Why I quit blogging
Reader, a confession: I am not a blogger.
Never have been. Never have had aspirations to be.
Over the years, I’ve kept some blogs where I have written like an analog writer (which I am) on a digital platform. I am not a digital writer, reader. I am from another century. I spent a lot of time in school studying poetry and fiction, plays and experimental writing, and when I studied I studied on pages. I mean, I was a freshman in college before I sent my first email because email was not a thing that even existed when I was a kid.
I am not a blogger, reader, but I have kept blogs on which I’ve written like a writer for the page, the kind of page you can feel between your fingers, the kind of page in the kind of book whose newness you can actually smell. An ink writer, reader.
I started my first blog after my first diagnosis of breast cancer, aged thirty-four, and quickly realized blogging was basically a side-effect of cancer. So many cancer blogs, reader. So very many.And I was a writer long before I was a breast cancer patient. I was a writer who liked to tell stories and pontificate and elaborate and ask questions that can never be answered. I was a writer who admired a good sentence – my love and admiration for the work of Virginia Woolf stems in large part from those sentences. I mean, my god.
I’m the kind of writer who likes a good sentence, and a well placed detail. I’m the kind of reader who thirsts for new – new forms, new ideas, new stories. When I read, I want to read things I feel like I’ve never read before. And when I read, if I appreciate what I’m reading, I’m studying what the writer is doing and how they’re doing what they do.
This is not to say readers of blogs don’t do the same when they read, or that bloggers are not writers (they are), but that my intents and purposes as a writer do not fit the blog form. Because I’m not a blogger. I’m an essayist and playwright who has tried to keep blogs.
My cancer blog got me a literary agent, and the sale of my first book (essays, not blog posts) You’re Not Edith. Another blog led me to fall in love with a reader who ultimately did me a lot of harm.
My agent died young. Fuckin’ cancer. The reader I loved ghosted me after the breast cancer came back, and it was stage iv, and I was not a horse or a man. Life is harsh sometimes, reader. I know you know this.
I am not the same person I was, fourteen years ago, when I started a blog because I had breast cancer and everything felt strange. I did not know the things I now know, or see the things I can now see – about myself, about others, about my country. And I didn’t know my worth back then. I didn’t know that I didn’t have to give myself away for free, and I don’t mean money.
I’m not a blogger, reader. I’m an essayist, a playwright. Those are my strong suits as a writer, and have always been.
This winter, I acted in my very first play. The production was not without its hiccups. The cast were regularly falling out with COVID, there were snowstorms, someone literally broke their leg . . . And yet, the show went on. And that’s what I love about the arts, particularly in Chicago – come hell (quite literally) or high water (quite literally), the show will go on. That’s resilience.
And I know a little something about resilience, reader. And I know about the show going on. More than I could ever share on a blog, but not more than I can share in long-form essays, and strange plays where I put characters in unlikely situations in order to ask big questions about this human life experience we are having.
All this to say, I’m retiring from blogging. It’s not my thing, and it’s never been my thing. I am from another century. An analog writer. A writer of longer and meandering stories and observations.
I do appreciate readers who read, who subscribed, who expressed an interest and I hope you will continue to follow my work on the stage and on the page, and if you’re so inclined, you can follow my writer account on Facebook – Allison T. Gruber – for information about performance dates, speaking events, and publications.
No need to read beyond this, reader, but I wanted to share one more story that is not for a blog, on this blog for my final blog.
About a month ago I had my thyroid removed. No cancer, thankfully, but the change in thyroid hormone, the adjustment to the synthetic thyroid hormone did mess with my moods. I am getting better, but for a minute there, I felt pretty disheartened. And March, I’ll admit, was a month of generalized self-pity. The days were gray. The bank account low. I had to find new health insurance in a pinch. I felt sick of doctors, doctors, doctors and procedures and needles and scans.
And I’m allowed to feel these ways, sometimes, but I do not allow myself anymore to dwell in such feelings. I let them pass through. Buddhism has helped me immeasurably with letting feelings pass, with understanding what a feeling is, and what it is not. In fact, I think Buddhism has done as much for my mental wellbeing as therapy and medication. I leaned heavily on my Buddhist practices during March, and I got through to the other side, or another side, of these feelings.
In any case, when I went for my routine 3-month follow up at the cancer center last week, my anxiety and depression were still running a bit higher than I like. My scan was good, my labs were good, but still I felt this sense of gloom and dread. When I got to my infusion, I felt tired and antsy, and in no mood to sit for the forty-five minute sit while the drugs dripped into my bloodstream. I was cranky. Grumpy. Still very kind to nurses, my doctor, other cancer center staff, but far less talkative than usual.
Midway through my drip, I heard squeals of joy coming from the hallway. I knew someone had brought in a dog because these particular squeals and coos are the kind that only dogs evoke in the human animal. And I love dogs. I have cats, because my life is cat-paced, but dogs are my favorite of the pet variety.
As I listened to the squealing, the baby talk, I heard a male nurse say, “How old is this dog? Like one day?” And I couldn’t help it, I laughed. The way he said it, the question itself — despite my mood, I laughed.
When my nurse came back to check in on me, I asked if there was a puppy “out there.”
“Oh my god,” she said. “Hold on a second.” Then she left, returning moments later with a shivering terrier puppy, with its puddly brown eyes, and the ears that don’t fit, and the nose that’s too big and for an instant, nothing was on my mind, my soul, my heart but “look at that cute little puppy.”
And afterwards I was comforted by the reminder that there are so many things in this life, still, that we can always count on to lift the spirits – like puppies, and music, and a damn good sentence.
I told my nurse there should always be puppies at cancer centers, and she wholeheartedly agreed. And for the remainder of my infusion, I thought of dogs and how they are too good for us. I remembered my old dachshund Bernie. I thought about the puppy, how just one glimpse burnt off some of my bad mood. But above all, I was reminded that everything I need to be happy is already here, on this earth, easy to access – the laughter of my friends, electric blankets, a pen, a brand new blank journal whose pages I can touch and smell, ink that I might smear. And of course there are puppies. No matter what, when times get tough, when life is harsh, there are always puppies.
Be good. Amituofo.