Although grades haven’t posted, I am done with my undergrad. What was once unknown anxiety-inducing territory became my norm. And, now, it has come to an end, bringing with it new anxiety-inducing changes.

It’s a little anticlimactic. As an online student, I didn’t get to know anyone super well. I also opted not to go to graduation for various reasons, not the least of which is how boring those ceremonies are. I’ll do something super informal next month, but I suppose the lack of a flashy end is par for the course for untraditional students like me.

But I did it, anyway. I went back to school in my mid-30s. I managed a 4.0 for the first six semesters, which earned me an invite to the Honors College. I’ve also earned honors in my specific college and an invite to the Phi Kappa Beta honor society that, as far as I can tell, is about the only one worth joining. I turned a service-learning opportunity into a paying gig along the way. I signed up for two internships, one which set me on the path to sex educator certification and the other that got me closer to research to strengthen my graduate school applications.

All that sounds pretty good, although I’m still struggling to feel pride. Maybe there was some in the late beginning, but it’s hard to find now, especially as I find myself at the end of the era and unsure what I’m doing next. Imposter syndrome is a bitch, anyway.

The plan is to forge ahead with graduate school apps and take things day by day. People keep saying it’s ambitious. It feels more like it’s what’s necessary to keep me afloat. I don’t know.

Endings are always bittersweet, aren’t they?

December 12th, Nebula comes home.

December 14th, I give up trying to separate her and Phantom while I’m home because I.need.sleep. I share her existence on social media.

December 15th on, I discover how very sharp her claws are and how very sensitive her play switch is. Scars commence.

December 18th or so, I put up my Christmas tree but left it bare to test her reaction. She enjoys sitting on the tree skirt. I post the first picture taken by me to social media.

December 21st, Sam meets her niece and falls immediately in like with her. The feeling is likely reciprocated due to treats and other gifts. We put lights on the tree.

December 25th-ish, I leave them alone for a walk. No one dies. Success. I finally finish decorating my tree.

December 25th on, she takes down ornaments from, climbs up, and jumps in the tree. I yell.

January 4th, tired of picking up ornaments and straightening the star, I break out the water bottle as a last resort. It is almost immediately effective and she stopped climbing the tree after a day or two.

January 5th to now, she doesn’t yet understand her name. I try to teach her with treats. Need to be more consistent

January 12th, she discovers cardboard scratchers.

January 13th, friends flood into my home, meet my cat, and dote on her friendly compliance. I recognize the first month.

January 16th, I mistake her for Goliath for the first time. )= But am grateful for the reminder of my sweet boy.

January 67th, she continues trying to get closer to Phantom but he moves too quickly for me to snap a shot of them touching or mirroring each other.

January 17th, she aggressively licks Phantom, and I break it up before it can become a thing. Their truce is tenuous at best, and I try not to associate their interactions with negativity.

January 18th, the peace is broken while I type this. I separate them with my scratched hands. This is my life now.

this title is so long it could be an old-school Fall Out Boy song

I’ve been meaning to write this post since last year, when I went through each and every post on my blog since 2020. My motivation was partly curiosity, vanity–to remove anything I don’t want any the Internet any longer–and practical–to free up space and remove dead links. During the process, I deleted about half of my 1200 posts, so I accomplished the latter two goals with ease. I left up some posts but changed some pretty cringeworthy internet lingo du jour.

As for my curiosity, I was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting mostly site updates–and there were plenty of those–and a lot of not-always-teenaged angst, depression, and anxiety. So much of my life felt so very dark for a long time. And while I saw some posts of that type, there were far fewer than I expected. Maybe I hadn’t written during some of those tough times. Perhaps my memory is clouded by my strong feelings and things were better than they felt.

At the very least, I was surprised by the sheer quantity of posts mentioning–or speaking to (Hi Ben!)–my friends. And so many of those people are still in my life. I was–and am–so very loved, and I feel incredibly grateful for that. I’ve known many of my close friends for over two decades, and I realize how uncommon this is and how lucky I am. I especially felt grateful after my divorce, when I returned home to so many open arms, even from those who rightfully had reasons to feel frustrated with me. I had a new lease of life and was the best version of Cole I ever had been, and I felt like my loved ones had stuck by me through the times when I was at my worst. Perhaps I was more redeemable than I had realized.

I had a similar feeling while going through my blog posts. As a person in my mid-thirties, I felt sympathy and compassion for the younger person who wrote those words, not (secondhand) embarrassment. It was a much-needed reminder during a difficult time in my life that I had value, so much that people have remained in my life for over 20 years. I wrote about parties with Ashley, who I recently shopped and hiked with, and road trips with Oli, who sends me a message about how much they miss me as soon as they return home to Minneapolis after a weekend together. I could write half a dozen of sentences like the two previous ones. Going through my blog posts was for me, I imagine, like pouring through old photo albums for some people.

Yet the exercise was bittersweet. For as many people who will be my lifelong ride-or-die friends, there were a seemingly equal number who were significant enough to write about at the time, were only blips on the radar of my life. Some people, mostly Internet friends, I struggle to remember at all. Multiple people have since passed.

And there is no way to go through 20 years of your own blog posts without seeing the evolution of the Internet and all its trends. My first blog was on Blogger, and I hand-coded my layouts, after all! It was an evolution to move to SSI, then PHP and WordPress, and the countless site update posts showed just how much I enjoyed the tasks and projects I created for myself along the way (and may be undertaking again…).

But the Internet isn’t what it once was and never will be again. Something, perhaps nameless, is long gone. I can–and do–lament with some of my friends, but I will miss the particular feelings of creation, potential, and community, among others, that I could only achieve at certain points in time. After all, going through my blog posts would be a wholly different endeavor in 20 years due to changes in quality and quantity. On the other hand, I’m likely experiencing something at this point in time–whether my life in general or as I type these words–over which I will feel nostalgia at some point in the future, so at least I have that to look forward to!

Funny how looking backward can make you look forward, too.

Heather B Armstrong, who owned the blog Dooce, died by suicide yesterday. If you’re one of the handful of people left who still read my blog, then this name probably rings a bell. Heather became infamous when she was fired for writing about her job in her blog, which she then turned into a lucrative career.

I personally never read much of her work, but her name was well-known, and people who I know from forum and blogging spheres from 20 or so years ago have commented how Heather’s honesty about depression helped them speak up about their own. Her influence is undeniable.

Heather was arguably the first mommy blogger–well before anyone used that term and years before I found myself seemingly at odds with mommy bloggers when I owned the review blog. I was so tired of being lumped in with mommy bloggers because I was also a young woman who reviewed things. It irked me to no end because sometimes emails from brands or PR managers addressed mommy bloggers specifically, ignoring people like me who had neither children nor aspirations to have them.

At the time, I took most of my ire out on the mommy bloggers, instead of the companies who deserved to be called out for their misogyny, for upholding the part of society that only sees value in women who bear children. My internalized misogyny reared its ugly head when I directed my other frustration at mommy bloggers; I was far from calling myself a feminist at that point (and they were, in some respects, my competition).

Of course, it only made sense that mommy bloggers were the burgeoning genre du jour: many of them were young women like myself who dedicated time to creating, designing, and posting in their blogs. They simply continued to do so after they had children. Some of them simply found a new way to advertise themselves when they saw the potential for free goods or paid posts!

In retrospect, perhaps some of these people marketed themselves as mommy bloggers–or defined themselves as mothers–because that was the only way they could make a niche for themselves as women in this world. They, too, struggled under the oppression that has tried to keep me down. Perhaps I was jealous because they formed brands and discovered niches in a way that I never could. I had too many interests to pin down, and while that might make someone interesting as a friend, it wasn’t easily marketable, at least not by me at that time.

I was a fairly active review blogger for a few years, but the self-promotion was excruciating. I didn’t make much headway because I never wanted it to be more than a hobby. Those who took it seriously as a career, people like Heather, achieved more success. The last few years of the review blog had little more than a post a year, even if people in my everyday life assumed it was still active. Instagram and other social media were the new fad, and I wasn’t interested in joining–and still haven’t. I wanted my content to be about my words (ignore the lack of posting on this blog, plz).

Although I haven’t owned the domain for my review blog for over a year (or is it 2 or 3??), I still find some of these mommy bloggers in my social media feeds. Most of them have walked away from this type of blogging like I have, perhaps because they were also burned out by it. Others have changed their brand or niche., More often than not, I delete these pages from my life forever. They were only ever tangentially related, anyway.

But still, as it often happens when something encourages introspection, I feel the need to apologize. Even if I didn’t cause real harm. Even if the people I felt frustrated with didn’t even know who I am. I will never achieve the influence of Dooce as a blogger, but that doesn’t mean I don’t impact others, that my existence doesn’t send ripples out in the world. Let’s all take the opportunities to consider our impact when they arise–and be glad for those who have impacted us.

So it’s September. Almost October, really. What does that mean?

It’s Ashley’s birthday, the first anniversary of my grandpa’s death.

The first day of Autumn was a week and change ago, and the weather flipped like a switch. Step outside, and you feel the cool breeze and the scent of leaves and fire. I hope I walk many miles before the snow hits.

It’s also three weeks into the semester. In fact, I am typing this as I wait for my class (Monsters and the Monstrous) starts. My class schedule also includes LGBTQ psych, psych of women, and plagues. Instead of a fifth class, I’m participating in an internship with Sexual Health Alliance, which I started over the summer and brings me one step closer to my career aspirations.

Combined with my freelance writing and work with America’s Black Holocaust Museum, which started as a volunteer opportunity/class requirement but became a paid position, I’ve certainly felt overwhelmed at times this month. But this week should be a bit less intense, so here I a taking a few moments to blog.

What’s up with you?