Journal Archives
Why do I do this? Why do I keep an online journal? I've asked and answered many times in entries but I have to admit that it probably never came out quite right. The fact of the matter is that I've kept a journal for a significant portion of my relatively short life. Journalling is a part of me that I hope never goes away.
My first journalling experience came in third grade. My third grade teacher required us to keep a daily journal. It was an exercise in free writing as we could write whatever we wanted. She may or may not have graded us on grammar but I don't remember. I do remember writing about the most private issues of my young life. I was "in love" with a girl in my class and wrote about her every day. Therefore, my first journal ever was a public journal about private things.
My fourth grade teacher had other things for us to do so the journalling experience picked back up in the fifth grade. This was a very different kind of journal. The teacher assigned us daily topics that we had to write about. The journals were very much graded. In this, the first year of my long slow academic burnout, I ended up not doing my journal for a major part of the fourth quarter. The punishment was a failing grade and an assignment to do the work all at once. The teacher wrote that I would have gotten an "A" for that work and I'm not sure if this was a trick. I don't think my grade in that class was low enough to reflect that failing grade.
I went five years without any significant journalling from the sixth grade to my junior year of high school. After I broke up with my first ever serious girlfriend, I picked the habit right back up except I moved from paper to computer. This journal was purely cathartic and reads like a road map of adolescent problems. I was unpopular, unattractive to the girls, unathletic and didn't do well enough in school to please my family.
Suicide was a constant thread in this journal. I don't believe that I ever mentioned it by name out of fear of my father reading it but it was always there. Usually, I was also hung up on some girl or another and those hangups lasted longer than most. This journal continued almost daily until I met the woman I'd eventually marry. Then, I was too busy to write.
That journal took a long time to officially die. I had plenty to write about and plenty of time to write but I had a new dilemma. I was living with Melissa and she was usually part of what I wanted to write. She knew about the journal, I didn't want her to be insulted by anything I wrote and I didn't want her to feel I was hiding anything from her. Therefore, that journal died.
I always felt like I was on the verge of picking the habit back up for the next three years or so but I never did. My life was running at about three times the speed I felt I could handle it. I worked, wrote a novel and played online games night and day. As young as I was, I thought that I could handle the pace forever.
The need for brain surgery hit the emergency brake on my life. I was constantly prostrated with either pain or boredom so all those other things had to go. I still spent a lot of time online on IRC where I met someone that dared me to find her name online. I did some shockingly easy tracing and found her web page. It was the first online journal I'd ever seen.
This was in 2000 so you can see just how far behind the times I was. When this journal went down, I checked out the Battered Black Book on my IRC friend's recommendation. I am weird about my approach to the journals of others in that I start at the beginning and then work my way through all the archives.
The bug bit me and I felt the urge to start journalling again. It took me three months of offline work to gather the courage to put "Blahthings" online. I figured that no one would pay any attention to me if I just had a first entry and nothing else. I put the journal up and nothing happened for a long time. My wife was my only reader.
So, what is "Blahthings" all about? The name is a combination of two things. One is a personal joke involving the frequent use of the word "blah." The second is sort of a joke from the movie, "The Princess Bride." Miracle Max listened to Wesley moan after he used the bellows and argued that he moaned, "to blathe." Max defined blathe as "to bluff" and hilarity resulted but I took it as short for the word "blather."
"Blahthings" is my excuse to blather to an audience about anything I want. Sometimes, it will resemble my high school journal and will be purely about my life. Sometimes, it will more closely resemble my fifth grade journal and emphasize essays about important things.
Sometimes, I'll be sharing a little of what it's like to live in my shoes and sometimes I'll be trying to persuade you. Usually, it will be a little of both. I try not to spend the whole time bitching and moaning because my life isn't really all that bad. When I do want you to understand something unpleasant, I won't sugarcoat it but I will go for laughs. After all, you know the expression about a spoonful of sugar1.
The hardest part of all this to explain is why I decided to put my journal online instead of limiting it to personal use. Why would I be such an exhibitionist that I want to be read? That was the first real change in my writing.
When I was in the third grade, I wanted to be an inventor or a fireman depending on the day. In high school, my greatest ambition was to be dead so that didn't provide a lot of motivation. When I decided that I wanted to live (and that I'd be a bad inventor or fireman), I picked something new. I wanted to be a writer.
You're probably thinking that this explains a lot about my novel but little about why I'd keep an online journal. Like most things in my life, it can be traced to something I saw on an episode of "MASH." There is an episode where a relatively new nurse is killed when she accidentally strays into the minefield.
No one knew her very well so Father Mulcahey went through her personal belongings and found a diary. That diary revealed a secret crush she had on Hawkeye Pierce. Hawkeye is allowed to read the diary so that he could have something to say for a eulogy. As he read this, he learned just how alike they really were. He learned that he lost out on a chance to get to know a wonderful person.
I hold a belief that all human beings have more in common than they have against each other. There are probably exceptions to the rule for murderers and all but maybe not. After all, we like to ask ourselves why they did it. Ceej wrote the first online journal that I read and we have very little in common. We disagree on a number of social and political issues, she's a computer geek while I'm a writing geek and I learned to appreciate her points of view. Before reading her journal, I would never have considered giving a damn about her. Now I do and I hope you learn to give a damn about me here.