Lisa Zahn

Hi all! This is basically a semi-public journal for me right now, so please don't expect me to write well or say anything profound. I'm just trying to get started again.  I've had writer's block for many, many years now. Since about 2015. Admittedly, 2015 is about six years after I got on Facebook and started down the social media rabbithole, so I can't entirely blame Facebook. But maybe I can blame Facebook, Instagram (which started much later for me), YouTube, Twitter, BlueSky, Threads, Huffington Post, CNN online, the iPhone (which I did first get in 2014, very nearly coinciding with the beginning of my writer's block), etc., as well as some personal and familial things that happened around 2014/15.  Yes, I'm going to leave that last bit at the very generic "things," which my English teachers would hate for its vagueness. But it's important that I keep some things vague, sorry to say. I don't spill my most deeply personal things on a blo...

Today I started thinking about re-starting this blog, but I didn't even know if I could. Well, it looks like I can! Blogger seems even easier to navigate than it used to be back in my blogging days.  I gave up all social media starting in January of this year (2026), and I'm not looking back. Life without it is great! I miss knowing about a few things going on, and participating in my Buy Nothing group (sort of), but other than that there is nothing that will get me back to it any time soon. Social media basically ruined my blogging and writing life, and I'm not too proud to say it. I started on Facebook in 2009, I believe, and over the years became more and more addicted to scrolling social media, news sites, and videos. Like so many people! That's how "they" designed it, after all (they meaning the big tech bros , as we now call them). And boy, has it harmed our world.  In the beginning, social media was all about sharing. I remember getting excited with...