is this blog inactive?
That answer is complicated, but pretty much yes.
I still go on tumblr regularly and I see the asks people send me here, but I don’t have the mental or emotional energy to answer people’s questions. I used to be able to, but running this blog requires a lot of emotional labor, something I was more willing to give when I was a teenager than now that I’m an adult who has a job, goes to college, has other things to take care of, etc. Which isn’t to say I don’t want to help people, just that I value my own mental health and well-being and I found that running this blog was badly effecting me in that way.
Also: I’ve been running this blog since I was around sixteen, and I was a different person then. There are some things on this blog I’ve said that I now disagree with, and frankly I’m not sure at this point in my life if I personally identify as aromantic any more. I’m not really sure what “romance” or “romantic attraction” is, or if those are even stable categories that don’t vary wildly from person to person. Also, internalized homophobia impacted me a lot, and I’m unpacking whether for me personally identifying as aromantic was part of distancing myself from other gay men at least partly.
This isn’t to say no one should identify as “aromantic” or that everyone who does is struggling with internalized homophobia, just that I’m not really sure what it means for me personally and am working through that in my life right now. And it feels disingenuous to me to answer questions about whether or not people are aromantic or arospec when I don’t even know if I am.
I’m leaving the blog up as a resource, but am not currently active on it. That might change later, I don’t know. I still value aromantic as a concept, and think a lot of the lessons I learned in this community (regardless of whether I continue to identify as such or not) like “you don’t have to follow a typical romantic narrative for your life!” and “being single is ok!” were super useful to me. But I’m trying to distance myself from it at this point in my life.
And also, this is a thing I’ve been trying to emphasize on this blog since the beginning, but: there is no eternal truth we have to divine in regard to orientation. Orientation labels are words we use to make sense of ourselves, not constant divine truths. If a word feels right to you, use it. And if a word stops feeling right to you, stop using it. Or take a break from it like I am. All of those are okay options.
