The worst thing about having a blog is that you've put all your junk out there and now it's impossible to take it back. Not that I want to. Well okay, I sort of want to. You'd think the bits featuring ex-lovers would be the most distasteful to me, but I cringe more at bad writing than at bad judgement in who I fuck.
Jesus.
This thing goes back 9 years. 9 freakin years! Some of the things I wrote about are disturbing, but what is most disturbing is that some of the things I wrote about are completely unfamiliar to me. I have no memory of this mundane stuff, and it would have been completely lost had I not written it down. I also suffer from revisionist's history, and the temptation to delete delete delete is strong. I am resisting, barely.
I believe in the whole "my history has made me who I am" bullocks. No really, I do. It's all good, but I think it's better in broad strokes than the gritty details.
In a way I feel like an archaeologist, sifting through another lifetime. It hardly feels like mine. Reading about such ancient history is a bit like masturbating with your left hand.
But it's cool in a way, to know that I used to have a bumblebee jar, and that I used to love my ex-husband. I have written records of these things for where my memory has blanked, or balked.
Someone I met through blogging recently noted that I was very unlike the person she first started reading about so many years ago. She's right. Most of the best parts of my life are less than 9 years old. I've had to rebuild my life, and although the construction is new, I think the foundation is pretty much the same. I have not been static. I hope never to be. I hope in 9 years from now I'll have had less drama but just as much reinvention.
The best thing about having a blog, incidentally, is reading comments. Unfortunately, being nearly completely e-tarded, I lost the vast majority of comments when I converted from one platform to another, and anything collected on haloscan did not follow. That aggrieves me more than I can express because I value the discourse, and the community that was fostered through blogging. I still have a few left though, and it's almost mind-blowing to realize what a long history I've had with people I've shared such intimacy with yet never actually met. Maybe it's time to give the old goat a makeover, but I'm not ready to let go. Looking back, I can only conclude that writing here has been a valuable and enriching part of my life. And if, at times, it also makes me want to die of embarrassment, well, what else are diaries for?
16 comments:
Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
we all make mistakes, and we tend to forget the smaller ones. Reading past blog posts can keep us humble....lol
Mine don't go back quite that far, but I treasure the comments too.
I'm so glad you are posting again. Hope it continues.
We are all unreliable narrators of our own lives, whether we realize it or not.
I loved all your creativity, your artistic license, your searingly clear insights, your cheerleading, your tear-downing, your internal searches, your external ramblings and I'm so glad you're back
Nine years. Me too. Yikes!
Glad to see you back out here. It seems our community dried up when Facebook pulled the plug and drained users down to its land of empty missives. Folks would rather read short posts from lots of people they had (happily) forgotten, rather than meaningful meanderings from those with whom their adult selves have discovered a commonality. That feeling of community was an unexpected side effect of having a blog. For me, once the comments stopped, so did most of my motivation. An alarming number of blogs just stopped, without explanation.
And yet here I find myself trying to click "Like" on some of the comments above.
Glad to see you back out here. It seems our community dried up when Facebook pulled the plug and drained users down to its land of empty missives. Folks would rather read short posts from lots of people they had (happily) forgotten, rather than meaningful meanderings from those with whom their adult selves have discovered a commonality. That feeling of community was an unexpected side effect of having a blog. For me, once the comments stopped, so did most of my motivation. An alarming number of blogs just stopped, without explanation.
Ditto. I often wish I never stopped. But I find it v hard to start again.
Go figure.
9 years, me too! I am like Mark, I lost the motiviation to blog when the comments stopped, and I think they stopped as people migrated to Facebook instead.
I'm tickled pink that you are blogging again, because your posts are always interesting. :-)
Haloscan!! I missed it so much when it went away!
I think I just lost the habit.
When I was blogging a lot, I almost started seeing the world as a blog post. I'd have to write notes! But then as my life became crazy and I was making so many transitions, I lost the time to myself that I needed to write. And once I didn't have the discipline, I didn't have the words. I'm hoping to pick up the habit again, to carve out the time somewhere.
I've had similar thoughts recently. I know some bloggers who routinely delete an old blog and start over. I don't understand that. The past is certainly part of who we are.
So I join you in appreciating the valuable, enriching, and embarrassing parts of blogging. And I say that it's good to see words here again. I did miss your raw and unvarnished perspective.
You're blogging!!
Which makes me want to blog again!
BTW I used to do the same thing about seeing my life as a blog post--how weird??
I think I need a new site, I destroyed mine somehow when I was playing with the HTML.
Melina - yes yes yes!
Vest - we both know I'd have to put that parrot down.
I moved to Google Reader several years after leaving (or taking a sabbatical) from my blog, but always kept "Kill the Goat" as a subscription. Hoping, wondering, waiting and hoping some more. Welcome back. You were missed and I am really happy you came out in a better place. I knew you could do it.
Grimm
(Formerly Tommy Gunn from tommysdarkside.com)
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