1996. Damn, was I ever really that young?

I thought about letting this post be my farewell to a site that’s long past its “sell by” date. My web presence is officially old enough to have graduated from college and to have lived on its own for a few years. I should probably think about turning its bedroom into a den or a library or a dungeon or something. Otherstream (or its predecessor) has outlasted six cars (sort of), five computers, four addresses, three area codes, two years in grad school, and one husband. All the other blogger kids stopped doing this years ago. And honestly, I mostly stopped doing it years ago as well.

In the past 25 years, I’ve gone from being an underemployed retail manager in San Francisco to a tenured university faculty member and librarian in North Carolina. I’ve successfully negotiated two major medical crises and many major financial crises. How we’ll I’ve navigated the several personal crises depends on your perspective. My hobby is travel now rather than sex. I spend my money on books rather than beer. I like to think I’ve becoming a more interesting and pleasant person to be around even though I was becoming much less social even before it was mandated by the current public health environment.

Most of my creative energy now goes into work and into Groceteria.com, though you can still find my random personal and pop culture sharing on Twitter. I’ve made lots of really good friends here, some of whom are even still around. Thanks!

Anyway, I’m not committing to updating in the future. But I’m also not committing to not updating in the future. I no longer have several hundred people checking in every day like I once did, so I imagine there will not be much anguish and distress either way. It’s pretty much just down to what I care about at this point. And I’m now old enough that I don’t stress over things nearly as much as I used to.

I did the big nostalgia thing five years ago. But I should probably do something to celebrate this time too, right? After all, it is still McRib season…