A Blog Born During the Age of Distraction

When I told my friend that I was thinking of starting a blog, they laughed and said, "That's so 2008." I understood that statement. That same thought was the ammunition my inner saboteur had actively been using against me.

No one has time to read your blog.

Don't waste your time.

Will it even be interesting?

You don't give your time to anyone else's blog—

why should you expect anyone read yours?

Why you?

—xoxo my inner saboteur

The truth is I am a proud, unpublished writer. Yeah, I said it. I am proud. I write everyday and continue to attempt publication, though every one of my submissions have yielded in polite, autogenerated rejection messages. I understand it is part of the process, but it has imposed some limitations in the ways I feel I can share my work with others.

Since we live in the Age of Distraction, as I like to call it, holding the audience's attention is exponentially harder. I even find myself struggling to finish a video or an article that I start. With these stakes, I have taken my craft to Instagram, carefully creating short prose poetry with my photography to be aesthetically pleasing and consumable. For the past three years it has been satisfying enough. Though recently, I came to a crossroads. One morning I was sitting at the counter of the Laurel Diner, in my hometown of Southbury, Connecticut. When the owner, Pete, discovered that I was a writer he said, "I'd love to read your writing."

Problem is, I didn't have anywhere to send him. I thought about the unpublished, unfinished manuscript I have been diligently working on since 2021— that wasn't ready. I thought of all the typewritten poems safely held between plastic sheets in an army of binders tucked in my apartment; he couldn't access any of those pieces either. Sending him to Instagram seemed like the wrong venue.

Then, I remembered, the Age of Distraction is also the Age of Content. The main hurdle being: having good content and consistency. I can handle that. A blog might be so 2008, but 2008 is retro at this point.

So, why not take matters into my own hands?

I can share my voice

my perspective

my experiences

my stories

in my own way

without any limitations.

The reason I write is because I love people. I love to connect with others and listen to their stories. I observe the words they repeat, their inflections, I notice their behavior. It might sound clinical, but it's not. I am a witness, a witness to the human condition and through my craft I process the world we are in. With my work I intend to hold up a mirror to show readers what I see, what they might've missed or what they've also noticed, but never spoke of.

I write because we are all connected, a fact we often forget. Here's to another blog being born in the Age of Distraction. If my work speaks to one person, that will be enough for me.

Let's do this, shall we?

Photo Credit: Marc Charbonneau

—Shelby

P.S— I'll also offer recorded versions of my blog, once I figure the technology out!