admitting you have a problem

… is the first step to a great blog post.

So: I admit it. The reason I started blogging again was so that I would have an excuse to attend Northern Voice.

Well, mostly. See, I was one of the group of ‘bloggers way back when blogs were totally unknown (that was before they became uncool, then weird, then cool, then uncool again.) Alas, I’d moved to Ontario by the time NV started up, and I never got to go and be part of the hip Vancouver blogging scene (I’m only being slightly sarcastic, but I’ll let you decide how much. It’s less than 40%, but more than 10%).

I gave up blogging – after ten years of spouting words into the internet – because I was sort of miserable, personally speaking. I couldn’t find a focus, either professionally or personally, and my blogging suffered. For one thing, I didn’t like where I lived, and I couldn’t really be bothered, like, doing things there. Internal monologues are only good for so many posts before you repeat yourself, and they’re only interesting if you have a terrible personal life filled with strife and angst. Alas, I’m old and my angst is limited to how thin Monday’s newspaper has gotten recently, trouble filling a savings account, and mildly irritating encounters with store clerks. I’m boring, unless I’m actively doing shit – and there was no shit that I wanted to do.

So six months ago, I shut down my blog.

“BUT WHAT IS THIS THING HERE?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s a blog. And with it, I’m once again qualified to attend Northern Voice, gripe about their terrible website, and just generally annoy the internet with descriptions of my random experiences. (Also,  everybody loves conferences – all those badges and cloth bags just fill my heart a little more each time I collect another set.)

Ok, that’s not really why I started blogging again. But it’s good enough for now.