#naphopomo 2013, day 12: thoughts while waiting for an oil change
I'm not sure what I'm doing here.
Not here at the car dealership. I'm getting my oil changed here. I mean here, on this site.
While in this waiting room, I used one of those online calculators to determine that it has been exactly 3,551 days (or 507 weeks and 2 days, or approximately 9 years and 9 months) since I published my very first blog post ever. That's almost a decade of recording musings, major life events, celebratory evenings and mundane days -- in other words, the everyday -- somewhere on the internet. During this time, I've become a mom, I've moved internationally (twice!), I've traveled the Caribbean, North America, Europe, Africa and Australia. I've written a book and delivered a TEDx talk. I've been blogging longer than I've held any single job or lived under any single roof in my life.
It has been a very good damn-close-to-a-decade-of-blogging, and I've loved writing every word, and sharing every photo.
But I'm not sure what I"m doing here.
It's not that I think the next 3,551 days won't hold adventure (after all, I have evidence to suggest otherwise); and it's certainly not that I want to stop taking photographs or telling stories. Far from it: I can't imagine that I will ever stop doing either. But in the past 507 weeks and 2 days, the nature of blogging has changed: these days, it's about maximizing and monetizing page views, about sharing the shocking or the sad or the confrontational. I'm starting to think that the age of using blogs to do the quiet sharing that I've done during the last 9 years and 9 months of my life has passed. I'm starting to believe that people don't really care about connection so much as sensation -- and regardless of whether it's a good or a bad thing, I just don't do sensation.
So I'm wondering what this means. In the short term, obviously, Chookooloonks will live on, but only because I don't know how else I would share my thoughts, my adventures, and my admittedly quiet images. But perhaps there's another way to do this that I'm not considering; some new platform or Next Best Thing that is designed for those who still seek the quiet over the bombastic, for those whose overriding motivation is self-expression and positive provocation, as opposed to instigation or, forgive me, shit-stirring. But I don't know what that is, yet.
And I'm not sure how to end this post, either, except to say that my car is ready.
This photograph was taken as part of #NaPhoPoMo (National Photo Posting Month) -- a shot a day for the month of November. You should join me: it's a lesson in stopping and looking, improving your photography skills, and appreciating the beauty and light around you.
Click here to see who's participating (and sign up your own blog, if you'd like!). And if you tag your photos with #NaPhoPoMo on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or Google+, your image will automatically be seen here. I hope you join in the fun - and I can't wait to see what you capture.