There’s still a blogosphere, sorta.

Entirely by accident — I was looking for recipes for leftover fried fish — I found a blog written by a middle aged white woman. I read a couple of her posts (one entirely about a jacket; another, about internet anxiety and unfriending people on Facebook and not really using certain platforms), and then I clicked through her blogroll.

The blogging experience we all had ten or fifteen years ago, and think of as “over”? Is still happening.

I clicked through to one and the author’s been dead of breast cancer for two years. Another featured a year-old post about how the blogger’s giving up blogging because of fatigue and a fucked up family. But another was current and about buying and using makeup. Another was also current, with brilliantly written little posts about everything, about anxiety and a sort of timidity about enjoying things.

And they all link back to one another and all have or had non-ironic readers who comment. They have layouts and themes even older than this one. It’s so great.

It’s also really weird, because every blog I read back in the day is dead… most of the links in my blogroll haven’t been updated in years, and three of the domains are expired.

I remember blogging earnestly and non-ironically. I remember how the internet was, in various corners, before the wonderful and terrible shit-show that is social networking and trolling and painful awareness of privilege. I remember it so well that now I keep an analog diary now and rarely post here, even though I pay for the hosting and the domain year after year after year, even though nobody reads it but me and maybe Stanley.

I love goblinbox, though, and my dad still blogs here, so it’s worth it just to host that.

As for my “what should I be wearing at my age” question, apparently middle-aged white women wear skinny jeans, expensive shoes, expensive tee shirts, leather bomber jackets, carry an expensive handbag and, for a pop of color, wear name-brand red lipstick. So, that’s me in sweats forever, then.