JOSHILYN JACKSON

My turn to blog happened just a few days before TLC decided to unbecome, and I quickly realized we would close before my next turn. I pushed and snotted to get a day, and so now, here I am with my pushed over, snotted on day, and I am feeling rawwwwther uncertain about what to use it for.

A 700 word Goodbye would take the fast lane to maudlin, because I am unremittingly SAD about the close.

SO! NO GOODBYES. I am just going to mouth something French at you near the end, something I think means TIL WE MEET AGAIN but probably, since my French has to be filtered through a LOT of years in Georgia, might actually mean something obscene (I hope!) but more likely is simply nonsense; I imagine I am waving a scented hanky at you and, with a tear in my eye, whispering Frenchly, "Yellow spank Band-Aid pants."

I also VERY MUCH wanted to post an essay I am working on called Fatter Than Thou, which is sort of a follow up to An Open Letter to the Fat Girl I Saw at Hot Yoga in New York City.

That follow-up BELONGS on TLC, not just because I posted the inciting essay here, but also because it is SO freakin' personal it requires the presence of a posse to make it seem okay to speak aloud...But it is not ready. Won't be ready for weeks, as it is complicated and too over-share-y at present and I am still writing my way to what I think.

So finally I decided that the heart and gonads (You can choose which YOU are! *beam* As for me and my house, we pick to be an ovary in this metaphor) of TLC are The Back Bloggers. What made TLC so super-nifty is that each post was a jump off for a discussion.

SO I wanted to ask you one last question, about blogs, actually, before this one makes like a bubble skirt and poofs.

Are blogs really over? Is it done?

I am not asking in a disinterested observer way. I have one of my own called Faster Than Kudzu that I have used as a mental playground-slash-institution for about ---Lord, 1,000 years now---- and yeah, TLC closing has made me take a HARD look at it...my numbers are down.

I thought it was because I POST less these days. Twice a week now instead of four times, and yet here we are shutting this one down because its numbers are down, even though it has fresh content every day.

And then there is Book Tour. Every time I have gone on tour I have met SO MANY PEEPS from the blog in the for reals. I am heading out again in January and February to talk about the new book, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty Best part of tour, really, is when Best Belobveds show up. I wonder if that will happen this time? It will be a kind of litmus test, but with cocktails.

And for people who wanted to be big gorgeous supportive muffins but who lived in a state I wasn't visiting, I made a deal with an Indie bookstore I love to take orders and ship signed personalized copies...The orders coming in via the The Virtual Book Signing seem low this time. To be fair--- I posted it the week of Christmas.

So we will see what happens in January as I remind peeps on Kudzu. And, um, here. *cough*

Maybe I will learn blogs are super dead and I have to learn to TALK FASTER and be exiled to Twitter forever because people only have time for 120 characters. Is that true? I HOPE not. Not just as a blogger, but as a blog-reader. But even the ones I read...

There are three blogs I have checked religiously for YEARS now, every day, and only one of them --HI MIR!-- still posts regularly.

The other two (yes, I turn my gimlet eye upon YOU Kira Kira and Julie) Seem to be posting with less frequency.
I have a lot of blogs I sort of read in rotation, because they have never been hugely regular posters *cough* for example Lydia *cough cough* but it's hard to get a good barometer reading off irregular posters ANYWAY I think.

But me? I cannot be ALONE in this: I am STILL link hopping and good-blog-hunting. I only JUST this very year discovered the myriad delights of The Bloggess and Finslippy.

Which, okay, finding those blogs was sort of like Columbus discovering America, in that there was already an entire NATION of people hanging out there, and then I came along and was like, OH! LOOK WHAT I FOUND! I AM EXTREMELY CLEVER!

To my credit, I didn't give either of them smallpox. Or Demon Rum. Or syphilis.

To my knowledge, ANYWAY.

So. Blogs? Dead? Dying? Taking a hiatus? Still viable? READY FOR A COMEBACK????

And now in French, I say to you, moistly: Yellow spank Band-Aid pants! Citron, Dehors!