This is an experiment

I'm awful at being consistent. Everything for me is a series of time trials. I enjoy and revel in my ability to complete a task for as long as anyone is watching me actively do it. So starting a blog feels like one of those things I'm going to forget about.

I have all these incredibly vivid memories from my childhood of receiving tons of journals from my aunts and uncles as that last ditch effort to buy me SOMETHING as a gift, usually with the tacked on comment of, "You've always liked to write!" A genuine attempt at connection, while dismissing the fact that I probably just wanted a doll. I fucking loved dolls. But I would always get it into my head that here, this is your journal, your little diary, and you are going to write in it all the time and it is going to be just...groundbreaking. I found many of these half formed time capsules during the process of moving out my parent's house a year ago. The ones from the late nineties are filled with the kind of gravity only children can possibly have while writing in a diary. "Today Tabitha was so mean to me in math. We wore the same shirt. Everyone laughed."

I was a dismal 4th grader. And my handwriting hasn't improved AT ALL. (Samples to follow)

The ones from high school read like an episode of something that would be featured on the CW. All frenetic emotion. I was human Id, in the way that everyone who was ever a teenage always is. Everything was tragic, everything was wonderful, and no one was ever going to know what it felt like to be me. Except for Sylvia Plath, possibly. What I'm trying to say is, I was hilarious.

The one tie that binds these strata of my youth is the fact that every single one begins the same way. I felt it incredibly necessary to speak to each of these journals, as though sitting down with Barbara Walters, for the story of my life. "Dear Diary, I know we've just met, but I feel you should know who I am before we begin." ACTUAL QUOTE. I would then labor over every pertinent detail of my life to that point, a sort of "Previously on Lost..." jump cut into my first entry. How could I possibly tell you what happened today! You have no context! Silly, diary! I was a strange kid.

I have to resist that urge so very hard right now, to not give some sweeping introduction to my life. Because somehow I've trained my brain to assume that's what diaries/journals/blogs/bathroom stalls are for. But where's the mystery in that? I'm going to just assume this blog is not unlike evenings in my house when friends are over. I'm going to think of a story and share it. With context, without, and usually nonlinear.

Also, thank God this is the only time I have to write a first post, because it is super awkward.