A Semi-Open Letter To Those Who Hate The Stuff I Write

Here’s a lesson I have always struggled with too: it’s not about you.

I had various blogs throughout different stages of adulthood, most of which I never stuck with. I finally started blogging more consistently in 2013. At first, the idea of the blog (then called Context of Things) was to take complicated issues, like whatever the hell a “debt ceiling” is, and break them down into easier-to-understand parts. I did some deep dive posts back in 2013 on hard-to-grasp topics, and I’m proud of some of those posts, for sure. Over time, I started writing more about work and a little bit about true crime, which is a fascination of mine. I got noticed and found more for those things in the 2013 to 2015 period.

At the same time, I was living in Minneapolis and struggling with adult relationships and why I was even in Minneapolis and various wedding and birth arcs of friends of mine, so sometimes I wrote personal shit. I think the first time this ever intruded in my actual day-to-day life was sometime around April of 2014. I lived in Uptown Minneapolis then (ha), and used to go to this beer bar periodically. I forget the name of the bar now, honestly. I was also working a contract role for Teach for America and traveling as a result of it. So, one Monday, I had just come back from Memphis…