There's no place like blog

 I feel like I have been waiting years for the dust of social media to settle. Would a blog still have relevance?

In slow, quiet moments in class – I’m a substitute teacher these days – I go to two blogs: Cup of Jo and Ann Lovejoy’s garden blog. The first is out of habit. I still like it even though it has commercialized. The second is a more recent addition, born of my increased passion for gardening and the happy discovery that the book author Ann Lovejoy maintains a classic personal blog.

I “go” to these blogs. I “visit” them. But I don't go to Instagram. I don't visit Tik Tok. These are not places, but “platforms”, where photos, videos, symbols, and advertisements wash over me, distract me, pull me. I still have to click away ads on Cup of Jo, it’s true. But as a blog it remains a place, with the familiarity and natural change that define all places.

Yesterday, in a science class, I visited my own blog. What was I doing and thinking in months of May past? I was glad to have a place to go to find at least some answers to the question.