Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Introduction -or- why bother?

My favorite part about having a blog is definitely the "log". I like looking back over my own words and seeing the comments left by my friends and family. It's like having the faint essence of a conversation frozen in time. I think our ancestors had something like it that they called "letters". My first blog was on The Myspace and sadly, when I moved it over to The Blogspot, I lost a lot of the comments that were left on the earlier stories. I also like how the public venue makes me feel like I should work harder to entertain. Having that constraint really helps me boil down my stories to a manageable few pages. More importantly, the desire to entertain allows me to find the humor in situations that otherwise might only be stressful or dreary.

I think my least favorite part of having a blog is the feeling that I occasionally have to deeply censor what I write to protect the privacy of myself and my friends. Because of this I still have never written about a few of the bigger events in my life over the last few years. I also have to be very careful when I talk about "Froggie". There are four stories in this blog (so far) that are wholly or in part about my "Little Sister". It is a sad commentary on the progress of AIDS awareness that in 2008 we are still unable to speak about HIV/AIDS in a more open and accepting format. This lack of progress has had a huge and negative impact on her quality of life. As her one of her caregivers it has also made it difficult for me to find the support that I need to replenish my own stores of strength.

Initially, I started "Days like this since 1974" as a way to express my feelings about being an older graduate student. I have found that very little of that has crept into my stories even though it completely dominates my life. Perhaps I needed a place to feel like a human with value outside of my last experiment. Maybe I'm just deeply in denial. Either way, it's been nice to write some and laugh some and bitch lots (and lots!). I haven't written much in the last month. I have a few good stories to get down. One is about quitting (almost? really?) graduate school. Another one is about driving over my mom's foot and then there was the time I sat in a dirty room full of nerf-covered couches and dust bunnies while doctors tried to decide if I should be committed to the psych ward.

Well, maybe I'll just wait for something more eventful.