Who I'm Reading (and Why)

 

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Not many people blog anymore. 

Blogging is out of date on the internet. The bloggers I followed as a high school and college student have mostly switched over to podcasts, Instagram, or, in one weird case, wrote a couple books and then became a stand up comic.  

I'm wondering if this now means that blogging is the cool, vintage, hipster thing to do online, or if it just means I'm an old fuddy duddy for sticking with it instead of switching over to Instagram with everyone else. 

At any rate, I know I'm not totally alone with it. There are those who still prefer this form of online expression, and a handful that have sites well worth following. Here's the ones I seek out and check regularly (versus the ones I only click on when I see them on social media). 

Stoic Breviary 

The only reason I know this blog exists is because I once crossed paths with the man who writes it. He's an extremely private person; he doesn't have any social media, he writes under a pseudonym, and he's not a very extroverted personality. 

His blog is made up of reflections on passages from stoics who lived and worked in Ancient Greece, mixed in with things he finds value in: works of art, pithy cartoons, poems, and passages from ancient Eastern philosophers. 

I read his blog because he's more educated than I am, and his reflections usually give me something to chew on. As a stay at home mom, I frankly don't have the time or brain space to read and analyze books of poetry or philosophy. At the same time, the part of me that likes to think about things from a philosophical or symbolic standpoint still exists, and I'd like to keep it alive. Having someone do a good chunk of the work for me helps that happen. 

Going Country. 

The blog of a woman living with her family in a wide open, desolate (but beautiful) area of New Mexico. They raise sheep, have a huge garden, and make a life for themselves in the middle of nowhere. 

Her life is different than mine in some pretty key ways. We're not nearly as isolated, and that alone leads to some pretty big differences. But we're similar in mentality with food and housekeeping in some ways that I've had trouble finding on other blogs. 

I also love how low key and casual her blog is. There are blogs dedicated to country living/ prepper lifestyles out there, and I've followed some of them, but they're obviously businesses rather than hobbies. There's just something deeply satisfying about reading a blog where you don't feel like someone is making a profit off of you or trying to, but are writing just for the joy of it (not that I have anything against making a living that way! But it definitely leads to a different reader experience). Not because they want to promote a lifestyle, but because that's the lifestyle they live and they want to write about it. It feel more real. 

I love the glimpses of life living somewhere so wide open and wild too. She does some casual photography of the area when she goes on her evening walk, and the sky there is just breathtaking. 

Charlotte Was Both 

Amy Wellborn is someone else I follow because she's more educated than I am, and has quite frankly lived a lot more than I have. She's a literature professor living and working in Alabama who's traveled Europe, written many books, raised/is raising a few kids, became a widow, and loves to explore national parks, watch artistically valuable cinema, and find open source places to read Tolstoy and St. Francis de Sales and share it all on her blog. 

She has a gift for taking all that she's found and experienced and making it easy to access and understand (she must be a wonderful professor). She writes on current events with the liturgy and gender issues in a way I find pretty illuminating, and I've learned a lot from her pieces on the saints and literature. Even stuff I don't share an interest in, like artsy European cinema, I'll gladly read her stuff on because her enthusiasm for it shines through and she does such a good job explaining why she finds so much value in it. She obviously thinks through her positions on things too, and that's always something to value in a writer. 

Simcha Fisher 

My relationship with Simcha's work is...complicated. She's been a huge influence on my work and on my faith life, and I still visit her blog pretty often, so I'd be remiss if I didn't include her here. That remains true even when I disagree with her positions on things, which happens fairly often. 

She's one of two writers I first encountered in high school still regularly blogging (the other being Kelly Mantoan), and her style has most definitely had a big impact on my own (it sort of had to...I've been following her stuff for 14 years!). That said, as I've grown up, I've found my own opinions diverging more and more from hers when it comes to certain political points and ideologies. There have been times I've taken a break from following her for a bit, once because her coverage of Church abuse stuff was too triggering for where I was at the moment (dealing with my own case), and a few times because she went an ideological or methodological direction that, try as I might (and I did try) I just couldn't sympathize with. 

She's undeniably intelligent though, and a lot of her pieces challenge me and make me re-think and re-evaluate (and often nuance if not change) my own perspective. Her ability to balance serious coverage of deeply painful topics with stuff about her every day faith life, and finding joy in that everyday life even in the face of all the nasty, helped get me out of a dark place.  Her stuff definitely informed how I format things on my own blog and how I approach my faith life. Heck, some of the things I learned from her helped my faith survive at all, and her (extremely honest) writing about NFP probably saved me a fair amount of marital angst (it's supposed to suck!).

She doesn't know me from Adam, but she's been a mentor and a huge influence, even if I can't sympathize with her positions (and once or twice her method) on certain things. I'm thankful she's around and still writing. 

And I've definitely stolen some recipes from her food posts. 

So those are the blogs I find interesting. Looking at this list, most of them are pretty eclectic and slice of life-- things people write about what they find interesting as they find them. I don't know what this says about me. I suppose I prefer blogs that feel more like letters, that tell me about people rather than subjects. 

I do know it blows that whole "find your niche and stick to it" thing out of the water. Guess that makes me a market outlier.