15.SEPT.00
What Now?
August brought forth... nothing...and
now?
Once again, I seem to be having a really
hard time updating this journal. I wonder if I will ever get to the
point where I really make it a priority to do this each day. I think
a lot about it and I feel guilty for not doing it. Now I am back to
the place where I'm questioning again why I am even trying to do it.
Originally, I told myself I wanted to
keep a record so that my family and friends could come by and read and
keep up with whatever bits of my life interested them. Also, some part
of me wants to leave a record, no matter how small, of some sort of
MY version of my life for future generations to read if they care.
I also believed that if I wrote things
down each day I would be able to read my own thoughts with some sort
of objectivity and maybe sort things out as I go along. Having told
everyone in the entire family and all of my friends about this really
makes that somewhat impossible.
I should have thought about all of this
in advance, because-- *surprise, surprise* -- I found that a lot happens
which I really don't want to share with just everyone after all. I am
just not that anxious to risk trespassing on personal relationships
or offending, so I am not really willing to be completely open here.
How many times did I hear my mother admonish,
“Don't hang your dirty linen out in public!”?
Instead of writing about some of my deeper
feelings about people and events in my life --I just let them tumble
around in my mind, as usual, and like the laundry, once it's dry and
ready to wear again, I bring the cleaned up version out--a synthesis--the
external version of my internal life.
Having to write about ordinary life in
an interesting way is a real challenge, and ought to be a very good
exercise in improving my writing, but it still does leave a lot unsaid.
In addition to all of that, I find myself
feeling lost about exactly where I am in my life anyhow. I have been
in transition for what seems like forever with regard to my artwork,
the book business, my part time job, my old haunts on the net, my real
life friends, and even my family. It seems that I can longer define
my place, and I cannot yet find my new place. Perhaps that's part of
why I have so much difficulty writing about it all.
I have no idea what the future will bring,
but, I realize that now is all any of us have anyway. I guess my problem
is how to make now count for something.
So I made myself a promise that I would
try to write something here everyday no matter how boring, and not require
more than necessary of myself. This space is for me, and I do need to
claim that in some way. Perhaps that will help me to discover where
I fit in now.