Splotchy: What is your blog?

Lulu:  Land-o-Lulu

S: When did you start blogging?

L: I started blogging sometime in early 2006.

S: Did you stop blogging?

L: Yes.

S: What were any factors that contributed to stopping?

L: Land-o-Lulu started out as a personal blog and became more of a travel blog once I moved overseas to teach. I finally closed it down because while I loved having a lot of readers, the earlier, more personal stuff seemed out of place in a blog that was easily discoverable by students and their parents. I had an experience where I went to a party in Bangladesh, and a woman was introduced to me and said, “Oh, you’re Lulu!  I’ve been reading your blog for ages!”  And it felt very weird and public.

S: Do you ever miss it?

L: I do miss my blog.  For a while, I really enjoyed Facebook, but I don’t post much there these days, partially because it seems like every other post on my feed is an ad, but mostly because many of the people I am interested in keeping in touch with no longer post very often.  I miss having a forum for longer-form writing and photography.

I also miss the community of friends, both real-world and online, that I had the privilege of interacting with while blogging.  Several people I met online became real-life friends, and while many of those people are still in my life now, there was a sense of community that I no longer feel.  

On Instagram stories, there are frequently little post-a-picture-of or ask-me-a-question-type trends, which are fine, but during the golden age of blogging, instead of a picture or question, there would be complicated, round-robin posts, long book reviews, thoughtful discussions of politics, popular culture and whatever else was on people’s minds.  I looked forward to reading my friends’ blogs and to their comments on mine.  

One of the things you learn as a teacher is that student writing is always better when they have an authentic audience reading their work rather than just their teachers.  And I think the same thing is true for all of us.  When I knew that a couple hundred people were going to read my writing, I cared about it more. I spent more time crafting my words and trying to make things funny.

S: Do you think you’ll ever pick it up again?  Why or why not?

L: I don’t think so. I feel like the golden age of blogging is over.  It seems like all the blogs I see are either corporate blogs or people trying to commodify their writing, and neither of those things is of interest to me. I am also very aware that any sort of online presence that isn’t squeaky clean can be problematic for teachers.  I live in a conservative country and work at a very prestigious school; I don’t need to draw any attention to myself. 

Sometimes I think about doing a podcast, but that seems like a lot of effort and equipment, and so many podcasters are annoying.  I would hate for people to think I am annoying.

S: How do you feel about social media? Does it give you the same feelings as blogging? Why or why not?

L: My presence on social media is scaled way back.  I do the birthday greetings thing on Facebook, and occasionally post travel or food photos there or on Instagram.  I do post a lot of aggressively political memes on my Instagram Stories, but my audience there is very limited, and the stories disappear in 24 hours, so I feel like I can’t do too much damage.  During COVID, my friend Jane and I ran a cocktail Instagram account called Drinking_While_Quarantined, and I actually became online friends with a group of people who ran cocktail accounts. It was similar to the blogger days because there was a lot of commenting on each other’s posts and doing themed group posts.  Once we could go outside again, the urge to post photographs of fancy drinks dwindled and the account is mostly inactive these days.  I don’t feel the same sense of engagement with social media that I once did, mostly because everything is an ad.  Late-stage capitalism is a bitch.

S: How do you feel about the state of the Internet in general?  This is a very broad question, so feel free how to answer as you see fit.

L: The internet is the worst.  And also the best. We’ve created amazing tools, and we are unable to use them. We have the opportunity to communicate with people all over the world, and we spend our time trolling them on Twitter.  Don’t get me started on ChatGPT.

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Thanks so much, Lulu. It was nice hearing your thoughts on things.