FYI/The backstory if you're interested (2024)
I have been blogging since 2013. From 2013-2019, Just Being Me…Who Needs “Normalcy,” Anyway? (this site, which is my personal blog) was housed at WhoNeedsNormalcy.com (initially hosted on Blogger, which was formerly Blogspot; both were eventually acquired by Google). After 2019, I merged the blog with my personal website, which was MorenikeGO.com, and republished most of the articles there. At the time, my purpose was to have all of my "stuff" in one place, which seemed like a good idea at the time.
(Fortunately, for me, I decided to still maintain the original site, including most of its articles, as an archive/backup. This worked out in my favor ~five years later when I decided to resurrect it.)
So…you might be wondering what type of blogger I am. I know there are beauty bloggers/vloggers, mommy bloggers, social justice bloggers, etc. I don’t really think I fit into a particular category; I’m just a plain ol’ blogger. My blog isn’t particularly sophisticated in terms of aesthetics or incorporating technology or anything like that. It’s more like a journal. In fact, the terms "blog" and "blogger" don't really resonate much for me. Not that I'm opposed to them - that would be sily. But before becoming and beyond being a blogger, I am a writer. The medium, for me, is just semantics...my writing can be found online, in academic scholarship, in nonfiction books...all kinds of places. I love to write, though sadly I haven't written as much in recent years as I would like, for various reasons.
In terms of my personal writing on this blog...well, I just write about whatever I feel like writing about at the moment. Things going on in my life; my family; things from my past; advocacy stuff…etc. My writing is…well, me. It’s my purest voice, and it provides a pretty in-depth glimpse into my thoughts and feelings.
As a busy mom to a large family who is also balancing a number of projects, 99.9% of the time when I write anything (a blog post, an email, an article, etc.), I’m writing/typing it on my phone using the virtual keypad. As a result, the formatting might be “off” sometimes. There might also be typos that I don’t catch right away. Sometimes I will go back later on a computer and correct them, but most of the time I leave things as they are. I’m not perfect and I’m not going to pretend that my writing is. I’m not criticizing people who carefully edit their blog posts because writing is indeed a craft. This is just me, and I feel that leaving the little screw ups here and there is a way for me to be transparent and real.
There are some months/years where I churn out a lot of writing. And there are others times where I only write a few things, or practically nothing. Between navigating my health, work, a husband, raising my kids, and other things going on in my life, I don’t adhere to a formal writing schedule. Sometimes I write frequently; other times months might pass before I write anything.
However, just know that when I do write something, it's genuine. I can’t write anything that doesn’t feel “real” to me…I’d rather not write anything at all than write something that feels hollow and false.
Feel free to read a few things if you're interested (and if you're not, I guess that's okay - I mean, I have no way of knowing if you'd prefer to pass). Be blessed!
MGO
Recommended citation: Giwa Onaiwu, Morénike. (2024). FYI/The backstory if you're interested. Just Being Me...Who Needs "Normalcy," Anyway? [Personal essay.]