I've been trying to begin blogging again for quite some time now. For various reasons—some internal, some external; some legitimate and some weak excuses—I was delayed. But here I am.
I haven’t blogged in almost a decade. I started in 2010, back when I had just finished college. I was young and green and idealistic, living in Chicago for the summer, trying to save the world one misguided adolescent at a time as a volunteer teacher. This particular gig afforded me a lot of free time in my hot sublet (and I needed something to distract me from the occasional centipede in that old building anyway ::shudder::) so I launched a blog.
That first blog, in many ways, reflects who I still am today: I wrote about whatever came to mind, as I’ve always been a lass with many interests and I didn’t want to limit myself. From why being a horse sucks and I pity them (a post I titled “Equine Sorrow”) to pop culture to intellectual elitism to fashion trends I hate, there was no topic that I wouldn’t have covered—unless I had absolutely no opinion on the matter. I rarely even shared with anyone the fact that I blogged, let alone shared the blog link itself, but whenever I was outed as a blogger, people’s first question was always, “So what do you blog about?” It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, but one I was always reticent to answer because the honest answer was something along the lines of “everything.” Though I and my steadily growing, global readership thought my posts were pretty entertaining (almost all of them were humorous in tone), I felt some embarrassment during those conversations because I was so all-over-the-place. Unfocused. People are always looking for box to put you in.
In a way, I still operate like that. People ask me what I write about in my professional life, and I have not chosen a specialty. But this time there is no shame. I am interested in Many Things, and I want to weave words around them, and that’s all you need to know. I hope that I never have to choose just one subject, or even just one genre. I value freedom in pretty much every aspect of my existence, and that includes the topics I explore. However, this new blog will actually be different. This time around, it will actually be about something: words. Well, mostly.
I’ve amassed a long list of things I’ll discuss here. It’s looking like the majority of posts will be related to words (mostly about my experiences being a writer but I’ll also feature books and post quotes and the occasional meme) but so too will I talk about the word-adjacent (the art of bookbinding, for example, or calligraphy). Some other things that I’m interested in will be sprinkled in (I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t deviate from homogeneity) but it won’t be as charmingly chaotic as my first blog.
That first blog is long defunct (I deleted it after I couldn’t take the nasty comments I started getting), but I hope to keep this one around indefinitely. Though still sensitive, I’m much stronger now than I was at 22. Also, I will not be anonymous like I was before, hiding behind a username.
My name is Danielle Hayden, and this is my blog. I hope you like it.