I Used To Be Funny
For those of you who don’t know, I actually blogged for 16+ years on a Wordpress platform at misszoot.com. Unfortunately, I never monetized it and spammers were getting smarter about how to insert links into blog posts and I couldn’t afford the malware packages to prevent the attacks so I decided to try to write somewhere with more security.
I’ve been cleaning out all of my archives over there until I figure out what I want to do with everything. Basically, this first round is just deleting the thousands of blog posts about TV and boob sweat and scamming through the entries I’m keeping for those erroneous links planted by spammers trying to increase someone’s SEO. For Example: 2 hospice facilities; one in Cincinnati and one in San Diego obviously paid some company to help boost their Google rankings because their links were plugged into entries where I was talking about my Dad dying! Isn’t that nice? I’m going to let them both know because I’m certain that’s not what they intended when they paid said marketer…but still…IT MADE ME SO ANGRY.
But while I’m going through all of that old content - I’m up to 2010 now - I’m realizing how much of what I wrote centered around humor. From 2004-2009, basically 95% of what I wrote (and I wrote 2 entries a day sometimes) was funny. The only time I ever got serious was talking about my reproductive nightmare but I wrote so much that those entries were nothing compared to the millions of words trying to make people laugh.
Now it’s like 90% serious stuff and 8% boring stuff and maybe…MAYBE 2% potentially funny.
It’s like I don’t even try to make anyone laugh anymore.
I was trying to figure out why that seems to have been the transition on this blog because I assure you: I AM STILL VERY FUNNY.
But here’s what I struggle with constantly when reflecting on change: It doesn’t happen with a flash of lightning. I think the diet industry actually did that to me, twisted my perceptions of transformation. The programming is always: YOU DO THIS DIET AND YOU WILL BE SKINNY IN NO TIME AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE BETTER! And I believe I let that seep into every aspect of my life because I have to constantly remind myself when I’m working on habits etc…PERMANENT CHANGE IS GRADUAL.
At first I wanted to blame my Dad’s death for me stopping being funny. But I’m still finding funny entries in 2010! Maybe it’s after my kid came out and politics started feeling very tangible and high-risk to me for the first time? Maybe it’s when Trayvon Martin died and his murderer was acquitted? Maybe that’s when I started waking up to systemic racism and started writing about it here? Maybe it was the 2016 election? Maybe it was…
It was all of these things. AND it was perimenopause. AND it was body dysmorphia and binge eating and anxiety and depression. AND it was becoming part of the sandwich generation where I was staying in Knoxville to take care of my Mom while helping my kids with their homework over Facetime.
It’s everything. Life just changed in 100 different ways and now my writing now comes from my heart instead of my need to build an audience by making people laugh. I’m writing now to build emotional connections. Mommybloggers in the 2000s were writing to be funny. Everyone had to be funny. Even writing about the sad stuff had to be funny. Somewhere along the way people either stopped writing, or stopped being funny, and I guess I’m there too and I just kinda woke up and noticed.
I mean, it’s not like I thought this place had been a laugh fest before this realization. I promise I was aware we weren’t keeping things that light anymore.
Popular people on social media will post pictures of their messy kitchens to remind their followers that they edit and frame photos and their life is actually not as perfect as it looks. So I’m posting this picture to remind you that my writing comes from a very serious and often tumultuous heart, but there is a lot of laughter in my life.
Nyoka thought she would come into my room where I was at my desk and she would do her school work on my bed so we could keep each other company. Instead I decided to act like an annoying little sister and take the opportunity to lay down on top of her while she was doing her work. We were cracking up so much at one point I screamed, “STOP MAKING ME LAUGH OR I AM GOING TO PEE ON YOU.”
Zoomie decided to join in on the fun too. She got a lot of work done, as you can tell.
I’ve also been going on a lot of serotonin producing hikes and I’ve been trying to set aside time to be more creative and to do art, no matter how terrible it is. Rosco still follows me around everywhere making me feel very loved and every once in awhile my kids stop fighting long enough to enjoy each other’s company.
(It’s rare.)
Writing has become cathartic which tends to be serious but I promise you there is still light in my days. I’m very sad a lot, I’m really struggling with my depression and anxiety and while we have insurance, we don’t really have extra money for copays so I’m not getting the medical support I probably need. But there’s always laughter in my days. It may be between spots of sadness and despair, but the laughter is there too. I just don’t write about it anymore.