. Meanwhile, over at Val's Galorious Galaxy, the number has been
gradually decreasing from 97 posts in 2012 to just 23 last year. Why did
this happen!?
I've
been keeping a steady pace on my fashion blog because I have a steady
stream of things to write about. I wear a different outfit every day,
and as long as there's something about it that I deem even marginally
interesting, I churn out a few words and slap up a picture. My personal
blog, which should, in theory, provide much more for me to write about, because it encompasses everything but fashion, is, meanwhile, languishing. Is this because I don't have anything to write about? What do I write about, anyway?
In the early days of my blog, it was basically a diary, in which I summarized the details of what was going on in my life: "Last week I took a vacation to California." "I spent a lot of money recently." "Someone used my stock photography on their website!" I also used it as a megaphone to share every thought that flitted through my empty head. "Should I get a new alarm clock?" (I still use that clock, but no longer to wake me up in the morning!) "Wow, the streets in DC are actually named according to a pattern!" "Here are seven things I was thinking about today."
Over
time, I have discovered other media that work just as well for sharing
my inane thoughts, chief among them: Twitter. Yes, when I can dash off
three words (e.g. "Seagulls are great!") I no longer need to write an entire essay about the subject. Facebook is another platform that has supplanted my blog: Instead of writing long multi-part tales about my travels,
I now just content myself to post a photo album on Facebook and caption
it liberally. I also find, these days, that I spend less time writing
about the banal details of my life and more time telling them to my
friends, usually over Google chat, Snapchat, and the various other
messaging apps I use from time to time...but still in the form of a
conversation, not a monologue.
A
lot of my older posts were what might be described as "whining." This
type of post received so much attention in my blog that I made an entire
category for self pity. This is not to say that I don't
write about these kinds of things now—there will always be a place for
complaining—but I increasingly prefer to keep my most personal issues
personal, rather than broadcasting them WWW-wide. To illustrate my
point, a few weeks ago, I sold my car. I'm now in the process of
searching for a new one. I probably will blog about my decision
and purchase when it happens, but what I won't blog about is the snit I
got into last week about all the stupid red tape surrounding buying and
selling vehicles, and how annoying it is that I have to keep paying for
my insurance even though I don't have a car. For that, instead of
ranting in my blog as I might have once, I ranted to my boyfriend (lucky
guy!). Since I now have a close personal network, I no longer have to
write about things like social failings and love and the lack thereof;
I can use real people to help me sort through my emotions, and don't
find it as necessary to air my grievances before the
largely-unsympathetic internet.
In
spite of my declining interest in using my blog as a personal
therapist, in more recent years, I still resorted to writing for the
biggest issues in my life: getting dogs, getting a house, dealing with
said house once gotten. But after a few years, my existence has calmed
down into a fairly predictable pattern: I go to work, I go home, I do
fashion, and I do it all over again the next day. In short, I just don't
have that much in my life that's exciting enough to blog about.
Now
that's not to say that I have nothing to blog about, period. While I've
deliberately retired two of my former biggest topics, Giant Cookie Reviews and MacaroniQuest, there will always be language and Adventures in Cooking.
But if you've noticed that my blogging has decreased in frequency, you
should know it's not something to be sad about. After conducting this
scientific analysis of how Val's Galorious Galaxy has evolved over the
years, I feel confident that my fewer posts are a good thing.
While
this post started off as a way to help fill the void left by my
infrequent blogging, and was inspired largely by guilt, it turned out to
reveal a truth I actually feel pretty good about:
