This, That, and the Other

I started blogging in 2005. I geared my blog for an audience of one — me. It was more of an online journal than anything else. I had no regular schedule. Sometimes, life interrupted and I’d go for months without posting. Ultimately, I got bored and stopped blogging.

Then I started a new blog in 2009. This time I tried to be more “regular,” posting at least weekly and occasionally a few times a week. I also aimed this restart for a broader audience. Rather than being a personal journal, I was expressing my opinions, sharing my observations, offering my perspectives.

Unfortunately, no one was listening. I accumulated almost no followers and rarely got any comments. Of course, I wasn’t on WordPress. I was using a platform called TypePad.

I told a friend that I felt like my blog was like that tree that falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it. It wasn’t making a sound. He said, “Maybe you should restart your blog on WordPress.”

So I did. In 2013. And suddenly there were a lot of people hearing my tree fall. One of my posts got “Freshly Pressed,” and received tons of likes and comments. And my blog started getting a lot of followers.

But something weird happened. My blog took over my life. I became obsessed by it. I became driven by the number of likes and comments each post would get. I checked every day to see how many new followers I got.

My blog was running my life. And ruining my life. Everything else — my job, my wife, my kids — took a backseat to my blog. My life was falling apart.

And when I almost lost my family, I quit blogging. Cold turkey, as they say.

That was three years ago. I rededicated myself relationship with my wife and kids. I focused on my work. I pulled my life back together.

At the end of 2016 I retired. My wife, who was not used to me hanging around during the weekdays, was desperate for me to find something to do that would get me out of her hair. “Why don’t you restart your blog?” she suggested.

So last May, the time was right to once again restart my blog.

And here we are.

Written for today’s one-word prompt, “restart.”