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When I started blogging, I wasn’t thinking very far ahead. If I thought about the future of the blog at all, I assumed it would peter out at some point: when treatment stopped, when people stopped reading it, when I got fed up with it. Back then, the blog was, essentially, a tool to keep people I knew informed about how I was doing.
Things changed, though. The Bah! approach to cancer crystallised into something more than doggedly keeping going and trying not to lose my sense of humour. People outside my circle started to read about my dance with cancer. People got what I was about. Somewhere along the line I became, I think, a sort of patient advocate as well as a person dancing with cancer. None of this with any special effort or design on my part: I’ve just kept showing up here, and so have you, and between us, we make Bah! to cancer happen.
Blogging has become part of my life. More than that, it has reminded me of the sense of home I find in writing: me sitting here in my PJs, weaving words in a way that might make a meaning for you, is a daily delight.
Currently, around 800-1000 people visit the blog every day, with numbers steadily rising. (When I first moved to this site in January, it was 200-300.) I’m so pleased that so many of you find enough value in what I have to say to come by, and come back.
But for the last couple of months I’ve been wondering: assuming that my daily Tamoxifen tablet is the end phase of my dance with cancer, how long can I justify keeping the blog going? I don’t want it to be like ‘Moonlighting’, limping on long after Maddie and whatsisname finally got it together, which was really the only reason any of us were watching. . Yet the thought of ending the blog doesn’t sit right. (And I have yet to have a day when there isn’t a post jumping up and down in the blog bit of my brain, waving and grinning and saying ‘Pick me! Pick me!’, which has got to be a good sign, hasn’t it?)
There’s a conundrum at the heart of Bah! these days. Every day that I have nothing to say about cancer is actually what Bah! to cancer is all about. Part of what I am trying to do here is to show people going through diagnosis and treatment, or their friends or family or colleagues, that it is possible to live through a dance with cancer. Bah! has become a blog about surviving. So I am going to write, now, about survivorship. About how life is when you have danced with cancer and lived to blog the tale – because life changes, for sure. I am going to talk to people who understand survival, and people who are involved with getting to the bottom of why cancer happens, and people who try to help and support those of us dancing with cancer. I’m going to celebrate survivorship, without forgetting how, once cancer has danced into your life, it never quite dances out.
And I will keep you posted about my hair. (Forever.)
How does that sound to you?
I think that is an excellent plan. Being a survivor is a great thing to blog about, and if your brain is still bursting with posts, then the purpose of the blog is very far from exhausted. Keep writing, and we will keep reading!
I have exactly the same issue. I started Postcards from the Slough of Despond when at the lowest point in the pit of depression. As I’m coming out of the depression – nowhere near out yet, but certainly making progress – I’m beginning to wonder if blogging about recovery is worth doing. Like you, I started the blog for my own comfort and now it might have to morph into something else of die. I’m inclined to deliver a fatal blow to mine – but I’d be sorry if you did the same to yours!
Sounds good to me. I’m picking up my life again, I’m going back to college to do what I always wanted to do more of, art and photography and my hair, skin and weight have never been better but I’ve also lost so much, my fertility and the career I’m trained to do (I don’t feel able to return yet). Also socially is a case of one step at a time…Life can still feel like a struggle.
I love it when things we talk about casually while, for intance, walking down the road, turn into something important. I was going to say big and important, but not all important things are big. So, I was thrilled to see how the seed of an idea about the future of the blog, and the possible essence of another book, has taken root. Your blog is both amazing, heartwarming and powerful but I agree it is time for a change of direction. This is it. Big and important. Congratulations!
You know I had the same problem. I wrote about treatments and surviving it, and didn’t plan to continue afterward, in fact my blog sits there like a bump on a log right now as I figure out what to do with it. I thought I wanted to continue about survivorship because I still ain’t my spunky ol’ self, but my heart just isn’t into it any longer.
Good luck with your blog and great post!
Thanks, everyone, for these sensitive and insightful comments. Something I didn’t say in the original post, which I think I should have, is that some things have their own lifespan and I don’t think there’s any shame in stopping a blog (or diary, or anything else) that has fulfilled its function.
I agree with your comments Stephanie, but I don’t think that the function of this … and then you get on with life blog is over yet.