I Wrote Another GodForsaken Blogiverary Post so You Don’t Have to

Today I’m blog-hopping, writing with friends on the theme of “I did [fill in the blank] so you don’t have to” inspired by JD, who seems to have retired her similarly themed blog in 2013. Mom, Dad, this is one of those esoteric blogger-posts.

Over the years, I’ve run the blogiversary gamut, writing satire and sap,  self-reflection and sass.  I even tried my hand at creating animated videos, making myself creative director of cartoon characters able to move their appendages in random bursts, and only at odds with their dialogue. Imagine a flip-book featuring a knock-off comic-strip Cathy making jokes about HTML code while she directs non-existent traffic, playing opposite a bastardized Marmaduke, burping his responses and nodding at all the wrong times. I’d link those videos for you here, but the platforms came and went in an internet minute, unlike me, the long-in-the-few-remaining-teeth blogger.

I neglected my blogiversary entirely in 2014, and this year I had to count my fingers over and over again to figure out how long ago I began blogging. Surely, more than 6 years have passed since October of 2008.

I remember that time—the two thousand and single digits– when I anticipated each blogiversary milestone. I attempted clever posts in hopes of links and shares from blogger friend, bloggers with blog names invoking some combination of booze, marriage, and ironic motherhood. Oh that heady time, before the entire blogosphere revealed its alcohol problem, got divorced, and the kids grew up.  Dang kids left us nothing ironic to blog about, save the fact that we are all bloggers now silenced by the very muses that drove us to the internet in the first place.  And yet, I still sit, gnarled over my keyboard, watching my bloglife pass before my eyes. So I’ll go ahead and write this blogiversary post so you don’t have to.

In the early years, we literally ran to our shared family desktops when creativity struck, instead of rolling over in bed as we do now, to bark at phone-slave Siri our latest FUNNY AND UNIQUE POST IDEA only to confirm  that, yes, someone already wrote it; the FUNNY AND UNIQUE POST IDEA went viral on HuffPo, so phew, another FUNNY AND UNIQUE POST IDEA you don’t have to write.

I’ve blogged long enough to remember Wordless Wednesday, Six Word Saturday, and Assault you with auto-play music and guarantee you’ll never returnday. In those days, the internet reached nearly full-capacity with bloggers taking pictures of themselves in the mirror with a camera over one eye. Now we’d give back all of our unspent klout perks if we could make the non-stop selfies full-stop.

I blogged at a time when people like me soul-searched over But what is my blog really about? I need a tagline. WHAT IS MY BRAND? When people rushed to cry FIRST in comment sections, like a first-grader with everything to prove and line-budging issues.

Together, bloggers, we’ve laughed over nearly every conceivable riff on humor parenting and revisited them all again as lists. We’ve cried over unimaginable heartbreak. We’ve collectively freaked the hell out over all of the perceived and real terrors of our world, leaving us wrung-out, with only the emotional capacity of like and the absence of like remaining.

When Facebook introduced stickers in comments recently, bloggers celebrated with likes or protested with the absence of likes, while ignoring the harsh realization that a cat riding a moped-wearing a top hat and monocle and/or a world cup referee shouting “GOL!!” now articulates our sentiments better than we, ourselves can. Sorry, but we officially tapped our lifetime allotted quotient of LOL OMG THIS <3!!!  (If you have no idea what any of this paragraph refers to, I admire you, I envy you, you make wise life-choices).

My blog fires still burn, if not as bright, though my feeds mostly burned out a while ago. I have to work harder now to find something worth saying, and to communicate words that resonate in our Top10List emoticon GIF world.  But I’m still here, and blogging still feels worthwhile for me. I think I’ll stay a while.

Now go read these and have a great day:

I Listened to KidzBop So You Don’t Have To – Midlife Mixtape

I Had Food Poisoning While Sitting On A Diaper Genie So You Don’t Have To – Smacksy

I Spent 3 Solid Days Obsessing Over Grout Color So You Don’t Have To – Elizabeth McGuire

I Toured Washington DC in a Night Bus So You Don’t Have To – Wendi Aarons

I’m Surviving October So You Don’t Have To – Tarja Parssinen