It’s my tenth entry! I’ve already written and deleted about four or five opening paragraphs here, trying to explain why I thought starting this little journal would be a good idea. Of course, since I have no readers as yet (since I have told no one about it yet) I can’t quite tell if it is. A good idea, I mean. But now I’m going to tell people, and now I’m going to see.
I feel kind of defensive about it. I mean, like everyone else, I want to improve my writing, I thought it would be fun, I really like to talk about myself because it’s the only subject about which I have any information, etc. And considering the size of my ego, you’d think I’d be all Welcome To My World, Yall!
But I feel really shy. I have liked having a secret…and not like it’s a big secret either. Just, you know, I’m writing about myself now online instead of in my paper journal. But still, I feel like there’s not a whole lot to write about, and if there is, I don’t know that I can write about it well.
I always really admired Pamie, who, as you may or may not know, wrote the one and only Squishy, now sadly shut down. I loved her writing and thought the community that grew around the site was really cool, and to this day, a whole six months later, I regret only lurking FOR THREE YEARS on her forum. I mean, not that I had anything incredibly thoughtful or deep to say, just that I think it would have been fun to participate instead of just watch. So I started thinking about it, and started reading other journals, and thought about it some more. Now, you may be shocked…shocked! to know that I have no HTML skills to speak of. In fact, you’re going to see my first attempt at making a link in about two sentences (thanks Carl!). I didn’t think I could have a journal without making my own site though, like Alison’s , or Anna Beth’s, or Omar’s. So imagine, if you will, how excited I was when I found Spinny’s site on diary-x. Oh, hey, easy, I thought. And for some reason, after finding Jessamyn’s journal I went ahead and signed on up, and here we all are today. These folks have influenced me quite a bit, and I think I may have absorbed some of their writing styles. Just a little. Judge for yourselves.
I thought it would be a cute idea to trying writing “and” as “&” throughout, but it took me 3.2 seconds to find how annoying that is: “& I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a job, & me & Carl went to Portland, & it’s cold here in Seattle, & so on & so forth.” See? I just dig that there’s a name for that little sign up there on the seven key, that’s all. Plus I have a penchant for run-on sentences, so, you know, it all works out. & how!
The other thing…I just have to say this..is that I have this friend Manya, who is just the coolest and with whom I grew up and whom I saw only briefly when I was in Miami for Christmas. Anyway, I would sometimes email people various funny little stories that happened to me and she would always email back right away saying I needed to write a column somewhere because she liked what I wrote so much. Now, I won’t vouch for her taste in writing, but you have to love someone who has been telling you should write a book since you were eleven, which is what she’s been telling me for some reason. So thank you Manya for being so encouraging. I am apparently not done being defensive about this quite yet, as I feel I have to explain why I’m here. I just am. I just do.
So nothing new right now at the moment. I’m going to write you an email right now and tell you all about it, as soon as I save this file. I’m pretty excited, and I hope you like all nine previous entries. If not…um, well, be kind for the moment at least, okay?