Is This a Real New Year’s Post?

2016Okay, it is a New Year’s Post…because we’re now a week or so into 2016. Holy Shit! How did that happen?

I could go into a small riff about age and time and blah blah blah, but you’ve probably read a million other blog posts on the same topic. Which provoked little more than a “yeah, un huh” from those in the know and a “Christ, will the aging please stop bleating about it” from those who haven’t gotten there yet. (YET – because I promise you, you will)

I haven’t written a real blog post in, well, in I don’t remember when. I haven’t actually posted very much at all over the past six months or so. When I have, there has been some purpose to the post. A purposeful post is not a real blog post, IMHO. A real blog post evolves out of itself. It’s what we used to do before the days when we all got Serious About Making A Living At Blogging. That’s before we started twisting ourselves and our ideas and our lives to conform to the wisdom of those who were first in line at the Great Monetization Window–the gurus of marketing. All of which is to say, before we grew up, got serious and–stopped having fun.

I haven’t written a real blog post in months because the idea of sharing myself with the blogging community feels a little too public to me. Weird, no? I don’t believe that I’ve changed; I’m still perfectly comfortable putting out a tad TMI if I think it’s warranted. What’s changed, I believe, is my sense of who my audience is.

Disclaimer: I feel incredibly pretentious even speaking about My Audience. Yes, I did once have one. I did once actively pursue one. But in the past year or so–not so much. Or really, if truth be told, at all.

Why not?I have two sites–Beyond MidLifeBloggers and JaneGassner(dot)com. But….

Neither of them stir in me the passionate engagement that I had with MidLifeBloggers.

I started blogging in the early days of BlogHer and what drove me then was to gain just an iota of the credit and credibility for our midlife cohort that the twenty and thirty-something mommybloggers were getting. I worked it really hard and had some success. In fact, I had tilled that midlife field so well that eventually it started to feel very crowded. Over-crowded, I might even say.

I had never wanted to be a service-oriented site. My goal was not to offer sermons from the mount about how to deal with menopause or midlife sex or second/third/fourth careers. I sought and published people who were writing about their own personal experience with those things, for good or ill, to learn from or be wary of. I didn’t make much money, but then unrepentant child of the ’60s that I am, that was never my goal. Making a difference, that was what has always motivated me. Call me naive, dumb, or just plain foolish–that’s the only goal that satisfies me, and when it’s not happening, I plain lose interest.

And too, I started to age out of midlife, or at least I couldn’t muster much interest in the topics that were bandied about. Once the mainstream media got involved in midlife blogging, the topics were grafted from the women’s magazines:

  1. Menopause–Oy, the hot flashes, the sleepless nights, the dry vagina
  2. Midlife Sex–Oy, the dry vagina and oy, his ED
  3. Midlife Parenting of Parents & Adult Children–Oy, when did my mother become my kid and my kid start sounding like my mother?
  4. Midlife Careers–Oy…..

Menopause is something you’re vitally interested in when you’re going through it. When you’re done, you don’t really give a shit. You’re just glad you don’t have to spend any time or money shopping in the feminine products aisle. Not only wasn’t I interested in it myself, I didn’t particularly care about shepherding other women through it. The same was true I noticed about the other hot topics on midlife sites. Sex: having it not having it wanting it not wanting it–hell, do your thing whatever it is and be happy doing it was/is my mantra. There are the finite viable topics that men and women are interested in: sex, relationships, sports, career, hooking up, getting married, having kids……oh wait, I’m starting to fall asleep.

Here’s the thing about being on the other side of sixty, all those things that you once cared about so passionately are no longer of such import. And if they are, you find yourself saying/thinking the same thing you thought five or ten or twenty years ago. Which doesn’t leave a whole helluva lot to explore in a blog post. I had dinner the other night with a close friend, a much younger woman who has been blogging as long as I have. We agreed that we feel like we’re watching Groundhog Day when we read blogs today: isn’t that the same post that I did back in ’07? When I saw the program for a midlifeblogging conference, I thought–and I think I said–“hey, reinvent the wheel, why don’t you.”

From time to time I think: you should really just let it all hang out, Jane. Explore your deepest feelings and fears. Make visible every nuance of your journey to old age. And then I think: to what end? And I further think: why does it seem somewhat hostile out there to me these days?

Any of this resonate with anyone else????? This is, I’m pleased to say, a real blog post and as such, you can comment on it. And I’ll comment back. And we’ll have a conversation. Like in the olden days….

12 thoughts on “Is This a Real New Year’s Post?”

  1. I found this site because all the “experts” say you have to blog to “build an audience.” So I’m researching blogs. This is the third I’ve found that seems to be oriented to “mid-life and older.” It’s refreshing to hear people who have blogged a lot say that they’re tired of it! No doubt it’s a great way to talk with a lot of people but there’s so much out there – you could sit in front of the screen 24 hours a day! I don’t want to blog. I’d rather write my novels about the topics that interest people in our age group – what really matters as we get older, how hard it is to change when you see your hangups are hanging you up, approaching death in a healthy way. But I see the value of blogs – not everyone wants to write or read novels. Blogs are a good option if you can find the right ones.

    1. Hi Diann,
      Thanks for your response. I consider myself an expert at the blogging thing and I say, you’re right to ignore people who tell you you have to blog to build an audience. There is a difference between writing (whatever the genre) because you have something to say and writing that is borne of a a purpose unrelated to the writing itself. Blog posts that are written to fulfill something other than a desire for expression are, well, they’re kinda like two bit hookers. They’re all dressed up and saying “baby baby” but the feeling is fake because it’s manufactured. I’ve done just about every kind of writing you can get paid for and I can tell you that there’s no difference between writing a blog and writing a novel. They both require desire, hard work and the willingness to keep at it even when it’s not so much fun. I hear your annoyance with the expert advice, and I feel it too. My suggestion is that, as with any reading you do, you follow your interests, the so-called experts be damned. Hope to see you again here….

  2. THIS IS FROM KATE MAHAR, WHO MUST BE ON THE SHITLIST OF WORDPRESS COMMENT GURU:
    “Leave a Comment” is trying to block me. It won’t work, you bastard! Anyway, you are so right, Jane. I don’t give a damn about menopause or middle-age sex or most of the stuff people are writing about. It’s just not relevant to ME. There is room for an elder blog and, God help us, you know it needs a more palatable name than THAT. The beauty of the internet and the ability to put as much stuff out there as we could possibly want (and then much, much more), is that there’s no reason why we can’t have a site aimed at our generation. And just as boomers needed and created the midlife stuff 10-15 years ago, the time is ripe to move on to the next level.

    1. Elder, schmelder–I agree.

      I dunno….maybe I should reopen this site to publishing other bloggers. Do what I did with MidLifeBloggers for The Other Side of Sixty. Whatcha think….???

  3. Boredom spawns creativity, right? I look forward to watching what explodes out of your creative mind next. I know it’ll be soon because a true artist doesn’t sit in old shit long.

  4. Jane, I have been having the same thoughts for years. I mean, what’s new that can’t be found on AARP? This is the question that keeps me awake at night but then I look at my file of “blog ideas” and all of the notes and half written articles I have stacked on my desk and scattered all over my office and I see that there are hundreds of things that I want to share in the hopes that I do touch one person and make that person’s life a little easier, a little less complicated or even a little more enjoyable. My closest circle of friends say I have a “gift” and an “interesting” style at times and I think that shows itself more when I inadvertently expose more of my personal life in my work. Maybe they are just “yanking” me, but why not do what comes natural. My recommendation to you is to take that leap of faith and write about what you know best….yourself. What do you have to lose? Nobody is going to remember us old “fuddie duddie” bloggers in another 20 years. Or maybe they will? Many of the world’s greatest artists weren’t truly considered significant until after they were gone. Look at how long it took for “It’s a Wonderful Life” to become a classic. Remember…….”No man is a failure……”

    1. Jay–So, where can I read your fuddie duddie blog posts? I’m always fascinated by what difference gender makes in this growing up thing. Let’s make some sort of resurgence of the Real Blog Posts blogging.

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