A Year of Blogging

Well, Christmas break is (sadly) over, and I believe all the ZD bloggers have made it back to their scattered homes. Perhaps this will mean that we’re going to be blogging a little more again– though I suppose the more ambitious among us might have other plans, such as (gasp!) studying.

As of this past Thursday, January 4, Zelophehad’s Daughters has been in existence for a year. I was going to post something to mark the occasion (because what’s the fun of blogging if you can’t indulge in occasional navel-gazing?), but I ended up spending the day driving multiple times through the snow to the Salt Lake airport to get various sisters to their planes, and then squeezing in a few last games of Settlers of Catan with the sisters who were still around before I left the next day.

A couple of people have asked me how ZD got started. There isn’t really that much to tell. Eve, as I recall, got quite addicted to reading the Bloggernacle during 2005, and would periodically mention some of the things being discussed. I glanced at it occasionally, but I was at that point involved in another online community and didn’t have the time for more– and, to be honest, I was a bit wary of interacting with other Mormons, because I’ve so often felt like an alien at church. Nonetheless, one night in December 2005, I found myself commenting on Feminist Mormon Housewives. Of course I immediately called Eve to tell her what I was doing, and soon the two of us were deep in a discussion of polygamy. And the more we commented, the more I thought about how fun it would be to have our own blog.

My first idea was to have a blog of female LDS grad students– a logical choice, given that three of my sisters and my good friend Seraphine all fit that category. But as we played around with the configuration, we decided that it would be nice to have more perspectives, and we invited all the siblings in my family to participate. Not all of them got hooked, but I was happy that they all came by at least once. Since then we’ve added two more contributors, so that Seraphine is no longer the only one not related to my family. Ziff, however, remains our lone male. (And he’s never even complained about our non-gender-inclusive title.)

And here we still are, despite a bit of turmoil early on, a period of hibernation in the spring, random internet outages, and far too many papers and exams. Though it’s been stressful and emotionally tiring at times, and I’m still trying to do a better job of balancing blogging with the rest of my life, overall I’ve had a lot of fun being involved with ZD and the rest of the Bloggernacle. I’ve particularly enjoyed encountering so many interesting people; for me, that’s been the most positive aspect of doing this.

So, Happy Birthday to ZD (only three days late). And Happy 2007 to everyone!