the old blogs
me at nineteen, Enchanted Rock
I started my blog, Nothing Rhymes with Orange, at nineteen. It was mostly for practice. I had spent a considerable amount of my childhood writing—10-page scripts for imaginary radio shows, meandering poetry for coffee shop chalk boards, concert reviews in the form of Tumblr posts—and I wanted to get serious.
It was my first year of college and I felt like I was unraveling. I didn’t know how to predict my future the way I had been able to as a child. I craved focus.
From 2014 - 2017, I spent my time on Blogspot writing and posting three poems a week. Occasionally I would post my friends’ work, which made it feel like my community, too. The poems I wrote varied in quality and length, but each was a stepping stone.
In 2017 after about 500 poems, I upgraded to my own url and kept posting at a consistent rate. When that era of my blog began, I said of my beloved Blogspot page: “That time feels distant now, my blog has evolved. It feels like a personal journal, like both the important and menial parts of my life. At the very least, it is constant. It has held me to the writing standard I wanted when I began.” I posted consistently on my own url until 2022, during my first year of graduate school.
Now, in 2024, I can reflect on the latter era too. That time matured my writing. I was dedicated and meticulous. It helped me get over the hump of beginning, helped me realize the power of quantity. I focused on publication during these years, and applied for and started my MFA.
It’s been a while since I was nineteen and I still can’t predict my future. My practice has evolved past my blogging days (for now), but I can’t bring myself to get rid of all those poems—they catalogue eight years of my poetic life. So take a read and think of me, a decade younger and with drive that has propelled me to now.
- Riley