Ten years ago, I started this blog honestly as a combination of boredom project and the realization that I cannot keep a handwritten journal. My brain simply goes too fast for my slow handwriting crawl, and I’d get irritated and stop writing – sometimes for months at a time. I figured I’d give blogging a try and settled into a then quite comfortable easy-going journal site called Diary-X.
I honestly didn’t know what would come of the blog. I mean, hell – what interesting stuff do I have to write about? My life certainly didn’t qualify as interesting. I was a mid-20s single woman living in Boston with few friends, no love interest, an entirely geeky personality that didn’t generally bode well to social acceptance (especially as a girl) and was quite honestly still in a rather bad way with a nasty looming relationship that had really screwed me up. I figured it would probably drift off as many little whims do with the web, and I’d lose interest and move on.
And from time to time, I have done that a bit – there are months that I haven’t written as much, or that I just have gone into inane meme copy hell just to keep posting. But that’s the thing – I kept posting. Much to my surprise, I enjoyed posting. I loved meeting new people that had the same interests as I did. I felt part of a social circle again, even when I felt isolated and alone offline. I learned from others. Somehow I helped others – including some insane good things that I still am amazed that happened. I found love, I experienced some nasty rejection, I switched jobs, friendships were made, broken, or strengthened, and I continued to grow.
For example – consider that I started this blog before I met my husband. Seriously – my entire relationship, right back to our first date, is blended in the pages of this blog. (the early entries I’m still importing from Diaryland bit by bit, because they predate entry tags). That alone is crazy to me. It’s amazing and wonderful to me – and it’s a complete accident. I just happened to capture it. This blog predates five of six cats, the house, my current job, my first car, my first trip overseas, experiencing death in my family, and of course -getting married.
It’s quite a list of things in ten years, and that doesn’t even count the silly day to day stuff I’m usually writing about.
I do read some of my old entries from time to time. I recognize the person in there, even if she’s now years detached from the person I am today. I laugh at the silliness and smile at the good memories. Some of those old pains are still quite raw. Others have healed. Some I don’t get why they were a big deal in the first place. It really is my weird, crazy life in a nutshell – and I’m realizing that it doesn’t matter if I have anything important or profound to say. I just need to write – and it’s as much for me to connect to myself as it is to connect to other people.
So thank you everyone who reads and shares this journey with me – I love connecting with each of you, and I hope it will continue for another ten, evolving into whatever the Internet becomes by that time. :)
Best,
Melissa
And I am the only person who will see this address list.
