Splotchy: What is your blog?

Flannery Alden: Prone to Whimsy

S: When and why did you start blogging?

FA:  I started sometime in 2003. I was at a new job, in a new city, pregnant with my second child with my first child being a year and a half. I started blogging after attending a presentation on education technology at the training we provided. This guy (I cannot for the life of me remember his name) talked about “web logging” or “blogging” and it sounded super fun to me. I love to write but what I love more is to be read and to connect with others over things that I was interested in. I started in some goofy platform at first but then moved over to Blogspot or Blogger or whatever the google it is now. Big Orange (Frying Bacon in the Nude – Now private) and I have been friends since college and he also loves writing. It was really the best kind of adult engagement I could have at that stage of my life. Big Orange Doc (Shawn Shaw), my first husband, and I started up Social Zymurgy: A Culture of Beer, which is the kind of chewy title and ten dollar verbiage that Big Orange favored. Doc was also a writer and loved telling stories and enjoying their reaction. He eventually took it over completely. Content Warning: Doc’s suicide note was auto-posted there a couple of days after his death, which was both the kind of prank he enjoyed but also insanely cruel). Doc and I also participated in Flash Fiction Friday, which was a great outlet for creativity and taught me how to write stories well and that limitations make art better somehow.

S: Did you stop blogging?

FA: Yes, I believe so. This is not my last post, but probably the epilogue to the story of Prone To Whimsy, which stands as a testimony of my life as a parent.

S: When did you stop blogging? 

FA: November 8, 2020 is my last post, however, I stopped once I left that job and Facebook emerged. It was probably more around 2011 when it was no longer a daily or weekly practice.

S: What were any factors that contributed to stopping?

FA: Oh, for sure Facebook did me in for blogging. I could get the kind of interaction and play I loved so much, but superpowered there. I was able to quickly find other bloggers and poke them. We were able to really kind of pull down the walls that blogging provided and start feeling more like we were in each other’s lives instead of just reading each other’s stories. I wanted to bring the blogging friendships into my life harder. I had found people who were my age and of my generation who had a lot of the same interests and perspectives that I have but have always felt absent in my life locally. As an only child, I crave the connection of common experience and maybe even a feeling of siblinghood.

When I started my job in 2007, I had to travel quite a bit and every time I hit the road, I’d reach out to the folks in the blog-o-sphere and see if anyone wanted to meet up. I was inspired by Some Guy, who went on a road trip to meet and interview bloggers in our circle. I’ve been to Colorado to meet Skyler’s Dad and Kristi Love, Atlanta for a Cup of Coffey, New York City to meet Coaster Punchman, Poor George, and Beckeye and then CP and PG in San Diego a couple of times and Beckeye in Pittsburgh, I got to meet VikkiTikkiTavi and Rick in Los Angeles shortly after Doc passed. I got to meet Cormac Brown in San Francisco and Bubs and Amanda a few times but never Frank Sirmarco in Chicago. I did get to meet Frank’s friend Guido at the famous Club Lago in Chicago. I also have met up with Dr. Monkey Muck and Sparky in Johnson City, Evil Genius and Red here at home. Each and every one of them is who they were on paper and then some. Most of these folks I found via Grant Miller Media (Blog Godfather), who I got to meet in Florida. When I first started blogging, I wanted to find other blogs, so I hit the “next blog” button on blogspot and found myself staring at the black and white photo of a very stern white man in a lab coat and thought I will love this. And I did. The rest has been magic, including having Skyler’s Dad marry my now partner, Dax, and I and Cup of Coffey be in the wedding party! I found Dax via a private facebook group that included a lot of Chris and Beth and lots of other blogger friends and their friends.

S: Do you ever miss it?

FA: I do but not in that yearning way of wanting to go back. Blogging took the loneliness out of my life. Reading about your lives and then having a lot of your stories literally coming to life was the fulfillment of every reader’s dream, or mine anyway. It was a good discipline and outlet for my life at the time which was full of stress and chaos. It was where I could go and be me and people liked that. I loved participating in the Green Monkey Music Project and Flash Fiction Friday. It was fun and collaborative and thoughtful. 

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

FA: I no longer feel the pull to blogging. I’m sitting here at 52, surrounded by the most precious diamonds of people, the finest kind. And I get to see their stories unfold and interact in those stories every day, more organically. There is no driving need at the moment to rekindle or retreat to blogging. For me, the connection was the most important piece of blogging. I do still enjoy writing, but I’m tired. I like sharing my life and thoughts in shorter doses and visually too. That’s not to say that if a blogger comes calling for a post, I won’t be there; I will…with bells on, as Vikki so taught me to do.

S: Did you feel part of a larger community when writing your blog?

FA: I did indeed. But they are still around me.

S: Do you have people you regularly interact with? How large a group is it? Are they also bloggers?

FA: Every day! It’s a fairly large group, I feel like. Most of my core friends are bloggers, workmates, and theater people.

S: What keeps you motivated to post, whether on a blog or social media?

FA: I have always loved “a day in the life” kinds of content and that’s what motivates me to post. I don’t have the best memory and I always used to turn my nose up at nostalgia. But now, I want to remember the good things, mark them down for posterity. I love viewing the memories feature on Facebook that goes back 15 years or so and contain those little moments of my kids’ lives that I recorded. I also like to pass some of those moments along as I find them to my adult children now to give them back some of their childhood that was interrupted quite ruthlessly by their father’s suicide. I want them to see notions and events with me or their dad or with each other so they and I can have those memories reinforced. I know trauma erases a lot; I’m doing what I can to repair and refill those empty or misunderstood places. I’m grateful to have the old blogs, which will persist, where they can explore their life through their parents’ eyes if they want. But mainly, I want them to know how loved they always have been and how amazing they always will be. They were born that way.

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

FA: Social media is a tool. It really should be the invisible vehicle that supports connection and creativity. I would say that I do have many of the same feelings, but more pint-sized and more frequent; maybe a microdose of the joy that blogging would give. I know people talk a lot of shit about social media, as they should, because that will make it better. I’m in the tech biz and I know that the makers of the platforms are watching every move we make, trying to make it work better for us or be more attractive, or, worse, habitual or addictive, so that they can keep us engaged with their advertising. These are free platforms and when the platforms are free, YOU are the product. I keep that in mind, knowing that this key tool is handing over the enduring legacy of my life and family as fodder for big business. So I don’t say too much that’s deep in my heart, but then I don’t need to; I can now afford therapy. The purpose of social media in my life is to maintain my network of beautiful and thoughtful people who love me and get me as much as I do them. If that means I tolerate ads that are targeted to me, then so be it. For once, this capitalistic relationship feels balanced. I get real value for the price of my information. 

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.

FA: The state of the internet is really much the same as it was back in the glory days of blogging. People are looking ahead with trepidation about the powers of AI and what that means for us as humans and creators. From where I sit, a lot of this is machine learning, which isn’t as sophisticated as people fear it to be. However, it is starting to encroach on creative territory and being paid for good content is something that artists are no strangers to. Because the fine arts can be consumed by anyone, some people assume that it must also be easy to mass produce. I expect this isn’t the last time talented people will need to band together and strike out against those who do not value creative work as work. But I’m here for it. I make my living using it. It will never be perfect, but that’s what I kind of like about it, it’s absolute unruliness. But, really, we are its stewards and it’s up to us to remind the powers that be that from time to time. We also need to care for it and each other because the internet gives us super-powered fuel to be closer than ever. 

*******************

Thanks so much for this interview, Flannery!