Last night was the first night that I’m willing to qualify as proper Miami winter (yes, yes, the 21st is still a few days off), which is to say that driving home late at night with the windows down, in t-shirt and jeans, I felt a shiver or two from the breeze.
I hate not having real seasons, even though I also do appreciate some things about the temperate climate. But, well, I’ll enjoy what I get. Wear a sweater or two.
I’ve found myself really busy over the last few months, which makes things go more smoothly for me, I think. I have less to say on this forum because I’m saying it in others. I’m working, and exercising, and spending time with friends and family and romantic partner, and all of this together conspires to bleed me of the meagre stories I have, until I’m not sure what to write down here when I try to journal.
My life’s grown very comfortable, such that the excitement is minute and perhaps uninteresting. I haven’t been in the mood, I guess, to write about the wonderful meal I made, or ate; the adventure I went on this weekend. I suppose I’ve been unable to write fiction, or poetry even, as well. I think I’ve written six poems in the past six months, which in fact is an improvement upon the preceding year, but is by far a decrease from years before.
I don’t think I feel the drive less, exactly. It’s more of a motivation issue. Always in the past, there’s been some element of conclusion—a poem to submit to the review, or send to a friend; a story to submit to my workshop. Without any driving force, the ideas well up and then die down. That was what was so brilliant about LiveJournal and the other journalling platforms that were abounded in the early/mid 2000s: your friends provided support, encouragement. Just having twenty “friends” on xanga or LiveJournal meant that you could imagine that there were twenty people awaiting your next update.
Tumblr provides that as well, but I think in an age where facebook already records the minutiae of your life, tumblr and the blogging platforms that remain have veered away from self-observation and towards more specific blogs. (The primary exception to this seems to be travelogs.) How many people still write blogs about their lives? Facebook is already recording your life as you live it. (And now, with the new timeline feature, you can go back and browse through the past. It’s a strange concept that I’m sure better essayists than I will cover.)
When I was perhaps a senior in high school, I set about writing a mini-autobiography, chronicling the stories of myself. When I first heard about the timeline idea, I thought of it as an opportunity for everyone to do that, to write an autobiography. I’m curious to see what people will do with it, to see who will create a false identity, who invent a past. Who will be the first artist to publish a character on facebook, whose story we can read? When we can detail our lives with images and video and interactions, map our paths and locate each moment in time, is a personal journal of interest?
As it is, I’ve veered very much towards anecdote-tinged essay on this forum in recent time, coupled with travelog and interjections of films. My earliest journal posts on the web are almost postmodern in style, spastic and jumbled. These days, I use paragraphs.
I don’t know where we’re going, this space and I. I’m sure I’ll keep writing. I hope the subjects continue to blossom.
