The Future of Eighteen Almonds

Oh hey… It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Last time I was here, I was trailing off into oblivion. I started this blog with the intention of writing about my hobbies and quickly found that I had failed to find a narrow enough focus to really create a topical niche blog. While I enjoyed food and running, neither consumed my every waking thought and thus neither really seemed to inspire the type of passion necessary to be a _____ blogger. (Insert whatever topic you may.)

Around the time my blog trailed off, two things were starting to consume most of my time, and thus most of my conscious thoughts, squeezing out what little space there already was for food and running. I was opening my own orthodontic practice and becoming deeply enmeshed in the worlds of business, entrepreneurship, partnership, and leadership/management – topics that could keep us all busy eternally and which have themselves each inspired bloggers, podcasters, authors, etc.

The second thing? Oh, just had my first kid. No biggie, but yeah that kind of consumes some of my time and mental capacity. (Obviously I’m being incredibly facetious. He has completely superseded all interests, hobbies, responsibilities. His existence has not only changed the thoughts of every waking moment, but he has actually increased the number of moments during which I’m awake and filled those too.) And I’m obsessed with him, so that’s all well and good, but once again it just served to make clear to me that perhaps the hobbies that I thought of as “passions” weren’t truly “passions.”

Perhaps this is why there are so many “lifestyle” bloggers. We all just want to write about whatever we’re thinking about in the moment. I enjoy rolling my eyes at the term “lifestyle blogger” because let’s face it… it’s a stupid concept. It says, “I’m so good at every damn thing that I’m going to write down everything I think so other, less awesome, people can read about it and try to be like me!” Usually book-ended with humble brags, these folks seem to find ways to amuse the general public by presenting a curated version of their lives. (And no matter how many pictures they post of their “messy house” and “no make-up,” let’s be real… they’re still curated.)

My disdain for the term lifestyle blogging leaves me in quite a pickle. Because it dawned on me recently that I miss writing. I want to write something. I just don’t know what. I used to feel pressure to have a topic for my blog. I used to think it had to be a food blog or a running blog or a mindfulness blog or whatever whatever. And yes, going narrow on the topic is good for readership, but it turns out, I don’t have a narrow topic. Am I… gulp… writing a lifestyle blog?

No. Of course not. I’m writing whatever I feel like and you can take it or leave it. I already write in lots of other places for myself – my diary, my annual photo album. So why do I feel the need to write publicly where other people can read what I have to say? I have no idea. Maybe I just want to put thoughts out there and see if anyone else feels the same way. Maybe it’s an incredibly ineffective “get rich quick” scheme. Whatever. I feel like it. That’s all.

I hope to see more of you soon.