I feel like I want to say “it was a difficult decision,” and while it wasn’t necessarily easy, it feels right. I really loved writing here, but its time has passed.

I’m going to keep the site up for a while, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s comforting to have around. However, I am now blogging, terrifyingly, under my full name at samanthagarner.ca. That blog will be different, slightly less personal but not sterile. It’ll still be me. And it shouldn’t be all like the sort of abstract nonsense that’s up there now. That’s just me testing the waters.

I hope you’ll all join me there, though I understand if some no longer find the new blog to their taste. I want to say once again how sincerely I’ve enjoyed “meeting” all of you, and reading your comments and sharing thoughts. You guys made the past few years so much fun.

See you soon!

Inspired by Outi. These ratty magical things are seven years old (I think) and were worn very often through all kinds of weather. Merciless exposure to snow, mud and puddles have given them a strange purple-grey colouring. They used to be black. They are finally too broken to wear on any but the driest, sunniest days, but I think I will sneak them out during the rain anyway.

Thank you everyone for such kind and insightful comments on my last entry – whether you gave me your opinion in the comments or privately. Maybe I’ll just see what happens in the next little while; I might just come to a decision either way.

Maybe it’s just spring. It can be such a restless season, and the correlation between shedding winter coats and shedding blogs is not lost on me.

My days lately have been slow and pensive. Not much going on, in a good way. I’ve been writing a lot, and reading a lot about writing (but not too much). I’m already looking forward to good things that are coming up: My writing program, a short class in conversational Finnish, a trip to Vermont. See, it’s spring. It does that to me. I feel like changing everything.

The post title comes from this song, one of my favourites lately:

Now, I know there are a lot of people using Tumblr well as their main website/blogging platform (I read a few of them). But, I’ve flounced off Tumblr twice now because I was sick of it in general. To me it seemed to shrink the attention span, to prioritize reblogging pictures over producing meaningful content. There is definitely a time and a place for pictures, but it really got under my skin, the general ethos of Tumblr. So when I found myself registering again and happily fiddling with CSS settings, I had to stop and take a good long look at myself. Not literally, don’t worry.

I’ve been writing this blog for nearly four years now. I remember the day I started it. I didn’t have my name on it. I don’t think I even told anyone. I wrote entries like this and like this. No pictures. No recaps of my day. And it was very exciting to me. At the time, I had another blog which I was much more upfront in. I found I liked the pared-down Clock & Bell better, writing about moments and describing things around me instead of making myself the focus. And lately I’ve been thinking the same.

This blog has most definitely evolved since 2008. Slowly, I found myself opening up more, revealing my life more, even clearing the final hurdle of the internet-privacy-wary: putting up pictures of myself. And for a while it was great. I love blogs that do that, that find the balance between the personal and the arms-length. But over the past few weeks, I haven’t been feeling it. I couldn’t tell you why. I just grow frustrated by everything, even that I have pictures in every entry now, even though I love photography. I find myself struggling for things to write about. I am a writer, but that isn’t displayed here to my liking. But if I go back to the way I used to write, will I disillusion the readers I have, whose comments and general presence I really enjoy? I’m no blog superstar – and I would vomit a million times if I ever became one – but writing things you guys like to read is so important to me.

I’ve thought of razing the whole thing to the ground and starting from scratch, but why? Why do I feel the need to jettison the past? And besides, this isn’t 1998. I can no longer put up an “I’m on hiatus!” message on my website’s index page or expect people to follow me to yet another place online.

I’m not writing this to solicit praise or to say I’m quitting. I suppose I just wanted to admit I don’t have a bloody clue what I’m doing anymore and that I can’t possibly be alone in feeling this way about blogging, can I?

All the family stories we grew up listening to, all the names we try to link up to other names, these are things my brother and I have been trying to unravel. Two weeks ago, a chance match on our great-grandfather’s name, a name we’d previously believed belonged only to him (why?). We discovered there had been another, and the process of untangling the two has been maddening. Our family is strong on stories but less so on dates, that vital information necessary to get anywhere with the limited records we have available. And so we try to construct a life. And we find a town that no longer exists, may have never existed and in fact only shows up in search as a surname. A sibling whose entire being is suggested only through the memory of a scribbled note on the back of a photo. Our brains run wild with theories and we vow to meticulously record the facts of our own lives, every date and place of interest.

I think what’s most maddening of all, what makes my brother and I so obsessed, is how little time there is before these hard-won and confusing official records are all we have. There’s a sense of urgency now, and we hold regular meetings via Skype, through a six-hour time difference, across an ocean.

Quiet, filled with walks and good food. Huddling around the electric fan, moving it from room to room.

My beautiful grandmother.

In the last two pictures, my dad is the guy in the middle and the guy in the top left, respectively. He was always easy to pick out in childhood group photos – just look for the gigantic one!

And one from yesterday, not fog-related: