This morning, I read an article about “old school blogging” and the power of sharing personal stories. Whenever anyone complains about social media or the Internet, I always think of the diabetes community and how it’s mostly remained this stronghold of support, kindness, and kindred spirits doing their best to live with a challenging chronic illness. I like that about our corner of the Internet. It really tries to use social media for social good.
For fourteen years, I wrote SixUntilMe.com to help me process the mental load of diabetes, and to forge connections with the global diabetes community. Writing here really helped me make sense of diabetes, making it easier to live with this disease.
As a throwback to the days of 2005, when I started blogging and had to code my own website using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor, I wanted to share some space here on Six Until Me – I’m calling it WYSIWYGabetes (pronounced “weh-see-wig-a-beet-eez”). It’s a way to use this somewhat dusty URL for good, instead of it sitting around being all sad and empty.
Do you have an essay you’d like to share? A blog post you’d like to write but you don’t feel like creating a whole blog? Do you have a poem, or a question for the community, or something you need to get off your islets? You can submit your essays to kerri @ sixuntilme dot com. Comments will be open on posts (unless you’d prefer not to have comments) and you can submit as often as you’d like. You can also decide to have the post be password-protected, and you can share the password with whoever you’d like. You can include images, if you’d like. You can share whatever diabetes thoughts that are rolling around in your brain.
I have no idea if this is a good idea. It could be chaotic. It could be cathartic. It could be poignant. It could be emotional. It could be weird. It could be brief. It could be awesome.
No matter what, it could totally be fun.
I hope to hear from you!
Blogging is being supplanted by other writing sites, such as substack and medium. Both of these sites have advantages over legacy blogs. They also offer elective paywalls for the entire article or select portions.. I have been using substack for some time and enjoying it. Do you know if these other web sites have better visibility via google or other search engines? Substack also allows the import of your legacy blogs.
I have looked into substack but haven’t sent anything out through it yet. I wanted to give this URL, which still sees decent traffic despite not being an active blog anymore, utility again. Just for fun.
Thanks for the feedback re: substack, etc. I’m interested in learning more about it. What do you like most about it?
One word reaction to reading this post-
YAAAY
I’m a teenge girl, diagnosed nearly 3 years ago. I discovered your blog just after you stopped posting regularly and I have read almost every post on here. I can’t tell you what an encouragement it has been. When I’m bummed about a bad site or I’m high and can’t stand people, I come here for a good dose of Kerri. Your stories have moved me from crying to laughing so hard I can’t move for minutes.
Kerri, thank you so much for all of your creative work over the past 15 or so years and for being willing to share. I’m looking forward to reading about some new people on sum!
Thank you so much for your kind words! <3 Glad to have you here.