This is a strange title, even for me. This past Saturday, I sat at my dining table and wrote several pages in my journal. In it, I shared that recently, I felt like writing. Writing here. I have not really felt this way for a long time, and I am not sure why I did not feel like writing, nor am I sure why I now feel like writing.
That’s the call I answered. The call to write. Here.
Technically, the call to write has never left me, but the call to write here and the will to do any other writing are separate matters that need tender attention and deciphering. Which is which? And why?
I thought I’d still come here, open a blank page, and write my thoughts, no matter how scattered. My Sweet Potatoes will accept me, I convinced myself.
I’ve been reading that blogging is dead. I think blogging started dying when Twitter happened because it was micro-blogging, and suddenly, the need to write so much was not there anymore. But I don’t know if I have ever truly been a blogger as much as I have just been a writer who owned a virtual space. I just wanted to write. Videos are wonderful, but writing will always be my first and true love. It’s the thing I’d worry and panic about not being able to do. And I worried and panicked when I could not write. I just could not write, and it made me feel less than useful (because I do not want to use the word, useless). There were ideas in my head, but I could not write. The ideas felt half-baked and foreign and tasteless and unwriteable.
I also think that the losses I suffered in the past few years affected me more than I knew. The divorce was the least of the losses. Can I even count the divorce as a loss? No. It was more like a detour, a change in plans, going from something to something else. My mom was the greatest loss. There were others that I do not feel like writing about today. There’s no part of me that dreams of not being divorced from that boy. But my mom, I fantasize about her being alive all the time. I imagine alternative realities where she did not die. I fantasize about the other losses, too.
In addition to these losses, however, there is a part of me that (I think) got lost and swept away in the raging sea of data-driven jargon. SEO, unique visitors, page views, new visitors, returning visitors, etc. I did not care about any of these things when I started writing online. I just wanted to write, and I was happy to have a virtual space to do that. Learning to care about this data became a double-edged sword. Sure, I learned how to have “SEO-Optimized Titles,” but sometimes, the titles did not feel like me, and they did nothing for my creativity. It was like craving pounded yam and egusi soup and being given a burger. Sure, it was food, but … you know? I’m not implying that data is bad – of course, it isn’t – but I’m trying to find the middle ground, the space where I can still eat the pounded yam and egusi soup, but maybe in a smaller, still satisfying quantity.
If we’re pointing fingers (and we are), I say we point at my mom and data. They both owe me – us, really – an apology. I’m not saying that I have suddenly returned to who I used to be, but you know, if the call comes, I will answer.
I have not been here for so long, so I figured I’d use my most recent picture. This was taken on March 4, 2025. My pants were the star of the occasion because Funmie gave them to me – not because she loved me so much and wanted to gift me something but because she bought them for herself and they did not fit. Friends who buy themselves the wrong sizes of clothes and end up giving them to you, they shall inherit heaven. I would also like to celebrate that the pants match the pot on the stove. Everything is worthy of celebration.
I don’t know if blogging is dead. I only know that I am not.
Did we both really put up blog posts within a day of each other?!