So, there was a time when I blogged on an almost daily basis. There was a time when Reappropriate was a relatively well-read (and well-linked) blog in the Asian American and feminist blogosphere. There was a time when “blogger” was part of my self-identity.
And then, I stopped blogging.
There wasn’t a specific reason why I stopped blogging, but about a million reasons contributed to it. There wasn’t a conscious decision to write. I didn’t get mired in a blogosphere battlezone that left me shocked and stunned, too jaded with the Internet to continue writing.
I just stopped.
And that’s when I realized something: I felt free. It turns out that blogging had stopped being fun long before I had stopped writing. I had felt trapped by my blog, by the pressure to be “responsive”, adequately “expository”, and sufficiently “progressive”. I was writing as a service for a community I cared about, because I felt needed, and somewhere in the mix I stopped having fun doing it.
Thankfully, a year away from this blog helped me realize a couple of things:
- No one needs me to write. Yes, I realize it’s incredibly egotistical to feel like you were needed, and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I succumbed to this hubris. But, I did. I felt like if I stopped writing, that my voice would be missed in the Asian American blogosphere, and so I had to keep on writing. Y’know what? It wasn’t. Oh, I had some regular readers asking what had happened to me when I suddenly disappeared from my blog one day, but for the most part, the world kept on spinning, Asian Americans continued to make headlines, and the Internets did not implode. Surprisingly, this has done a lot to help convince me that I can come back to blogging, but on my own terms.
- I miss writing. Writing helps me process my thoughts, develop my opinions, and stay engaged in the world. Over the last few months, I’ve found that I missed keeping a blog. In particular, I’ve missed having a small space of the Internet that I can call my own, and I even just missed having a server I could post stuff on to share with others.
All of this has led me to my final realization: it’s time to re-start my blog. But I’m restarting it with a few different caveats.
First of all, I promise to write for the right reasons. I will be writing because I have something to say, not under the misguided notion that someone needs to hear from me (‘cuz, really, no one does). I’ll also spend less time on this blog by writing shorter posts — this decision is based purely on the fact that I have much less free time these days than I did in the past, so I can’t really invest the 2+ hours it used to take me to write some of my posts of yesteryear.
Secondly, I’m going to shift the focus of this blog somewhat. Asian American politics, feminism, current events — these topics still interest me and will remain a primary topic for this blog. But, I’m also interested in fitness, science, movies, pop culture, LOLcats, and my every day life. I used to avoid putting these topics on my blog, because my Asian American feminism niche was so well-carved out, and also because I tried to put a solid barricade between my personal life and my online life. Well, there are plenty of Asian American feminist blogs out there on the Internet these days; so, I think it’ll be okay for this cyberspace to be more reflective of me and my interests. Also, in my personal life, I’ve made efforts over the last year to stop compartmentalizing my life, and in the spirit of that journey, this blog must also transcend those disparate interests.
Finally, I’m going to focus less of my attention on readership metrics. At one point, I spent a lot of time cross-posting and promoting my blog, and I did end up with some pretty noticeable success. I wanted to raise my blog’s profile, to take advantage of social media advertising, etc. However, it took a lot of time, and energy, to worry about those kinds of things. I just don’t have the time or energy for that kind of stuff these days.
So, long story short, Reappropriate is back (now at a new URL because some assholes took Reappropriate.com!). Guess we’ll see what happens next.
