When Tumblr first launched, I played…and failed. I didn’t understand exactly how it was supposed to work and started a blog that didn’t really catch on. Honestly, I can’t remember the concept exactly, it was something about parental victories and kid failures on a day-to-day basis…yeah, lost you already. It’s fine. Lost my interest, too.

But, in the last year my daughter has spent a great deal of time on Tumblr. She kept carrying on about fandoms and laughing at funny posts. I’ve been on social media for years, surely I was missing out on something by not participating on Tumblr. So I created a blog, and told her about it.

She didn’t follow me.

So I followed her.

She still didn’t follow me.

“Honey, why aren’t you following me? I’m on Tumblr.”

Then she launched into a monologue that I really can’t quote. Something about “boring” and “half of tumblr is fandoms the other half is porn, you really have to be careful with all the porn” and then something else about, “boring”.

So I looked around to find other people to follow, very scared about all this porn.

I never really found a lot of porn. But I did find some really fun pages that told me that, yes, my very occasional posts of pictures of my flowers are, indeed, boring. History, photography, writing…I followed some of my favorite authors and musicians.

A few months in and still have only posted some pictures of flowers. Only two people have followed me, and neither are related. But that’s okay. I think I am going to be a lurker on Tumblr.  It’s not social media that has clicked with me yet. When I first realized this, I felt competitive- like I was losing at something. I am (fairly) intelligent, I understand the social part of ‘social media”, I’ve met a lot of friends via the internet community. I use phrases like, “internet community!” I should *get* Tumblr!

Then it occured to me that life is too short to understand everything, and sometimes the best course of action is to understand something the way that we best enjoy it and not work at it so hard. I doubt I’ll ever use Tumblr like my daughter does, but I am still getting a lot out of it.

But no porn. The closest I get is, Fuck Yeah, History Crushes

MY Boring TUMBLR.