Basically, I only play one character; I just play him at different volumes

 Hi.  My name is Cari Donaldson, and I used to be a writer.

I wrote a book (that link is a shameless plug, just so you're not tricked into thinking it'll lead somewhere fun).  I wrote for Catholic websites like Catholic Exchange and Aleteia.  I was the communications coordinator for a non-profit.  And I kept a blog for almost 10 years.

I googled "Clan Donaldson" and this screen shot came up.  No idea why.  Not linked to anything on my blog.  Just a screen shot.

Of all these things, it's the blog I miss the most.  I mean, I actually miss it, because at some point, I failed to renew the hosting on it and the whole thing got scrapped.  Gone.  Lost in the void of the Sub-Etha (yeah, I'm a link junkie.  They're the blog equivalent of footnotes.  Which I got to use extensively in my book.  Just to let you know in case you were hoping I'd eventually stop.  I won't.)  The loss of the actual, tangible (?? tangible?  Can a blog be tangible?  I mean, I'm not talking about a printed version of the blog.  I'm talking about the files hosted....wherever files are hosted) blog was most crushing, as it served as a baby book for all six of my living children.  It was a love letter to my husband.  It was photographic and documented proof that the Donaldsons existed from 2007 until....oh, I'd say 2015?  And now that it's gone, did we even exist?

Another google image search result.  This one was linked to something on Pinterest?  Idk

But beyond the loss of my personal blog, I miss blogs in general.  I miss the blogs that I had in my 30s, the wild west of blogging, when we all just sort of smashed our fingers against our keys and out came what was on our minds, what was on our hearts.  It wasn't slick or commercialized or branded and sure as hell nobody had even COME UP with the word "influencer".  We just were ourselves and found each other to form these weird little communities.  I made so many friends from our blogs.  Weird and messy and untidy and unpolished friends who would throw ideas into the sub-etha without worrying about censorship or being cancelled or losing followers.

But at some point blogs stopped being boundless and rambunctious.  Bloggers started organizing themselves into compartments: Mommy Blogger.  Lifestyle Blogger.  Political Blogger.  I started organizing myself into a compartment.  I started worrying about content and monetizing and SEO optimization (just kidding, I never worried about that because I don't even know what that is).   I began worrying that I wasn't providing good enough, interesting enough, profitable enough content and then I realized I didn't want to turn myself or my family into a commodity and that's basically what I was trying to do, so I just stopped.  Plus, I'm lazy and scatterbrained with terrible follow-through.

It was nice, for a while.  I filled that need for community and writing with Facebook.  Then Facebook got lame, so I moved to Twitter.  But Twitter was loud and stupid and confusing, so I settled on Instagram.  Instagram was pretty and curated and while it never had the raw, messy, honest musings of blogs, at least it wasn't as angry as Facebook and Twitter.

But then Instagram turned off hashtags in the days before the election to "help prevent the spread of possible false information and harmful content related to the election".  Then it notified me that a post I'd liked had contained false information about covid and so it had been taken down.  Then a friend of mine I'd made through blogging (Hi Mary Kate!  I tried linking to your old blog, but it seems to be having margaritas with my blog out in the sub-etha) posted an article urging people to return to the decentralized, wild west way of pre-Big Tech online communities, and I knew what I had to do.  What I'd been wanting to do for a while now.  

I would insert the actual IG post, but I don't know how to.  Here's a shiny screen shot instead

I wanted to start blogging again.  I wanted to start writing again.  And I wanted to do it in a space that wasn't going to punish wrongthink.  I want to write and engage with people outside an echo chamber prison created for me by algorithms designed to sell advertisements and police thoughts.  Probably Blogger isn't the bastion of free thought and expression that I'd like it to be, but hell, it's got to be better than InstaTwitterBook, right?

We'll see. 

I thought that from now until the end of the year I would challenge myself to write something Monday-Friday.  And because I know I will end up staring at the screen for hours and not do anything otherwise, I've created a schedule for myself.  Behold, and be sure to mark your calendars:

Monday: Faith

Tuesday: Farming/Natural World

Wednesday: Wild Card

Thursday: Culture

Friday: Family 

It's an assortment.  And I absolutely will go on tangents.  But those are the things that interest me the most and that I have the Biggest of Thoughts about, so we'll start here.  

Resquiescat in pace, friend

Anyone reading this who knows me probably knows how much I love Chris Farley.  There will absolutely be more on him in the upcoming posts. He said something once that rings true for me- "Basically, I only play one character; I just play him at different volumes".  I get that.  That's me.  That's why blogging soured for me.  I tried to brand myself as just one thing, and I am just one thing, but I'm that thing at different volumes.  Cari the Farmer is still Cari the Mom is still Cari the folklore obsessed is still Cari the Catholic.  But I play them at different volumes, always changing.

So let's see if I can't remember how this writing thing works, and play you some parts of me, all at different volumes, with no concern for how the neighbors complain.

If nothing else, it'll get me writing again.