Life After Normal ... The Evolution
For some reason, I just can't let it go
Everything old is new again. Welcome to my Substack!
I know, I know. But there is something about writing Life After Normal that keeps drawing me back. It’s not that I have something new to say — trust me, I’ve never run out of things to say — but rather, I’m craving opportunities to live authentically. Put myself out there a bit. Escape from the burdens of conformity that accompany my suffocating professional existence.
Writing is a muscle, and mine is weak and atrophied. Setting up something new, I hope, will be like a shiny new toy I want to play with all of the time! Or, more accurately, like a new game. Something that will challenge me, force me to collect experience points, inspire me to put in a bit of time every day in order to get stronger and move up that leader board.
Having the option to revisit something that was very meaningful to me and create new communities and connections is part of why I never fully shut down the old WordPress site (where Life After Normal was previously hosted). But WordPress is wonky, I went all-in on customization when I started the blog, and when you go 10 years without updating, things break and it’s messy. I don’t want to have to bother with design, and want to find ways to connect with new audiences. Hence, my move to Substack.
You’ll see that I migrated many of my old posts over to this new platform. After I was too far into the tedious process to back down (seriously, Substack, do better!), I realized that I should have just started fresh, be a new random voice (admittedly, on a crowded platform where chances of getting noticed are pretty slim, but again, I do this for me). But, for whatever reason, when I started the migration, I felt very strongly that my earlier blogs needed to be moved here. I needed the archive, I needed the history. I mean, I went on a JOURNEY! One that people may want to experience … or relive!
(people won’t, I get it, but work with me here)
The migration was an incredibly time-consuming process, and while some of the more recent posts were just copied and pasted without any review, as I got towards the earlier ones, I peeked at some of the writing. And … ugh, it is embarrassing.
I thought I would find deep and meaningful reflections of my journey following the deaths of my brother and my marriage. But it really was more just random ramblings. Reflections of a mundane existence. Generic thoughts and observations.
After getting over the mortification of the musings of my previous self, I realized that my approach to writing back then made sense. I was navigating tremendous pain and uncertainty, chaos and upheaval. Sharing reflections about a regular, boring life provided a sense of normalcy that I was clearly craving. It was all about one foot in front of the other … I could still cook a meal. Visit with friends. Take on new hobbies. Build a business. I wasn’t craving an ah-ha! moment that would help everything make sense. I was looking for a normal life, after abnormal things occurred.
So I completed copying over those ancient posts, although I chose not to migrate the entries where I dabbled in being a vegan blogger, and removed the photo challenges as well. Any comments from readers are now lost to time, I’m sure they were all brilliant. If there are links within the posts, they are probably broken, and I’m just not compelled to review and fix every link or every photo caption. If you do happen to stumble back in time and read something from a previous decade, yeah, it’s going to be a mess. Just like life is.
So what’s next? Well, as I have evolved, so has the phrase “Life After Normal”. It’s never not relevant, due to bad life choices, the collapse of American democracy, or whatever other circumstances. And now, I’m on the cusp of 50 … I don’t even know how the fuck to process that nonsense. Sure, I was born in 1975, but I’m only 36, just like the rest of the people who graduated from high school in 1993. I’m now living a life after the normalcy of adulthood, not only over the hill of age but rapidly tumbling down it.
I can’t tell you if the new and improved Substack version of Life After Normal is going to be about adventures in perimenopause, figuring out the disaster of my professional life, figuring out the disaster of my personal life, the shame of being an American right now, moving somewhere new yet again (please, let it be outside of the U.S.!!!), or what. But life still moves forward, as do I. So onward.
While Grammarly was used to improve the writing of this post, no other forms of AI were used for content creation.