My Final Blog

My Final Blog Post

I write this post with a heavy heart. But also with a feeling of contentment. This will be my final blog post for RealDelia.

I never thought I’d see this day. I remember back when I first started blogging, when I was writing several new posts a week. At one point, a couple of my favorite, go-to bloggers who also wrote frequently ended their blogs. I remember thinking:  Why did they leave? Don’t they still love it?

They didn’t. Or maybe they did, but they wanted to move on to new things.

That’s now me.

Hanging Up My Cleats

Back when I was still an academic,  I took a one-year leave of absence to work for the U.S. government. At the time, I said to myself: “If I miss this job when I’m gone, I’ll come back to it. If I don’t, it’s a sign that I’m meant to quit.”

I didn’t miss that job. At all. So, fairly soon after starting my stint working in policy, I took the decision to resign by the end of the academic year.

The same thing happened with this blog. I’ve been on hiatus for nine months now. When I first stopped writing, I didn’t miss the blog at all. The time off came as a relief. I thought that maybe I should just “hang up my cleats” altogether. As the months wore on, however, I began to miss sharing my ideas with the world. But I also found myself yearning for a slightly different format than straight-up blogging.

I gave myself some white space to reflect on what a better social media platform for me might look like. In addition to this blog, I also have a monthly newsletter, and it felt inefficient to carry on maintaining two separate online spaces. Like so many others, I’d also left Twitter in early 2024, and begun exploring Substack. One of the nice things about Substack is that it rolls blogging and social media into one. Substack feels like a more organic space to grow and maintain an audience.

Finally, while I’ve absolutely loved writing about the journey of adulthood, it’s a vast topic. I wanted to return to posting more frequently, but with less density, and on a slightly narrower set of issues. In short, and to quote the Six Million Dollar Man,  I wanted to come back better, stronger, faster.

Au Revoir, Not Goodbye

I’ll be back here shortly to announce my new endeavour. For those of you who read my newsletter, the new platform will combine the sorts of recommendations I provide there with the tips and insights I offer here. The voice will be the same, but the theme will be different.

I really do hope you’ll join me as I embark upon this new journey of learning and sharing. The main thing I want to say for now, however, is “Thank You.” Some of you have been with me from the very beginning; others have joined this community more recently. It has meant the world to me to share my thoughts and feelings over the years and to know that someone was listening.

In the immortal words of Mary Poppins, I hate goodbyes. So I won’t say goodbye; I’ll say “Au Revoir.” Or, as we used to say back in college, “If I don’t see you around here, I’ll see you around. Hear?”

 

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