Welcome! I can't believe I'm "starting" a blog. Aren't blogs, like, so 2005?

I used to read blogs, and I mostly don't anymore. It feels too hard to try to figure out what's relevant or accurate. Also, when I am scanning my email on the go, I'm not likely to click over to a random link. Again, it's just too hard, and I believe that my phone exists to make my life easier, not harder, so I don't do anything stressful or complicated with my phone, as a rule.

And when I'm sitting at my desk, I just don't have time to relax and read things. I'm working.

I read the newsletters in my email inbox, and yes, those are sometimes also available as blog posts on those writers' websites. And I also have an email newsletter with a wonderful group of readers...but I don't put my own newsletter on my website, because those are meant to be direct conversations with people I "know." It's quite a different thing from writing a blog post meant to be read by a wide, random audience.

So why am I starting a blog?

For fun.
To share.
To update in between newsletters.
For those joyful moments.
For sad occasions.
For a way to be social without feeling like a digital sharecropper on someone else's platform.

If you want to get to know me in any "deep" way, you'll have to read my books and join my newsletter, where I try to dig deep into the human experience on this planet.

But if you want to just see what I'm up to or to hang out with me more frequently, in a "lighter" way, my blog is where I'm being "real" in real time. Apologies to Facebook and Instagram, but it's like Facebook and Instagram, without...well, without Facebook and Instagram.

It's better than social media, because it's mine. It's not there to enrich Instagram or Twitter. And you don't have to join anything or share your personal info in order to hang with me.

I'll be posting pretty randomly, but every Wednesday I'll try to stick something more edifying in there. If you sign up for the blog feed (SO 2005!), you'll get the weekly update automatically, but I probably won't include the little snapshots and in-the-moment posts, because won't that drive you nuts? Tell me if you feel otherwise....

And on that happy note, I'm signing off on this first HEY WORLD blog post. Enjoy your week! I'm going to go out and enjoy the lilacs.

Maya Rushing Walker
author of contemporary and historical fiction
mayarushingwalker.net