My friend Lindsey Kubly mentioned this week how much she missed the days when personal blogs ran the Internet. Those were the days where the only way you could catch up on your favorite writers was to head to their personal URL.

I have long maintained that I have always, always been an Internetter. Jill, my college roommate, still teases me that when she woke up in the middle of the night she would always find me lit by the glow of CNN.com. I love how the Internet never sleeps, how it always changes, and how it gives everyone opportunity and a voice.

So, naturally, I’ve been so interested in the rise and fall of the personal blog. I watched everyone fumbling around figuring it out. I watched those same people start to strategize and beautify and court readers. I watched them achieve great success and started to find some of my own. But, when you become a brand, sometimes it’s scary to just write silliness like we used to. Our readers were expecting (were they?) excellent, editorial worthy content. We had to go toe-to-toe with organizations with massive budgets. The stakes seemed like they were getting higher and higher, but our voices and Internet homes seemed more and more similar.

As the list of women who blog daily has dwindled, I’ve been sad to see them go. In 2006 as a new adult and also a new mom, I began every day with a roundup of ten or fifteen blogs. I’d consume them like coffee, and it was such a fun time on the Internet.

1. People seemed genuinely clever. There was no Pinterest and to find specific blogs you still kind of had to go on a link rabbit trail. So, the shelf-life of a creative idea was longer. You didn’t burn through novelty in 15 seconds like you do today. I was so impressed by each and every woman I encountered online, because they were so…them. It was like they had finally been given permission to be totally themselves…and women ran with it.
2. There was so little pressure. When no one knows what works, no one really cares. :)
3. Like Lindsey said, the content someone put out lived in just one place. The personal blog was their online living room–not rented space from Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and the like. I could check 10-15 links in a day and be pretty much done with the Internet. That made the content I found on that blog richer (because the writer wasn’t spread thin over 10 different platforms) and it allowed the reader’s attention to linger, because we weren’t all bouncing off to the next burst of inspiration and information.

All that to say, I’ve been really blessed by the strategy on the Internet. I am not poo-pooing on it, only noticing how things have changed. I still run a site that is heavily in tune with what the “best practices” of social media are. But here on the URL of my own name, I want to explore a little more. I want things to be more personal. I’m going to do my best to just show up and write. I may delve into some silly prompts. It may not be award-winning Internetting. But, I’m just going to try.

I’ve loved seeing Lindsey update her blog so often this month. She has purposed that her URL will be the main place of creation for her. Instagram will just be for sharing sweet moments, and she’s done with Twitter altogether. I love knowing that she’s showing up to write and that she’ll have something smart or stylish to say (simply because she IS smart and stylish…not because it’s some new-fangled strategy).

I would like to know: do you have any favorite blogs that still update daily or weekly? I’m dying for some new ones in my reader. :)

(image by Gina Zeidler, Gina Zeidler Photography)

I have written under the pen name The Tiny Twig for the past 8 years. It’s where I grew up as a writer and it has provided me with incredible opportunities. I’m crazy grateful.

But, I am not The Tiny Twig. The Tiny Twig’s mission statement was to inspire women to create lives of more passion and less fuss. That is very much still a heartbeat of mine, but like all humans my mind, whims, and feelings grow and change as I learn more about the Lord every day.

I am not a brand. I am just me. Hayley Morgan.

I’m grateful to reclaim my name, allow Tiny Twig to grow a brand of its own (oh, it’s still there and even better than ever!), and just be a normal and un-curated writer here.

I’d love to invite you to sign up for The Saturday Morning Reader, where I send out a little note most Saturdays.

If you want to stay up to date with The Tiny Twig (and who wouldn’t??), follow along on Instagram for encouragement or head to the site to get a feel for what we’re doing over there. Hint: the tagline is Helping You ‘Adult’ Since 2008. It’s VERY bright, happy, and fun.

To follow along with me, just regular old Hayley Morgan I’ll be hayley.e.morgan on Instagram. If you’ve followed me on Instagram as The Tiny Twig, you’ll still be following me–but definitely give the new Tiny Twig a follow because we’ll be starting at zero over there. ;)