Last night I finally shut down my old site, my blogging home for 12 years. The domain was up for renewal, and I wasn’t interested in spending money on something I wasn’t using.
It was time for it to go.
Seeing the splash page was a bittersweet moment for me.
There’s a part of me that’s relieved to see it go.
It felt like a dark cloud, forever hovering, forever reminding me that there are painful parts of my life on the internet. Especially towards the end, when it felt like post after post was just trying to find a way out of my misery. Jumping from one solution to another, with nothing sticking. I no longer enjoyed writing there.
Yet there’s part of me that’s sad to see it go.
Yes, it was painful, and yes, it really hurts to re-read some of that. But that was also part of my journey that brought me to where I am now.
Without those hard times and those lessons, would I be as grateful for where I am?
Enter Kel me about it.
A new blog, a name with a pun, and a fresh start.
I’d spent so long in such a negative place, writing about what I perceived as my failures, that I’d forgotten how much I used to enjoy blogging. I’d put so much pressure on myself to make every post something big and meaningful.
Starting again felt like anything was possible. It took me a while to ease back into things, but once I let go of that pressure and started writing about…anything, really, blogging became fun again.
I’ve overhauled so much of my life this year, and let a lot of shit go. Looking back, I wonder if starting this blog was actually the beginning of that snowball of changes.
Once I moved to Kel me about it, Kelly’s World was neglected pretty badly.
A lot of the images were broken when I moved my hosting to another provider. I didn’t bother updating them. I just left the broken image placeholder.
I never even bothered to share the link to my new blog. I just walked away…and barely glanced behind me.
And now, it’s gone.
So…what now?
Introducing “The Re-Kellection Files” (I love a good pun).
I’ve loaded a backup of the site into Notion (thanks for the idea, Melissa), and now I’m going to start working through the posts. I’ll tag anything that is worth salvaging, and re-posting them under the Re-Kellections banner on Kel me about it.
There are some stories on there that I don’t want to lose. My pregnancy/birthing story was a core memory. Events I participated in. Letters to my son.
Stuff that brings a smile to my face. I want to keep those, and relive those moments.
So today I’m having a toast to moving on, while not forgetting where I came from.
Leaving something behind doesn’t erase its value; it simply makes room for what’s next.
A new beginning can be so healing.
I am new so I do not know your story (yet) but I am happy you found a way to enjoy blogging and life again.
So healing. I’m an oversharer so it won’t be long before you’re caught up haha.
Congratulations on the new start and the new puns! Looking forward to following your new blogging journey.
Thank you! And excited to have you here!
Oh, gosh. Obv I didn’t know about your other blog or your struggles. The idea of walking away from my blog is scary! But, I really should go through my old posts and delete the garbage ones. I just realized on image plug-in I used heavily is broken so a lot of older posts have weird photo sizing that I need to fix.
Blog admin is by the least fun thing to do. It took a lot to decide to move away and start fresh, but the instant relief helped me realise it was the right call.
I’m glad you got this done; I knew you had it on your list. It sounds like you were ready for a bit of a fresh start when you started this blog. It looks to have been a positive in yuor life.
I moved my blog few times, the current one is my third one, each represents an era so it’s totally fine to leave it behind. I still visit them from time to time and realize how much I have changed and glad for the changes.
It’s definitely nice to see where we’ve come from sometimes!
I imagine this must be bittersweet! But I’d agree that you don’t always want to pay for a domain you don’t use. And, I totally understand about the pressure to write something big and meaningful. That has been my biggest problem for a long long time, and is why I’ve started over so many times. But I always fell in the same trap and stopped writing because of it.
I love the Re-Kellection files name! And it’s a great way to keep old posts.
I always deleted old stuff, but luckily I’ve kept some post on local drives where I’ve tested other blogging software and used those posts as sample posts. Some are quite interesting and I might use them and repost them in a new form.
You should!
I plan on writing a little intro, something that either explains why it meant something to me, or how I’ve changed since. I think it will be an interesting deep dive.