Only The Jodi

To give you an idea of what the blog, Only The Jodi, offers, let me explain it this way – I had asked Jodi to tell me when she started her blog. Jodi Sh. Doff (yes, Jodi’s middle initials are Sh.) responded, “So long ago I can't remember. All I remember is that I was still living in Brooklyn. Or maybe I was still in the East Village. So, at least 10 years ago. Or more.”

Jodi’s comment brought a smile to my face, because I, too, have had a difficult time remembering certain events that have taken place in my own life. And as a fellow middle-aged blogger, with a smile still on my face, I laughed out loud at the following comment, because when I asked Jodi what prompted her to begin writing her blog, she told me that a friend of hers said, "You like to talk about yourself. You should start a blog." 

And that’s all it took for Jodi to being writing two blogs, Only The Jodi and Dirty Girl Diaries, the second of which, according to Jodi, “sadly bit the dust when the host server went out of business with no notice.” She considered the host server’s disappearance to be a sign, so she let the blog go.

DGD (Dirty Girl Diaries) was a bit risqué and had a salacious bent. According to Jodi, “DGD had been solely focused on my years working in the topless bars and sex industry and eventually spawned a monthly column called 3 Naked Ladies – three Times Square strippers from different eras: the 70s, 80s, 90s, and someone who was currently still stripping. We had guest posts from Annie Sprinkle, Dr. Carol Queen, Candida Royalle and so on.”

Jodi admits that DGD, “was a lot of fun, and some of it can still be found on OTJ.” But Only The Jodi was the blog that helped Jodi find her voice as a writer. And in it, she speaks about issues that are important to her: feminism, aging, animals, humor, photography, and healing from trauma. “I figured it was time to stop segmenting my life,” Jodi said.

Jodi doesn’t give her readers just Only The Jodi, though; they also get Middle Aged Lazy and Tuesdays With Mommy!

Who are Jodi’s readers? Mostly women – “Grown-assed women. With a bit of a left lean, politically speaking. And writers.” Jodi reveals that her blog is, “mostly about finding a kindred soul, learning to laugh at yourself, that it's okay to think or feel anything and that you're not the only one who does. Insight into dealing with an aging parent and adult parent-child relations in general. You'll laugh. And you'll cry. Sometimes in the same moment. And there are pretty pictures. Well, not all so pretty, but good and interesting. And urban and gritty.”

Jodi Sh. Doff is a blogger who draws lines in the sand and then ignores them, but not intentionally. She joins gyms and then doesn’t go. She buys a FitBit and when the battery dies, she doesn’t replace it. She is very honest about who she is, where she wants to go, and how she intends to get there, all the while insisting that she’s too lazy to actually get wherever “there” is. 

She admits she has, “no internal editor,” because whatever is on her mind, “comes flying out my mouth. Sometimes that ends well, oft times it doesn't. But always, it's the truth. I'm that best friend you'd love to drink with if I drank, the one you'd want there when the shit hits the fan (because I can fix a shitty fan), and that friend that will answer the phone in the middle of the night when you're hysterical and say that thing that will make it all right until the sun comes up.” 

A quote that gives you some insight about Jodi appears on the Only The Jodi blog site – Your beliefs don't make you a better person. Your behavior does. And some of her favorite hashtags include the following: #truthteller #funnybroad #standuptomato.

If you’re curious about this truth teller, funny broad, and stand-up tomato, visit Only The Jodi by clicking any of the links that appear in this blog.