Starting my blog: a history of failed attempts
So I guess this is my first official post which is awesome because I currently have ONE subscriber (shoutout to my coworker Steven).
Anyhow, I thought it fitting to do some reflection on what I’m even doing here in the first place and how this all started.
Let’s pull out a chronology of my writing habits and failed attempts at starting a blog:
1985
I am born.
1995
I am 10 years old and start journaling. I am probably writing pretty lame stuff, like “I saw a butterfly today and it was so pretty!!!!” etc. There are hearts everywhere. All over the page.
2000
I am 15 and in the deep throws of high school. There is probably endless drama and I’m wildly insecure. I journal religiously about “friends” and boys and how horrible I think my life is. I even type out journal entries on my ginormous desktop computer using pretty font colors that I proceed to print out, cut out, and glue-stick into my journal. Oy vey.
2003
I am off to college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. It is such an overwhelming experience and adjustment and I am still journaling almost every single day. Lots of processing and trying to figure out everything that’s going on and what I’m even supposed to be doing here in the first place.
2007
I am graduating college and have somehow gone from a happy-go-lucky English major with my nose constantly buried in books to a neurotic and unhappy overachiever who now just wants to make money. Hmm. The journaling stops.
2011
I am working at Facebook and on my honeymoon in Greece. I explicitly want to go to a bookstore in Athens because journaling used to be such a huge part of my life and who I was and what I did every day and I don’t understand what happened to me?? Why did it stop?? I buy a journal and tote it around for two weeks. I am resolved to record the immeasurable joy of our honeymoon and get back to journaling like I used to. Spoiler alert: I still have the journal from that trip. It’s empty.
2013
I am miserable. A shell of a human being. I convince my husband to let me leave my job at Facebook and I go to France for a month by myself. I am journaling again for the first time in YEARS. I write my way through the entire solo trip. Mostly I am trying to figure out why I am so unhappy and what is wrong with me. I have no excuse to be unhappy. I am ashamed.
I decide to start a blog called Subtle Sophistication - the name is so cringy I know, gross. I spend a bunch of time building the website. Not one post ever goes out.
2014
The illusion of my picture perfect-looking marriage is shattered. I am (quite literally) in shock. The sheer anxiety caused at the thought of my life falling apart so blatantly is SO crippling and SO overwhelming I physically cannot go out in public without feeling like I am going to have a panic attack. My mom drives me to Barnes & Noble because I want to buy a journal. I am able to make it into the real world of the store for 10 minutes to pick one out. We stop at a Starbucks and I literally last 3 minutes in a crowded store before I feel like I am going to scream and fall apart. Something about watching other people continue on with their day-to-day lives as time moves forward while I am entirely stopped in time and emotionally stunted and can barely breathe is impossible to grapple with. I am desperate to get home. All I feel like I can do is write. I get back with the journal and I write for hours straight. The first time I have journaled that much since 2007.
So. many. realizations. start coming to me.
2016
I am slowly healing from my divorce thanks to lots of therapy and work and incessant (probably unhealthily so) journaling every day. I leave my job at Pinterest. I am resolved to start another blog and actually post on it this time. This one is called Musings x Melissa - another winner in the name department. I spend time trying to build a website before I just give up and move it to Medium. I post a couple things largely related to the divorce. I am WAY too raw to be posting anything. More cringe. Not a great move. I abandon the project.
2020
I am living in Denver now and loving it and feeling like myself for the first time in years. I am still journaling (albeit a healthy amount) every day. I finish an 8-month software development program where I’ve learned how to code. I am trying to get a job as a software engineer and it’s March 2020. Low and behold - the lockdowns start. I decide to start ANOTHER BLOG. <facepalm> This one is called melrob.codes - we’re getting slightly better on the naming here. Mostly I want a way to share my journey moving from the business side of tech to the engineering side of tech. I have a teeny tiny instagram following of people I don’t know. I post on the blog 2 times.
Abandoned.
2022
I still journal every day. I try to write longer-form pieces and analyze the best way to tell my story
over.
and over.
again.
I go through about 23413 potential blog names before I decide on objectively MELROB. I like it because it’s neutral. And the idea is that I’m just trying to be my freaking self for the first goddamn time in my life. Objectively (just) ME - full stop. I build another website. I write half a dozen unfinished posts. I spend months hemming and hawing about what to write and how to write because I just can’t do it and I am a terrible writer and I will never be able to get anything out there. I paralyze myself.
I discover substack. And I get going in 2 days.
That brings us to TODAY, right now, in this moment. Where I’m sitting on my couch with a laptop in the pitch black dark of my house like a total weirdo because evidently it’s nighttime and I have literally not moved since I sat down and started working on this post who knows how long ago.
If that tells you anything, it’s that writing is the only thing I can do for hours on end and lose all sense of space and time. It’s the only thing I know how to do. The only way I know how to express myself. And while I screw around year-in and year-out wishing I could finally write publicly and beating myself up endlessly for not having the courage or the form or the discipline to be a good writer like everyone else - I think I have finally reached a point where the cost of not doing it drastically outweighs the whole JUST PUTTING ANYTHING OUT THERE thing.
So here we are. I’m finally getting this stuff out of my head and into the ether. It’s happening. And even if no one ever reads this, I know I will be 1000000000x better for trying.
So welcome. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING. This is going to be a wild and crazy ride.