Writing 200 Blog Post 22 - The End

Write a reflection on your blogging life. What have you learned about keeping a blog this semester? Is blogging something you will continue to do past this semester? Why or why not?   

Here it is, the last blog post for this class. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a bit of a relief—the Friday deadline on these assignments has been the bane of my existence this semester. But on another level, it feels like the sad end of my blogging era.

As someone perusing the depths of my blog might see, I'm pretty much an expert at this. I started blogging in January of 2021, and since then I've written over 50 posts. It's been a storied career, and a life I won't soon forget, but I don't think I'll take up the mantle again unless academic necessity calls. I'll likely take one more writing class to get my minor, but I'm considering trying a poetry class or something a little less bloggy.

That's not to say that I haven't enjoyed this. Casting my words into something slightly less void-like has been fun for a while, and the 38 views I got on my most popular article will forever remind me of these days of fame and glory. I hope that as I move forward in life I can tap into the same manic energy I have at 11:45 with a 300-word blog post due by midnight. 

And I also hope I can show my writing to some people, sometimes. Receiving comments (and even better, having friends mention my blog posts to me in real life) was a fun experience. So was the idea that even if the odds are preposterously stacked against me, there's always a chance for almost anyone to see and resonate with something I wrote. The internet has done many things, a huge number of them negative, but I think it's provided to a greater number of people the idea that their words can leave some sort of semi-permanent impression on the world. And though blogging is a very outmoded means toward that end, I'll admit I felt the appeal at times.

But no more. I go now into the cold oblivion of unpublished, unheard anonymity. Many have ventured, few have returned. To anyone who reads this five, fifty, five hundred years from now: know that the work housed here was not who I am. Know that the deepest chambers of my soul were never open to this base medium, that the words I wrote with the greatest fire I wrote elsewhere. Know this, and imagine them as eloquent as they could never be.

See ya later, alligator.