I am a ______ blogger

Take a ride in the Wayback Machine ... (Looks like the date-updating Javascript is still working! This page is actually from Oct. 8, 2000)

I've been doing this blogging thing a long time now. Like, a really long time. So long that when I started, I didn't even know that was what I was doing.

I first registered this domain back in The Year 2000 and at first my site was static. It was a playground for practicing my new-found HTML skillz. Everything was manually coded. I posted some of my first digital photos. I had some pages with links to books and music I liked. I had a page of links to friends' sites.

But mostly I updated (and coded and FTPed) a part of the site I called Dispatches, little stories of what was going on with me for the 3 or 4 friends and family members who even knew how to find me online. Status updates before Facebook.

When I found out about blogging software--you just type in what you want! and it automatically publishes! and creates an archive!--I couldn't sign up fast enough. First I added a shopping blog (since retired) in 2001. I moved the entire site over to the Blogger platform in 2002, a year before Pyra and Blogger were snapped up by our great Google-y overlords.

All of which is to say it's been interesting to watch the rise of blogging, especially the "mommy blogging" phenomenon, in which I could ostensibly claim membership.

I'll admit I'm conflicted by the term.

Yes there are other kinds of blog niches (cooking, photography, fashion & style, etc.), and it's natural that women would blog about the transformative experience of motherhood. After all, we've always been diarists.

But men don't seem to be as frequently reduced to labels; they're simply bloggers.

And "mommy blogger" always seems to imply a "(just a)" in front. (It does use the most diminutive possible form of address for someone who's a mother.)

But maybe I don't have a dog in this fight. After all, I'm not a mommy blogger. Except when I am. Other days I'm a photoblogger, or an infertility blogger, or a music blogger.

I'm a ME blogger.

Welcome to my life.