I used to blog a bit. Nothing really all that impressive or popular, but I was pleased. You see, it had a purpose. When I started, about 2 1/2-3 years ago, I needed an outlet for the things going through my head at the time. I was fresh out of a 12 year relationship (Best thing that EVER happened to him. The relationship, not its end. That was the worst. ed) and consequently had lost the person that I would normally talk to about those things. And I had driven away the person (I'll call her C, for anonimity's sake. Guessing she'll come up again later.) with whom I had tried to replace her with. Shortly thereafter I lost my job and my apartment. I ran away and I tried to return. I tried to re-build and did an awful job of it. Mostly my doing. And all the while I wrote.
It kept things in perspective. It is so much easier to be critical of your choices, thoughts and decisions when you can come back to them later, read them and SEE what you were thinking. But never having had a "public diary", as it were, I didn't really know how best to handle it. Until I met (As much as you "meet" another blogger. ed) JK. I was reading through blogs, looking for someone who was writing about similar subjects to see how they were presenting these ideas and what things I should avoid doing. As I read this woman's blog I became fascinated with her insight into feeling and the incredibly hopeful attitude she seemed to maintain. She combined the real with fantasy. She could explain the most complex of human emotion in the simplest words.
Now, I wasn't a "blogger" per se. At least I didn't consider myself one. I didn't follow any other blogs or was interested in doing so. It hadn't ocurred to me that people that DIDN'T know me were going to be interested in what I was writing. Just some cat, sitting in his kitchen, tapping away at the keyboard, writing things that nobody was there to hear come out of my mouth that I needed to get out of my head. But JK was not only doing that; she was making people feel better about their situations through it! Fascinating!! Then one day I felt compelled to comment on what she had written. Ignorant of "blog-commenting-etiquette" I rambled on a little much and failed to "Kudos" her post. The next day I had a message in my inbox from her. She thought she knew who I was. She thought she "recognized my writing"! Turns out she was wrong, but from the back and forth we had afterwards we developed a bit of a camaraderie. I hesitate to use the word "friendship" because, personally speaking, I assign a rather weighty meaning to that word. I learned a lot from her. About writing, blogging, life and myself. She introduced me to other blogs I became attached to. She even recommended my blog to some of her readers. We even did an Anonymous Karaoke Challenge (This is where someone you have never met, who's picture you have never seen, goes to a place they have never been to to do karaoke at the same time as you and later make you guess who they were by trying to remember which song they sang. Well, at least she SAID she was there. Can't really be sure. That is the best part of Anonymous Karaoke Challenge. ed.)! Then one day she was gone. But more on that later...
I wasn't particularly interested in anyone reading my posts, even though I knew some people were. When the effects of my writings started affecting other people's lives around me, people I knew and cared for, I started to be a little more mindful. Not of WHAT I wrote, but of HOW I presented it. References to those people became just initials (See! Told you she would! ed.) or nicknames. For a while I turned my blog into this imaginary cast of characters, some people I needed to talk about and some parts of my personality, that I called macsjak's Circus. That was short lived. Keeping everything straight in my head and writing in different "voices" was incredibly taxing and not very enjoyable and, quite frankly, I found it a little pretentious.
And before I knew it writing was REALLY important to me. Some days I was posting 2 or 3 a day! I answered every comment and reveled in the attention. I must admit I am a bit of an attention whore (as I imagine most blogges must be in order to be interesting enough to read) and since my career had come to an ungracious, flaming end, that aspect of my personality was no longer being satisfied elsewhere. When JK got offered a deal to write a book under an assumed name (I never found out if she did finish it. Hope you did, Knees. I hope you did...) I had fantasies of writing professionally. Maybe that book I had never started. I think it was David Sedaris that said that writing is the only artform that ANYONE can do, or at least that we all THINK we can do. And, in a sense, that is true. We all have and tell stories all the time. Most of them true, though we embellish. A writer is just someone who embellishes the whole thing. A good one makes you feel like it was real.
I got so caught up in it that I forgot that people who knew me, the RL me, the people that I wrote about and inspired me and gave me the things I would write about were still reading them. I hurt some of them pretty badly. When I realized this I cut back. Slowly at first. Then I started editing what I wrote. Things I would have had no problem writing about before were now taboo. I was scared of how what I would write would affect my day-to-day life. I lost some friends and some others became distant. Pretty soon I was focusing on writing that book. (ed. note: Due to geographical difficulties and a mild case of mental retardation the completion of said book is still a matter of conjecture. The best current approximation of its publishing is roughly 2056. Posthumously. So don't be holding your breath or anything....).
As my life continued to change away from the keyboard I wrote less and less. Pretty soon it would be weeks between posts. Comments went unanswered for the most part. I stopped reading the blogs I liked. I tried to rationalize it by saying to myself that I was simply spending more time putting my life back together. And to some extent it was true. I found a new place to live. Started a whole new career that I entered into quite by accident. Made new friends and, for the first time in a long time, was happy. At least as happy as I could allow myself to be with what I had acomplished while still carrying the baggage of my past life. And then one day the most unfortunately amazing thing happened...
Even though I had unknowingly already started down a new career path, I still looked through the classifieds and Craig's List for jobs in my old field. Somehow I thought that if I could somehow get back to where I was professionally I would also get back to where I was personally. And then one day there it was. The job. THE job! The one that I had started in that field to get. The goal I set for myself when I moved to that town. The peak of Mt. Life-Kicks-So-Much-Ass-And-I-SOOOOOOOO-Rock. Two interviews/auditions later I had the job. I was beyond stoked. It was, to steal a word from Will Ferrell, scrumptrilescent!
But the job wasn't exactly what I had imagined it would be. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. When I told people what I did for a living they looked at me with that face that people look at you with when they really want to be happy for you but can't because you remind them of why they should have stuck to their dreams instead of becoming a pharmacy tech. And I got off on that. The hours were hard and the drama plentiful. The money was not so great, so much so that I kept my old "new" job on the side. The satisfaction I felt was indescribeable, even though I was exhausted and my voice was non-existant every Monday morning (Which, quite frankly, the boss at the old "new" job, Dan, quite enjoyed. ed). More importantly, I started to write again. I needed to just to be able to process what I was dealing with, just like I had when I first started blogging.
And then, after barely a month and a half, I was let go. I was crushed. I don't know if it had anything to do with what I was writing. The company that I worked for is very "digital-media" conscious. So much so that they actually employ someone to manage their outlets and monitor their employees "social-media" interactions. Seeing how my blog, though not linked to my Facebook page, was mentioned on it I imagine that some of the things that I wrote might have had something to do with my dismissal. The reason I was given was that "there just weren't enough hours to keep everyone happy" and they "just HAD to make some cuts" to personnel. But I had already seen the writing on the wall. I wasn't fitting in. I didn't play along in the way I should have. I was already being excluded by my co-workers before it happened so I wasn't exactly surprised. And quite frankly, I wasn't good enough. That was what hurt the most. After 7+ years in the field I had to accept the fact that I wasn't built for my dream job. Just for the lower ends of it.
I went home, got on my computer, and I said goodbye to my blog. My last post. I said the things that I hadn't said but wanted to to everyone I could think of at the time, which was kind of tricky considering I was sobbing my eyes out and an emotional wreck. I said that I wouldn't be doing this again. I was done. I had a new path to follow and it didn't include writing. I got comments from some, most hoping I wouldn't go and some rather angry ones. One in particular (S, my most recent failed attempt at a relationship, due in no small part to my writing) said that I was quitting the one thing I was good at that I still did. I didn't care. I just wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
I went back to the old "new" job. I'm pretty good at it. Planning on going to school for it now. I want this to be my career now, and I don't want to settle for the lowest rung of it. So I quit the job, moved to the caribbean, where I thought I would be studying (Not happening here now. But that will probably be the subject of the NEXT blog. ed.) and, in the process, ripped away the last connections to my old life. Except for one.
Writing.
I really wanted to stop. I really, really did. I thought that leaving behind all the trapppings of my old life, all the old patterns and activities, would help me move forwards. And it does, in a way. But I would be criminally negligent to myself if I didn't admit that there is much work to be done and that the one tool that has helped the most (if any have ACTUALLY helped at all) is writing. I was reminded of this because a close friend of mine recently started a blog here as well. About a week ago. Just for the same reason as me. I hope JB doesn't think that I am trying to steal his thunder or ape his style, because that isn't my intention. I just need to say these things again. See them said.
I know, eventually, somebody will read these. I know shortly thereafter they will comment. And I will learn something. And maybe I'll help somebody learn something about themselves. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just be entertainment. I'm fine with that too. Everybody needs a little escapism and we live in an age where we have countless forms of it available to us. Reading other people's rantings can't possibly be one of the worst ones. So if you are reading this, thank you. And please bear with me.
I am planning on re-posting some of the old blogs I wrote (It has been pointed out that that is the literary equivalent of turning in last year's english homework to the professor at your new school. Feedback recieved and processed. ed.) mostly because I regularly re-read everything I've written (sort of a "perspective recap", if you will) but also because there are some that A) I want to share since they are still relevant to what I am trying to achieve here, B) I am very proud of writing and C) I am a little lazy right now; I've got a ton of things going on so I won't always feel like sitting down to write and I don't want to go too long without posting stuff or I will fall into bad patterns of inactivity.
All in all, I want to feel like I did when I first started writing again. And right now I do. I think I started this about 4 hours ago and it has definitely been therapeutic. It didn't end up exactly where I thought it would, which is not an uncommon ocurrence when I sit down to type, but it certainly has made me feel like I wanted it to. I hope this trend continues. God knows I could use a little happy in my life. I'll be looking for some blogs to read soon as well, so if anyone reading this finds themselves liking it I hope they will recommend some, even if it is their own. Can't promise you I'll become a fan of it, but I'll give it a fair shake.
Until next time post time....
P.S. JK up and closed her page one day and just plain disappeared. At the time, she was one of the top bloggers on MySpace (before it started sucking really hard). I miss her greatly. One of the things she did, which I really enjoyed and will try to incorporate here, is pose a question to the reader regarding the suject that she had just written about. So, in honor of Just Kate, here goes:
Now you, sort of, know why I started blogging. Why did you?
P.P.S. If anyone out there knows what happened to her and, if she is still writing, where I can find her, please let me know. Tell her I still don't want to see her... :-)
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