The Pointlessness of Blogging

I started this blog, lovingly named Trans/Plant/Portation to refer to my gender identity, my then-imminent relocation to the other side of the continent, and the travelogue that I’d be writing about as we drove across country (and through part of Canada). I was volunteering to give up my day job, figuring that after fifteen pretty successful years in the workplace I’d land something new and interesting shortly after unpacking my last box in our new house. Instead I blew out my left ACL three weeks prior to our trip, watched the global credit economy implode, and didn’t find work for another two years.

Somehow, the blog that was supposed to be my fun-filled journal for friends turned into my stop gap, my virtual solace-finder—one of my only outlets for my extroverted personality. Susanne was worried for me, I could tell, but she had her own anxiety regarding acclimating to her new college environment. She had to start her faculty career and sort out the myriad characters at work. All of a sudden everyone we knew was Susanne’s coworker—fine, insofar as coworkers go, but not a group to whom one can express their concerns about their Very Recent Moving Experience.

Also, the new house reeked of cat urine, the walls bulged, and the upstairs tub occasionally leaked into the kitchen, via the spotted ceiling.

At some point, I took up writing again, after something like an 18-year absence. This move really worked out for me in that I now have two published books, three more in progress, and several other writing credits to my name. I’ve done more than twenty readings and met a lot of talented writers and activists, and I feel like I’m contributing something not entirely crappy to the nascent transgender literary scene. Go me. In the swell of resurgent writing I turned my attention to topics I didn’t see taken up elsewhere on the Internet—trans community, trans health, trans youth, trans & popular culture (sensing a theme here?), and trans literature. Oh, and hamburgers.

Then, boom. One, two extremely adorable children came into being, created so lovingly and at great labor of my partner, Susanne. Thank goodness I’d gotten those writing projects mostly finished before they came along, because now I have some momentum in between the diaper changes, spit-up cataclysms, sleepless nights, general chaos, and intense learning. All of my less-priority writing has been pushed to the back burner (which sits on our kitchen island right next to the binky on deck and a mostly used box of tissues).

Also in the meantime the Web gave rise to many new, intelligent voices who covered my beloved topics very well, and in my dearth of free time it seemed like I’d only be echoing their sentiments, and on a smaller platform to boot. So I pretty much stopped blogging. Nearly eight hundred posts live here at transplantportation.com, and sometimes people even stop by and read them. I’m proud of every word. I’m proud of the 150,000 words I contributed to The Pop Culture Blog Which Shall Not Be Named, even if the owner deleted them all in a fit of juvenile rage (maybe I’m still annoyed about that, I guess). And I’m not saying I won’t be blogging anymore, but I am overdue to reassess my writing projects.

I’m also going to be reorganizing this blog in the fall, making it easier to find the links to my work that’s available online, and separate out the “writing about writing” posts so those are easier to find for the six people in the country who care to read such things (seriously, there are six of them out there). I think I’ll get back to blogging as I revamp my weekly schedule. And I’m grateful for what this little virtual place has meant for me. But 2016 needs to be a year of focus for me, or I won’t get anything done.

And you know, in the writing, activist, and parenting worlds you’re only as useful as your last good deed.