25th Sept - dooce made me write an essay.
dooce made me write an essay.
last night i spent 20 minutes googling "dooce quits blogging". i went to her website and read the latest post. it doesn't say farewell and she was going to stop. but all the articles are saying she's quitting and the reasons she is. but where is it?? where was the farewell post?? where did she say "it has been fun, but adios for now?"
it has been implied and posts were becoming less often. i haven't been a faithful reader in a long time, so i didn't really notice.
i don't remember when i first stumbled upon dooce, but once i did, i fell hard. leta was in the midst of being in her toddler years, and she was the most beautiful internet baby i have ever seen. i loved everything about dooce; her humour, her writings, her pictures, her husband, her baby, and her chuck. i lived for her words. once i wrote "if words were drugs dooce is my pimp". one time i had a dream we were all very good friends and she called my name and everything, and that dream was perfect. i dug up her old archives and read almost all - i especially love nubbins entries in which sometimes she only wrote in 1 sentence. but that once sencence was perfect and made me laugh.
i told my mom about her because once we lived in Logan, Utah for a year. We identified being in Utah and the fact that she lives in Salt Lake City and wrote about the shops my mom remembers.
i read and reread the post she wrote about the first time meeting jon, falling for him and then eloping. it was so romantic and sounded perfect.
i remember her cousin george! and then his friend camille. dooce had a way of making you feel you were there when she was telling a story.
i remember the monetizing page and was disgusted when reading about how people online can be so mean, so judgmental, so crazy about a person they don't even know.
i remember my favorite pictures - there was one with both leta and chuck in the kitchen, and they had the same expression about something. and one time i had a bad day and she posted a picture of toddler leta in leia costume - my heart melted into a puddle of goo (actual words posted in blog).
she was part of how i found my blogging voice. i felt we had the best years together.
but time passed and maybe i grew up, she grew different, content changed... i parted ways. but never was the love was any less.
when she announced the divorce i was devastated. i was just a sporadic reader by then but it did hit me hard. i though they were happy and like scores of others, fell to scouring gossip online. that was low and still is low, getoffmyinternets.
reading about chuck dying has been the hardest posts i have to read on www.dooce.com.
dooce was a stranger, a far away stranger but she touched my life. i am so happy i had found her, that she shared what she has shared, and she fought what she had believed in. she is a role model and IS a superstar blogger no matter what other people say.
Thank you Heather and goodbye.