Over the past many years, I have basically left this blog alone. I continue to pay my annual domain registration fee and every year wonder if I should keep paying it or just sunset the whole thing. I feel very protective of this space and not many weeks go by that I tell myself, just start again. You love publishing blog posts, even if for no one other than yourself.

While I haven’t gotten the oomph back to do that, I do want to have access to all of my old posts for nostalgia’s sake. So usually once or twice a year, I’ll pop on with a reflection or goals post.

As life and technology ebbs and flows there’s been other places I’m showing up online and other considerations about the degree of detail and personal views I wish to disclose in a public forum. I wrestle with that here too but can’t quite shake a feeling that in this next season of life, I may feel ready to show up here again.

Let us take a short trip down memory lane and address some of the way-posts and rationale about writing online: what it’s looked like, when and why it’s shifted, and where I am now.

Around the end of 2020 I decided to lock down my personal Instagram account @clairewood, where I’d been keeping lots of very personal photos and anecdotes about our family. Our kids were getting older and I wanted to shift the focus away from posting about their moments to honor their privacy. I started a new account @home_sweet_military_home where I documented a lot of the creativity and complexities of setting up new homes every two years.

That account is where I am still active but a few years ago decided to rename it to reflect a broader, more personal shift. That account is now @claire_wood_77 and it’s my catalog of weekly 10 Good Things reflections and mostly a place where I share memes with friends, reshare thought provoking and funny Reels, and occasionally make my own. I mostly go on Instagram to be inspired by fun home decor accounts, by savvy financial experts, by wow-worthy cooks and bakers, and to get a chuckle from someone cleverly remarking on the state of the world.

It was also around 2020 that I began to stop engaging with Facebook. Perhaps a touch of it was political, but overall, I just never felt happier after being on Facebook. I still phantom scroll there, make an occasional ❤️ on a friend’s post, especially when they are walking through something difficult, and definitely only keep Facebook around for using Marketplace. Sometimes it feels like Facebook is mostly a record of the past: friends from high school, family members who I don’t see as regularly as I used to, and people we’ve connected with at past duty stations. I love all of that but somehow the engagement there seems… I don’t know… not my reality.

As for published writing online, well– I also go back to 2020. After twelve years of consistent blogging at that point, I started with my first paid content writing job. It was slow that first year. I wrote a few sporadic articles for Millie and Books Make a Difference. I loved that I was finally earning actual money for something I had been practicing for ages and something that I loved. However, with the uptick in social media use and paid writing, I found that I wasn’t making as much time for public, long form reflection here.

The Millie gig became more permanent in April of that year and soon after I began to pick up regular monthly jobs of 2-4 articles each for contractors like United Through Reading and AAFMAA’s SpouseLink. I wrote about home, moving, and real estate (Millie), the importance of early literacy (UTR), and financial preparedness (AAFMAA)– all for military audiences.

While each of these shifts was taking place with Instagram, Facebook, and professional, paid writing, our kids were hitting their stride in adolescence. It no longer felt right to share such vivid stories and anecdotes about family life and motherhood at such a tender time in their lives. I still very much felt the pull to create through my writing, but I allowed that to happen in the privacy of my journal.

With every military move we’ve had, in addition to writing, I have also tried to keep my foot in the door in my teaching career. I taught at East Georgia State College when we lived in Augusta, took a 4th grade classroom teacher job at a private school in Louisiana, did more adjunct teaching at Austin Peay State University during our Fort Campbell stint, and spent time as a reading interventionist, 5th grade teacher, and sub while we lived in Williamsburg. Between the hustle of moving, parenting, finding jobs, and posting to Instagram, blogging simply fell off my radar.

During those years I published an article for Legacy magazine, for the Williamsburg CASA annual report, and dipped my toe in the world of Substack, only to realize it wasn’t really for me.

In early April of 2023, I became the content manager for company called Virtual Veterans Communities (now MissionWise)– growth partners in higher ed providing student veteran educational services to colleges and universities. I started writing monthly blog content only for two of our sites, and now I do that, a newsletter for one university, client services project management for a few others, annual report writing, and have begun working in the areas of data and assessment with new partner schools. In 2024 I started a PhD program in higher education.

Just as social media, kids growing up, and professional teaching and writing jobs have slowly evolved, I am finding that I, too, am continuing to evolve. I look back at all of these small shifts in how I show up online, where I am spending time writing, and what type of work opportunities have come my way and I sit back in awe of the way God has woven together all of these things.

I guess what I am trying to say is that in 2025, I am still finding new ways to express my creativity and God-given interests and passions. In a few more months, the last of our baby birds will be flying the nest. My most important work as mom during the most formative “at home” years for our kids will be shifting. I am no longer doing smaller contract writing jobs as I have now set aside Millie, UTR, and SpouseLink to focus my efforts on my full-time, fulfilling work at MissionWise. I am no longer chasing entry level adjunct teaching jobs or classroom jobs at small private schools. I have decided to let my Tennessee and Virginia teaching licensure lapse for good. I’ve found my home in higher education.

I am sensing a new season. New priorities. Old passions made new. Old dreams given new purpose. The thread that’s been slowly guided through the tapestry of my life is starting to reveal the bigger picture of how it is all coming together, just as it has been all along.

In this next season of life I’m still a mom, still sharing on social media, still an educator, still a writer– it’s just taking a different shape and form.

Yes, I’ll keep wrestling with how to show up online and struggling with authenticity, vulnerability, and privacy on social media. Certainly, there will be less about the kids and their pursuits and more about mine–traveling, reading, cooking. (One of those places I am showing up is in the new nest Ryan and I are building together as a place for those college and young adult birds to come away to rest and recreate. Follow along @blueskycottage.nc 🏡)

Yes, I’ll keep wrestling with how to be a teacher and educational leader even when you’re geographically independent. Certainly, I’m more resolved, excited, and fulfilled in my remote role that’s actually having impact on the student veteran population and I am curious to see where that will lead.

Yes, I’ll keep pursing my doctoral classes and working toward the completion of that program in the next few years. Certainly, the learning and investment will yield a fruitful vocational harvest.

The short version of this long and rambling post?

Yes, I paid my $19 to WordPress today. Certainly, there will be more personal essays and reflections here to follow. Stay tuned.