I was reading somewhere on Facebook yesterday about a writer. Someone had recommended this writer’s memoir to the commenter, and she read it and loved it, and then did some research about the writer and discovered that he keeps a blog that he writes in every day. I overdid it yesterday and was kind of in a shell of throbbing misery so I can’t tell you for sure who the writer is or what the book was or even where on Facebook I read all of that, but this morning when I woke up (gratefully out of pain) I was still thinking about it.

Remember blogging? Remember when all of your friends had blogs, and you made other friends by following and reading your friends’ friends’ blogs? When blogging was about just sharing random stuff. It wasn’t about your Brand, or trying to sell stuff. It was just…sharing. Thoughts, ideas, experiences.

I miss that.

Am I coloring that time with wistful nostalgia? Maybe. If I had developed A Brand back then, would I have been a more successful blogger? Maybe. Is it easier to find like-minded people through social media? Sure. Do I have a tendency to resist change and to want things to stay the same? When it comes to technology…kind of. (I do still use my very old copy of WordPerfect for my personal writing, you know.) Is it kind of…weird, I guess, that back then (a decade ago) we just read random stuff about people’s lives? I guess.

The arguing voices in my head pointing out how ridiculous I am aside, I still do miss the heyday of blogging.

Because back then, I would’ve just written what I want to write today, instead of writing a long explanation of why I’m going to write the following. Because, if I’m honest, for me, blogging has always been about writing. About having a platform for my random words to be out in the world somewhere, and for the process of crafting something with words. So, like whatever writer that was being discussed on that random Facebook thread, I’m just going to write this because of the desire to put the experience into words.

On Sunday morning, my next-door neighbor, who goes on a walk early every morning, sent me a text letting me know that Kendell’s truck (which he parks on the street) had been egged. Which is how I found myself standing in the gritty pavement at the carwash, while Kendell vacuumed the truck after getting it washed.

When I got out of the truck (on my crutches, mind you), I gasped. The air was so clean after the storms we’d had over the past few days, and the mountains were perfectly coated with snow. It doesn’t last long, that smooth coating; the wind eats at it, and avalanches crumple the layers, so when it is like that—like frosting, almost, applied thickly with a flat knife—I try to appreciate it. And the sky! The sky was so blue.

White mountains, blue sky, clean, cold air. Even in a kind-of gross carwash vacuuming lot. Even on crutches. Even while I wished I could put on my running shoes, a pair of capris and a tank and hit the road and even while I compromised by crutching around the lot instead…even then. I am grateful for beauty and revision, for the world made clean, for breath in my lungs.