Years ago, when I was in a very dramatic summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school, I started a weblog. It was on Livejournal, as many weblogs in the early 2000s were, and it began as an audience to replace the family and friends that just didn't "get" me.
In short, it was a typical outlet for a typical 16-year-old.
Over the years, it evolved into a place where I made friends who shared interests, a place where I shared my own fiction and occasional poetry, and where I wrote passive aggressive posts in hopes the right person would read it and feel bad for me. The journal wasn't for me anymore. I guess that sounds silly, considering I was publishing it on the internet in the first place, but there you have it.
I kept it up somewhat faithfully throughout the rest of high school and the first few years of undergraduate level college work. I found myself turning to post in it dozens of times a day when I was at my lowest, whether my content was only somewhat rhetorical cries for understanding from a God I doubted existed or song lyrics with essential portions pertaining to my miseries highlighted in basic HTML-glory. Other periods during those five-odd years, I would go weeks without posting, only to come back with a breathless apology and update that I had been having the time of my life.
My final post was the summer after my junior year of undergrad, right before I left to travel Europe.
I am giving this another go, mostly in an attempt to give myself a more healthy outlet without resorting to the attention-whoring of Facebook or the cesspool of pedophilia and suicidals that is MySpace. I probably won't hand this URL out to many, in an effort to preserve myself from those passive aggressive posts from teenage years past.
My best friends live in California and Michigan, so listening ears are always willing but not always available.
So, Self, enjoy the journey.
--Jana
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