I believe I'm still due for part 2 of the Four Pass Loop backpacking trip.
Since 2020 and all that has since transpired, I went through a few job transitions, tried running the New York City Marathon twice, got injured or sick each year since 2018, to the extent that I had to take a few months or more off from running, caught COVID, became a cyclist, own a couple or three bikes, baked countless loaves of sourdough and still fail at it sometimes, baked a four-tier wedding cake, fell on a mountain and had to be airlifted off, cycled many miles and many feet of gain, and got married (not in chronological order). While I have yet to get a tattoo, I did get pink highlights one time.
As I moved away from blogging, so did many of the bloggers I enjoyed reading (anyone remember Google Reader?). Some of those bloggers stopped blogging altogether, and others moved on to other social media platforms where I gladly followed.
It seemed as if the food bloggers I loved, who carefully tested and perfected their own recipes, were replaced by people who changed one ingredient in a recipe from another blog and passed it off as their own (I intentionally and gladly stopped following them).
Blogging felt disheartening. The community, both in the food blog and running blog worlds, has been replaced by influencers. Every post and picture now feels content and view-driven, with hashtag this and hashtag that. Running blogs are now reduced to posts written with SEO in mind that read terribly. Social media running features daily running selfies with the exact same poses and the same recycled captions. Nothing is organic, if you will.
My blog, being both food and running related, was not where I wanted to ramble mindlessly about whatever was on my mind. I tried the monetizing thing, and those posts are all around terrible, as most sponsored posts tend to be.
This blog was a place for me to share my running - the training, the races, and the injuries. I also shared my food - the recipes I tried from others and the recipes I very carefully created. Did you know I was once featured in Cooking Light? I don't think I ever mentioned that here.
I attempted to revive my blog a few times, but was never enthusiastically behind it. I'd either get injured and no longer had running to talk about, or just didn't have it in me to create a recipe and catch the light for pictures -- a difficult endeavor with a 9-5.
On the running front, I am yet again coming back from an injury. This one took me out since June. I've been baking and cooking, and keeping the recipes to myself. To those of you who still make the recipes from my blog, I am forever grateful for you and always love hearing about it.
There really isn't much of a point to this post. I suppose it's an ode to all the blogs I've read before, whose domains were no longer renewed. They were friends, even if I never met the blogger in person.
