I still have those “green” tendencies, however. I just haven’t
written about them so much. I think I was following the wave of blogs that I
was reading back in the late 2000s. Those were the days people worried about
their carbon footprint, toxins in their makeup and hair products, and growing gardens
in their backyards. It was pre-Obama and just at the end of the Dubya
administration. We weren’t sure where we were going as a society, but we were
going to do everything we could to hold on to hope that it would get better. I
think the progress of the Obama administration kind of took out the spark in
that movement. Either that, or it was the hipster takeover. I’m not sure. It seems
that the bloggers I was following, with names like “The Crunchy Chicken” and “Green
as a Thistle,” were handing out the ideal way to live a simpler life, with less
consumption. This was also about the time when I started following a little
cooking blog called The Pioneer Woman, before everyone knew that this was Ree
Drummond, before the show and way before Walmart! This was the age of the Mom
Blogger. I didn’t know that’s what it was called at first, but I always envied
all the time that they seemed to have to churn out blog posts every day. I
think the only one of the bloggers I followed that was similar in age and
singledom than I would have been “Green as a Thistle,” and she was Canadian!
All of these lady bloggers really gave me the inspiration to
develop my own blogging chops. I wasn’t very consistent, but I definitely wanted
to share my abilities with the world. We were all so passionate about doing
everything we could to save the planet. What happened to that passion? Was is
squashed with the advent of Portlandia? Certainly the more hipster, hippie-dippie
trends took over. To be honest, I did try some crazy things in the name of
using less non-renewable resources. An old-fashioned clothesline? Yep, until it
broke. It took me a while to decide I just needed to put it out on the curb for
the scrap man. I also bought a bicycle. One that I rarely ride because there is
nowhere in my neighborhood that is safe enough to ride a bike without getting
ran over.
That year or so that I did that part of my blogging life was
one of my more productive writing times. I think it was a creative distraction
for me while I finished my Master of Library Science. I was also in a new job
that did not have me nearly as busy as I had hoped to be. Also, this was before
I discovered Facebook. I can look at my blogging history and see exactly where
everything started going downhill for my blogging. I think social media did
that for a lot of bloggers. The blog forced me to experiment with my writing
and a different way of living. Facebook kind of insulated me into another
world. I am hoping to get back to this world I used to be a part of. Not just the
writing, but living a sustainable life, with a simply sophisticated twist.