They paved the internet and put up a parking lot

For a few days now*, I've been ruminating on a recent post from Pru about Infertility blogging: the Halcyon Days Gone By. It made me all wistful and nostalgic and even a little...homesick. It was a time in my life where I had little else to do in the evenings but roam the internets, read blogs, write comments, write my own posts (I used to try to post every other day! Imagine!). The quality of the company was just stupendous. There was, for at least a short time, a real sense of community and togetherness; I for one had the feeling I had found my tribe and my sad, bitter little infertile voice could for once be raised as loud as I wished. It was an amazing revelation to me to learn that people could have serious, soul-destroying problems and still be funny, still laugh about things, still find a  snarky comic joy during some very bleak moments.  

If you are a blogger now and weren't around then, this is not to make you feel all left out. To be honest, even though I have fallen out of the habit of reading so widely, I had kind of assumed that in some ways, the tradition continued on unabated, although it did seem to me at one point that there were now entirely too many blogs to humanly keep track of. That was part of the beauty of the old days, I think. It used to be on Infertility Island, everyone knew their neighbour and nobody locked their tent at night. But the population seems to have grown and grown. Odd having a overpopulation crisis in a group of people unable to populate themselves, but there you go. I even heard a rumour that there may be a brand new condominium going in by the ferry dock.

For me, blogging changed irrevocably due to three factors. The first, and most serious, was that E. found out about the blog a couple years ago around the time of our first near break-up. Well, I say "found out" but in reality, I did tell him. I think we were having a huge fight about the underlying web of secrets and lies in our relationship and it seemed kind of disingenious to be keeping it from him, considering what a huge amount of time and effort I was spending online. He wasn't particulary amused about it and even though he indicated he wasn't going to read it, from then on I felt eyeballs on the back of my shoulderblades whenever I sat down to write. And I started doing a lot of undesirable self-editing.  

And that self-editing became even more self conscious after I got trainwrecked. I hate to even bring this up, since it was a ridiculous incident and it bothers me in the extreme that those sad little fucks (who went around targeting sites to subject to ridicule) might have somehow, in any small way, gotten to me. But it did make me question to some degree as to how my writing might be coming across. That can be an insidious mental journey to take, and in my opinion, one guaranteed to fuck with your blogging head. Who is reading? How often? Do they like me? Do they still like me? Why do they like me? Will they like me if I say...this. What about that? Oh God, I really want to say that but then they might hate me and stop reading. Or maybe they are only reading because they hate me. Oh God, I hate me. Maybe I should just give it all up and work on my knitting. Etc.

The third thing was, obviously, getting pregnant with Botany, her subsequent birth and the mayhem of my ensuing life since then. I no longer have an iota of the free time I used to for the internet; most of my days are spent patching the leaks in the liferaft and trying to keep us afloat (all the while singing a rousing chorus of Incy Wincy Spider at top volume). So it's perhaps easy to wrap up the fondness I felt for the Halcyon Days with the same longing for say, a long lie-in followed by a leisurely coffee while reading the Sunday papers. Or even just thirty uninterrupted seconds to pee in peace.      

Anyway, I am not sure where I am going with this little walk down memory lane. But if you're out there blogging, wondering in Jack Johnson fashion- where'd all the good people go, then I hope you somehow manage to carve out your own little happy corner of cyberspace. Everyone should have their own Halycon era. For no matter what fresh hell comes along in future, I think I will always be the better for having experienced that time.

*Nothing gets done quickly around here anymore. I have grey roots showing, I may never reach the bottom of my laundry basket and there are still cardboard boxes from the move sitting in the hall awaiting recycling. Admittedly, the boxes do make great tunnels in which Botany can play. 

Comments

[Laura]

The community you found in your early blogging days sounds enviable. (My own blog doesn't fit into any particular niche other than the wildly overpopulated "mommy blog" category...which is not an island, it's a whole supercontinent, like Gondwanaland).

Anyway, the train-wrecking and the self-editing re. E. sound really difficult. But your blog still retains a strong identity of its own, even if it's no longer particularly about infertility. That identity is, loosely, "damned fine writing." I read you before I even thought about becoming pregnant, and I've kept reading you even though infertility is not among my (many) troubles. I hope you keep posting, no matter how infrequently or on what topic.

[Grace]

Of course I went to see what trainwrecks was. I'm new to the blogging thing. And I was happy to find that it was gone. There are some good people in the world... sometimes. I like reading your work and what you are musing. Memory lane is a good place to *visit*. In the blog world it is a very easy place to find :)

[Melody_NC]

Pru's post also made me a little sad. I'm not sure why, I'm fortunate to no longer be in the misery of IF (I have 4 year old twins from IVF) but my god did those women get me through some dark times. I don't comment on your blog as often as I should although I've been reading and enjoying your blog forever. I know you had promised your faithful readers the story of how you ended up in Scotland and I know you're busy but if you ever get a chance to tell it I'd love to read it! As someone who has born in North Carolina in the US and never lived anywhere else (I still live in the hometown where my grandparents and parents were born and raised) the thought of taking off and living in another country is intriguing. ;)

[Mel]

Gah, Trainwrecks was awful. It was terrible to live in fear of their open threads.

I think the expansion of the Internet has just made little groupings pop up with chatter between groupings. Sort of like taking a big college and making it feel small.

[Lala]

i miss those days too.

[carosgram]

I've been reading blogs for 5 years so I do remember the 'halcyon days'. I think what happens is like RL relationships - things change. People come together because they have similar needs/circumstances at the same time. Then life happens. Some people in the IF world decided that they were never going to have a baby and they dropped out. Some adopted and some got pregnant and now they all have children. Then the issues of how we parent come into play and that again can bring similar minds together or cause disruptions in relationships based on parenting style. And some people just get busy with other issues in their lives. I think you have a great voice about single parenting and enjoy reading your blog. I was happy for you when you became pregnant, happy with the birth of Botany, sad about your separation with E and hopeful as you deal with the issues of parenting alone. Thinking of you and wishing you the best

[Thalia]

I feel a bit the same way, mostly about the quality of my writing compared to the quality when I had time to think about posts, edit posts etc. I feel that what I write now is incredibly mundane in comparison. And I feel at a loss when I look at the lost and found and see all the names I've never heard of there.

I think as someone else said, this is what happens to communities, so it's not unusual, but it's hard to live through. My friends now in RL are only partially the same as the friends I had 10 years ago. It's not the end of the world, and it's ok to be wistful, but perhaps we can also see a bonus, an opportunity, in the new environment.

[Betty M]

I think that probably little mini-versions of the Halcyon days pop up here and there in the vast mass of IF and post-IF blogs. I get the sense that the babyloss community is in a halcyon days phase. There are still opportunities to find new kindred spirits but it is harder the more other stuff there is. What would be a real shame is if those of you from the old days like Pru and Thalia and you stop blogging entirely. Your readers don't care if you don't post as much but we do like to hear from you.

[Jenn]

Ditto. Just, ditto.

[Anna H.]

it was a new thing, back then, and as such there was a certain closeness that came from being a much smaller group of people. it was intimacy.

but my sense is that the women who are blogging about infertility now have their own communities too and they've created circles of support and friendship within the much larger if blogging world. i think it's probably easier to find each other now; people just know more about what's out there on the internets.

that part of my life feels like a long, long time ago (on an island far, far away!) and i'm moving away from it every day. but i will always remember what you blogging women did for me in the darkest time of my life: you saved me.

thank you.

[Megan]

Infertility Island...wow, that took me right back to those days.

Jen from Vintage Ute was the first one to comment on my blog, and I felt like I finally, FINALLY someone was listening who got it.

Since I got pregnant with G, I began to write less and less and somewhere along the way, everything changed. Its ok and the changes are serving most of the people here in blogosphere well,but I miss the "halcyon days", for sure.

[Donna]

Ah yes, the good old days. I was never one of the cool kids but I read voraciously and hopefully my rants and crying jags helped someone out there. I left my old IF blog up just in case, but I started a new one, to start fresh, and still I find myself back in the land of IF more often than I'd like.

[Amyesq]

You echoed my sentiments exactly. And what about buying expensive shoes and purses to soothe our pain? It really does feel like we (collectively) went through some kind of war together.

Hey, maybe we should start some kind of veterans' group.

[Heidi]

Awww... I have to come out of hiding for this one. I saw your shout-out to my old blog at Pru's site, and I thank you for that, my friend.

I miss those halcyon days too. Which is weird to say because they were some sad, dark days indeed. But you are right...the company was special. It was unlike any I had in my real life, and in some ways better because I could be free to express my true self with all those who "got it". I miss some of the big names, too (Getup Girl and company), but also some of the lesser-knowns. In some ways, I miss them more because they were most like me in the blogging world.

Many times I have thought of blogging again, but I know it could never be the same...but I am not the same either, I suppose.

I'm just happy I printed out some posts and comments written by special people, so I can return to them like memories in a photo album. And I am even happier that I have brought a few of those former cast-aways from infertility island (*ahem*..you) into my present-day life.

[Jen]

Anyone who uses Halcyon to describe those days has really forgotten the reality of what IF is/was like. Period.

And to be honest it is not just your blog but a lot of the other IFers who went onto become sucessful parents. I read the former IF blogs and therein lie the most insensitive posts of all the mommy blogs on the internet. A lot of the current IFers are feeling the same way.

I admired you as someone who made it. I know parenting is hard. You have spoken about it freely. And even though it was painful for me to read you complain about something I so desperately wanted, I looked at it with empathy and from your perspective.

Now I am just disgusted and hurt. I won't be coming back here or reading the comments. You have made me feel foolish for supporting you and your blog.

[Heidi]

It's the "halcyon days of her blogging community". I don't she meant the "halcyon days of her life".

As I have come to realize, it's possible to feel polar opposite emotions related to the same situation or period in one's life. I am still infertile, and I still feel full of grief about that. However, I look back on the height of my BLOGGING (both reading and writing) as a time when I found some peace amid the pain. Most of that internet community is gone or changed, and like all old friends, I feel nostalic when thinking about them, not that terrible time.

As I said, most of those blogs I used to read are gone or have changed since those days, and that's a good thing. It means they have moved on too...we all need to move on at some point... Even most of the ones that still exist, I do not read, mostly because they do not give to me now what they gave to me way back then, and that is fine. It's important to remember that internet relations are mostly tenuous, and it's OK to let go of them if they do not serve you in a positive, much-needed manner. As bloggers move on, it's OK for readers to move on too.

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