End of an era?

Looking at this blog now is kinda funny. Since it’s been so long since I last posted (and it feels like an eternity since I posted “regularly”), going back and reading posts, even “recent” ones, feel like I’m reading something written by someone else. Even the layout looks like someone familiar yet different put it together (a huge chunk of the blog and webcomic links are even more defunct than this blog has been, and the ones that aren’t are still ones I haven’t visited in a very long time, and I haven’t been active in the Rescue Ranger community in at least a decade, despite what my sidebar implies). So it feels weird to be making a new post here, as though I’m a guest blogger on someone else’s blog, someone who I have a lot in common with but hasn’t actually existed for some time. The things I’ve gone through and the decisions I’ve made in the past few years have put me in a completely different headspace, the beginnings of which happened in the past few posts where I describe leaving the church, but it’s more than that.

I think I’m in a good place mentally regarding who I am post-LDS: what my values are, what I pursue and what I leave alone, where I find happiness, how to be OK with any sadness that may happen (for the most part); in essence, I’m fine with who I am and where I’m heading (despite it being somewhere that most of the culture around me disapproves of, but that’s far less a problem than it used to be). That isn’t to say life is perfect and all rosy; while living alone has its perks, I do eventually want to find someone. The difference between earlier and now, however, is that before I was looking for someone to make my life complete. Now I believe my life is complete even if I don’t find someone, and so now I’m looking for someone to share in the goodness I already have instead of someone to fill a hole. (This has had the side effect of me being far less pro-active when it comes to dating, but whatever; part of that is also because I’m in my mid-thirties, when meeting new people is difficult anyway, especially if you’re no longer a part of the majority local culture and you’re a bit of a loner anyway.) There are good people, friends and family, in my life who fill my social needs, so finding “the one” who does all of that for me has become less important.

So maybe that’s one reason I haven’t posted in forever: on a blog that, historically, has been mostly about angst and self-exploration, since I’ve been in a far less angsty place recently and I’m mostly at peace with who I am, what is there left to say here? I also feel like a lot of the answers I’ve found may rub some people the wrong way, especially people who are still involved with the church and its culture, and writing about that honestly here feels wrong, as you can go back in the archives less than a dozen posts or so and see a completely incompatible opinion being expressed.

I almost feel like this should be the last post of a blog that has documented my journey from boy to man, and I should start a new personal blog less focused on “why I’m still single” and “what the heck is Mormonism” and more “why I’m fine being single” and literally nothing about the church (except maybe how it’s affecting those around me, which is occasionally heartbreaking to see). I haven’t actually decided to do that yet (I literally came up with the idea as I was typing this post), but the more I think about it the more I like the idea: wiping the slate clean and starting over blog-wise may help me post more, and what’s more, may help those who read this blog separate the person who wrote most of it from the person I feel like I am now and have been for most of the past two years or so that this blog has remained silent. I’ve started a whole bunch of rough drafts for blog posts here, but it hasn’t felt right to post any of them, so maybe it’d make more sense to put them a new site. I don’t know about what I’ll do with the URL or anything, or even if I want to start a new blog (I might think of some great posts and/or finish ones I’ve started within a week, or it may take five years, who knows?) but I’m pretty sure that this particular blog feels complete to me now.

So I think that’s where I’m gonna leave this. Happy about where I am, unsure about the future, but at peace with that uncertainty. That goes both for the future of my blogging and, interestingly enough, my life as a whole.