For the first time in a long time, I visited my own blog. I sat here and let myself look over the post titles, remembering some, and others not so much. Of the recent (not that any of them are recent, but you know - more recent) posts, I most often found myself thinking "oh wait, what? I actually posted that?" Oh well. I guess what's out there is out there. I've started to think of a lot of things in my life as a stew. You add something into it, say turmeric, and for a few moments, it's bright and bold and at the forefront of everything, but then you give it a little stir and let it sit and simmer awhile, and soon, it's all just a conglomeration of what you might call the past. Obviously, it's the sum total of what you've put into it and every addition matters, but no one thing holds the spotlight for long.
I used to obsess over the things I posted on this blog, which never had more than twenty readers and usually had more like three. Now, I see it as turmeric in a stew - no, scratch that. Turmeric, even in the company of a myriad other ingredients, still leaves a pretty distinctive mark. This is more like...onion powder? I'm giving myself away, here. If anyone out there thought (or cared to think) that I used only the finest ingredients when cooking, well, I don't. The point is that I used to have all kinds of anxiety about the things I wrote on this obscure page, but I am beginning to see my posts as grains of salt or garlic or onion in the great ocean of content that is the internet. Hopefully, in some indirect way, I'm elevating the flavor of it, but one way or the other, I have the luxury of obscurity. It's nice to know that I can fumble and totter along without making much of a splash.
My mom is the only person who still mentions my blogging, and asks for it, and probably the only person who will still read it when (if) I post, and the nice thing is that I can write whatever silly, tedious things I want. The world wide web is big and often cruel and I am terribly good at feeling intimidated, but if I think of it being just my mom reading, I can be free to write whatever I need to. Maybe it's because I connect with most blogs through Pinterest these days, but I feel like this sort of blog - literally an online (or web) log, a diary of sorts, is no longer a thing - which will make me feel self-conscious about writing it, which will probably give me anxiety about having posted it --- But it's only a little onion powder. It's not even turmeric. It won't ruin the stew, and most people probably won't even notice.
For the record, though, I'd rather not be onion powder. It depends on the kind of stew, but I'd rather be basil or thyme. Or rosemary. Or ginger. But it depends on the kind of stew.
