Well hello. I type this in six word sections between standing up and dancing, developing Ember’s coordination and challenging mine with quickening repetitions of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (knees and toe-oh-ohs). 

A long time ago, eight years ago, I started a blog. Through networking and advertising, I built a large following. I was proud of those 100,000 average monthly page views in a time when blogging was a thriving and layered ecosystem that has eroded so nearly completely it’s hard to remember or define anymore. It then became ugly and commercial and we fled. We fled to Instagram. We made our pages private. We shuttered our blogs. Life had changed. Blogging had changed. Many of us had new babies to protect. Our own hearts in the minefield. I met some of the nicest, most supportive and lovely women in blogging. A lot of you I still keep in touch with on Instagram. I remember that age of blogging fondly, and I try to forget the ugly parts when they showed up. That blog taught me to write. Gave me the confidence to attempt a novel. I have a literary agent because of that blog and all of the people who loved my writing and said so, loudly.

I could fill pages with my thoughts on the evolution of blogs to social media and of intimate and honest community to polished ads masquerading as reality, but that’s not why I’m here. 

I’m here to write stories in freeform. Maybe once a week. Maybe three times if the spirit so moves. Maybe once a month. Maybe with perfectly polished and professional photos. Maybe with poorly exposed iPhone photos. All of those are ok.  Here you’ll find the pretty pieces of our days. Of our wagon rides to the beach. Our random four foot snowmen. Halloween trots around the island. Ember’s earnest picking of dandelions. Our first year in this house as a home rather than the construction site it has been since we got here. My wisps of thought about motherhood. The moments that are pulled away by years. The hard days. The best days. The ones between. Because I don’t want to forget any of it.

I love so much about instagram. What I don’t love is how often I have a passing thought, something I would like to remember, some story I’d like to write down, pair with a photo or three, put someplace with an IP address for safekeeping. And then think, No, I don’t have the perfect picture for it. Or I have a few pictures and the algorithm favors single photos over carousels. I don’t want to stress over posting it at the wrong  time and have less people Like it or have the algorithm decide it didn’t “perform” well enough and thus hide it from the feed, and so I never write it down and I never post it and then it’s gone.

So many of those precious fragments are gone. 

So I bought this home, paid three years of property taxes for this address, this bit of web-earth where stories, precious fragments can live safely again. No ads. No sponsorships. No analytics. No stress. 

There is something creeping and sinister in the culture of Likes. The psychological negativity that comes with the speed-dating, half-attention scroll, the clamor to make enough noise so that scrollers will stop and lift a finger, place it down on your big, empty, hopeful heart. Fill that empty heart with the red pixels of digital approval.  

Trying to do this on Instagram feels like trying to conduct a poetry reading in Concourse E at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. 

I’m here in an optimistic exodus from the culture of Influence, Algorithms and The Almighty Like. I’ve come to the far and quiet country where the population is small and traffic is hushed, and you can see stars and hear night bugs. 

I’ve built this warm and cozy place, strung twinkle lights in the garden, and it’s just for friends. Callers with fresh cider or crusty bread assuming one can find yeast in these strange Covid times. 

Welcome friends. There are muffins on the stove. And in this new home, I’m happy that you’re here.