Why I Made This Blog

Driving near Bisbee, Arizona - road trips are my happy place.

This post will likely serve as that place people will only click if they come across a random post and vaguely wonder who the weirdo is who wrote it, and that’s great. I’m that weirdo. 

I am not new to blogging. In fact, my oldest blog posts on LiveJournal are truly archaic, long lost to the faded memories of internets past, though my Blogger blog, CincySarah, last updated in 2016, ten years ago, still somehow exists. You can go see it here if you’re so inclined! That 2016 date is probably pretty significant. The last post I did there was right after Trump was elected for the first time, and I already didn’t know what to do with my conflicted emotions, especially coupled with a lot of heavy family stuff. I just... kind of broke. I wasn’t feeling up to being particularly vulnerable on the internet (and a personal blog should be vulnerable or, really, what’s the point?). 

I turned to other things to cope with what felt like a seismic societal shift (a feeling that turned out to be correct). I retreated in many ways, but especially in the way I interacted with my writing, which I’d been enthusiastically sharing in every way I could find. It’s like I shut off the tap. I still did freelance work, but I mostly stuck with marketing copy and writing professional things for other people. 

A few years ago, I embarked on a job that reignited some of my writing passion, coming aboard as assistant editor at Pride Source Media. We create Michigan’s longest-running LGBTQ+ print publication, Between The Lines, and we run pridesource.com and a national queer wire service, Q Syndicate. There, I was able to get back into writing (and editing and etc.) work that felt meaningful and impactful, especially in an increasingly anti-LGBTQ+ political era. Over time, I’ve poured myself into this work and these days, I’m the director of content and community engagement, which is a long title that doesn’t actually even cover everything I do. My immediate boss and I are an amazing little team, if I do say so myself, and we do a lot with a little. I truly love this work. But it’s depleting sometimes, and I haven’t felt like doing much writing for pleasure for a very long time. 

Lately, though, I just do. I’ve found myself composing potential blog entries in my head — stuff I’d love to share with a wider audience (or to just leave for posterity for people randomly, the way we used to more often when the internet was younger). I thought about using a platform like Substack, where there would be a built-in audience, but Substack doesn’t seem like where I want to be these days and I didn’t want to be tied to a specific format or platform (and have my content monetized but see nothing for it myself). So, I decided to just stick this blog here, where I am fully aware it won’t likely gain any measurable audience, because it’s not about that. I just feel compelled to create in this way (and in whatever way I decide to create as time goes on), and this is my space, and here we are. 

So, there’s no unifying theme on this blog. It’s called “Off the Record” as a nod to my day job, but that’s as structured as we’re going to get here. I might post about my cats or my family or my job or most likely, stuff I like that I hope you’ll like, too. I have no idea what might come up here, but I promise whatever it is, it will be real. Sometimes, it will even be very witty and enlightening. To some. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time. I know there’s a lot of stuff to ingest on the internet, and I appreciate it.