Why I Almost Left

I spent several hours today exploring the features of WordPress with every intention of switching over. After four years I was going to cheat on my blog with another blog. I selected my URL, my template, my color scheme, my header photo. I wrote my first post. I even clicked the option to allow virtual snow to fall on the home page until January 4th, which I guess is either when they predict they'll run out of virtual snow or when they're sure we've all perished in the impending apocalypse on Friday. So you see, I was all set to change.

But then night fell, as it has a habit of doing. Those who know me well know that my mind absorbs information more thoughtfully when everyone around me has gone to sleep. I began to think about everything I've gotten from my blog--everything it has allowed me to do and say, everyone with whom it has helped me keep in touch. It has seen me through two summers on Orcas Island, the second half of my college education, my year in Melbourne. It has tales of very un-Kosher Passovers and emotionally uncomfortable exchanges with strangers on public transportation. It explains why my relationship with my cat is the most complex I will likely ever have in my life. It's too dear to me. I just couldn't do it.

And so I come crawling back, prepared to hurl myself at Blogger's cyber feet and beg forgiveness for even entertaining the thought that I would somehow be a better person by discarding the past four years for the glitz of a new layout and virtual snow until January 4th. I have returned without ever really having left.

If you're curious, by the way, this was my "I'm moving up in the world" post on WordPress:

"Blogger has been good to me for the past four years. It helped me learn that my words have weight, that cyberspace is a vast dimension that belongs to everyone. I read back over my earliest posts there with gratitude (sandwiched between some hefty helpings of self-abasement), and have decided that it is time to move on.

"I am not one for New Year’s resolutions. I believe, with the part of my twenty-four-year-old soul that still lies awake on Christmas Eve listening for Santa, that every day is an opportunity to start over. Sure, January 1st is a great time to set goals for yourself, but so is March 7th or August 29th. This year, though, I’m compelled by an instinct I can’t explain to redefine myself in 2013. For one flawed reason or another I have let go of so many things that are important to me: people I love with whom I’ve lost touch, hobbies that were once my retreats but that I pushed aside and promptly forgot. I want to atone for my mistakes. I want to see new places and taste new foods and read new books. And I want to write all about it.

"Consider this jump to WordPress the first step in reestablishing my online presence. Here’s to a year of remembering what–and who–it is that makes me happy."

    

P.S. Just for the record, Blogger, you're way less complicated.