In just a few days, the blog will hit 300,000 words. Well over 715 posts in about 21 months.
Most of the posts are mediocre at best. Going back to the first several months, back in the Summer of 2013, I can see how rough it was. I didn’t know why I was doing it. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but I kept doing it. Every day, or nearly. Even now, my posts are not particularly polished. They aren’t edited. I don’t have time. I am doing this with most of my free time and it isn’t nearly enough. It’s a lot of words.
So most of them aren’t great, but there are a lot that I am proud of.
I walk the same line was one of the first things I wrote that tried to pin down why I feel like I am different. I think I was starting to find my words. My voice.
Asleep or awake, it’s hard to tell until it’s obvious is a dream I had when I was sick. A dream about being Michael Jackson
I’m not fat, I’m fluffy. No, just fat. But I have great hair. In which I talk about being fat. Yes, I am aware that I am fat.
300 acres of lonely. It started as a conversation with someone important to me. He used the expression to describe why he never went somewhere anymore. I stole the phrase and used it to write about a really dark period in my life.
This is not an invitation is about rape. I went into it again more recently on a more personal level in the post Sometimes yes means no in which I tall about an experience I had which may or may not have been a rape.
Meeting Omer is about someone I loved.
Out she goes is just a night in the life of a messed up college student.
The Samael stories started as a very sexually graphic series of dreams I had about someone. I thought “what if I really did have an incubus?”
Beer tattoo which was just because I love beer and tattoos, and had just read a bunch of books about fairies.
Letting go is about just that.
Karma and the blizzard is about what I think karma is. It’s people. Just like Soylent Green.
Oh, there are others. I just can’t remember their names. It’s a good thing they don’t have feelings.
The thing is, even though I post on a site that is accessible to the public, I don’t pretend to do this for anyone but myself. It is partly a creative outlet. There is a little fiction. There are some funny stories about things going on in life. I write about things that happen at work. I write about my dreams. I write about the people I love. I post pictures of our shenanigans.
I think aloud.
There is a lot of stuff about trust, loss, faith, interest, intent, friendship, love, family and football.
There is also a crap ton of angst and navel gazing.
It mostly was, and is, a way for me to figure shit out. Shit that most people probably manage to figure out when they are twelve. It’s how I kick my own ass, and tell myself not to kick my own ass so much. It’s how I scream, and cry and keep myself from screaming and crying. It’s how I learned to turn myself back on and stay that way. It’s how I keep from turning around and running away.
It’s a message in a bottle.
So, why does something so personal have to be done in a public forum? Why can’t I have a private journal to work out my demons?
Because if it wasn’t public, I wouldn’t do it. I need the illusion of accountability that comes from daily public posting. It really is just an illusion. I don’t think anyone would call me out on it if I stopped posting.
So would it matter if I didn’t do it?
Not to anyone but me. I guess maybe that means it matters. I’m not sure why I feel like I need to qualify it. It is important to me. It doesn’t need to be important to anyone else. I am not looking to expand my readership. I’m just trying to get better. Not better at writing, although that would be nice someday, but better at being who I am. More tolerant of my own flaws and everyone else’s.
When I’d been writing for a year or so, I came across something writer Neil Gaiman said that describes what I am trying to do perfectly:
The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself…That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.
It is my way of learning to let myself be seen instead of always hiding. From myself most of all, but from everyone.
If anyone else enjoys it or is helped by it, that is a bonus.
It’s been a voyage.
Totally unrelated side note: happy birthday, Clarence, and thanks for the ideas. Enjoy paradise!