Two years ago, I got a new blog.
I should of course have made this post two years ago, or at least only slightly less than two years ago, but, of course, procrastination took over. And once it had taken over for long enough, there was the whole ‘But how do I explain why I didn’t write this post before?’ factor. And so on and so forth in a vicious circle. Anyway, today is the second anniversary of getting my new blog and I thought “What the hell, let’s (ignore the twenty-seven other things I should be doing and) make today the day I finally write this post and bid my old blog the farewell it deserves”. So, for what it’s worth, here is the story.
Some time around November 2015, or thereabouts, I was browsing my phone as usual to keep myself occupied while the children were taking their usual interminably long time to get ready for bed, and I thought “Hmmm. Wonder what [atheist writer whose work I had in the past particularly admired] is up to these days?” So I googled this person, and found that he had a blog. On a site called FreeThoughtBlogs. Which was a blogging platform; a site hosting multiple blogs. In this case, multiple blogs by nonbelievers interested in social justice issues.
The FTB site highlights all the most recent posts on the front page, so I ended up browsing through a lot of interesting posts while I was there, and it wasn’t long before it became a site I visited regularly. Now and again I daydreamed about how awesome it would be to have a blog on there. You know, as an in-my-wildest-dreams sort of aspiration. I assumed they only invited the real blogging stars. Probably by a golden ticket. Personally delivered by a flunky walking along a red carpet.
Then, one day, pretty much by chance, I stumbled on a post on the site asking for new members. (In verse, no less.) And saying they really wanted atheists who wrote about pretty ordinary things alongside their atheism, like, say, knitting patterns, or plumbing.
Wow, I thought. Or maybe… parenting stuff? And just other random day-to-day stuff? Stuff I could, like, totally write about?
So I e-mailed them an application. Looking back, it was a pretty rubbish application and I could have made it considerably better, but it did the trick.
On the morning of March 14th, 2016 (Pi Day, as luck would have it, thus gifting me with an easily memorable blogging anniversary), I received an e-mail telling me my application to FTB had been accepted and inviting me to think of a name for my new blog.
I spent a fair chunk of the morning frantically trying to think of a good blog name. (As luck would have it, my daughter was at home with a sore throat, so I’d already had to take the morning off.) I already had a blog called ‘Thoughts From An Atheist’, but that sounded downright boring. I considered the slightly more interesting ‘Thoughts From A Heathen’ and ‘Thoughts From An Infidel’, but decided against both. Apart from anything else, I realised that, on a blogging platform which listed the blogs in alphabetical order, I wanted something beginning with a letter earlier in the alphabet than ‘T’. After a lot of thinking about what was important to me and what I wanted to say with my blog name, I eventually settled on Geeky Humanist. And thus was a new blog born.
(Ironic postscript to the story: Three months later, the writer I’d admired whose blog had led me to FTB in the first place had to leave FTB under a cloud. Thus, within the space of a few months, I went from “I wonder what [person] is writing about these days?” to “Squeeee! I am on the same blogging network as [person]!” to taking part in a vote on his temporary blog suspension. Life is strange sometimes.)
Anyway… this blog has served me well, and the archives will remain. You never know; I might even post here in future, although it’s unlikely. But, if you want to find me now, go to Geeky Humanist and check out how my life is going over there. (At the moment… really pretty well.)
Good Enough Mum 