365 x 2 +3

There's nothing like the forced reflection brought about by seemingly symbolic days... birthdays, new years, anniversaries, and, of course, blogoversaries!

Yep, 2 years ago (minus, oh, say 3 days... I should start marking this in my day planner), ...and hijinks ensued was born. Apparently, after having just finished the maddest half year in my life, I was overwhelmed by a sudden influx of spare time, and decided to start jotting down my observations about the world in a little more systematic of a fashion.

Honestly, I am a little surprised I didn't think to start blogging earlier. My friend's mother, upon meeting me for the first time, said I was an observer, noticing everything around me to a greater degree than people realized. I was always constructing little anecdotes in my head in far too much detail. Once they were constructed, I didn't know what to do with them.

When I was 10, my literary masterpiece, Dognapped, placed in a city-wide children's writing contest. At 13, I wrote novellas about girl detectives and feisty orphans. At 15, I wrote melodramatic poetry. And at 18, I stopped writing for me, and started writing for grades. At 22, my mother and I went across Canada, and I sent out a number of update emails including my silly observations about our travels. These emails were an unexpected hit, with people printing them out to read them to others, and even my boss telling me how much he'd enjoyed them. I felt a burst of pride, knowing that I still had that writer's spark in me, but also a bit of helplessness. Great, I can still write, but what purpose does a talent for witty emails about teaching Brazilians about hockey and my mother's failed attempts to speak French serve?

At 25, I started blogging. A summer earlier, I had met a blue-eyed fellow at a concert, a fellow who helped me see that focusing on one foot in front of the other so you can ignore everything else tumbling down alongside you is not a good way to live. One night, after I'd found out of the death of a friend, he insisted on coming out to the suburbs to take me for gelato. That night, he told me, in perhaps less direct terms, that I didn't need to live under the weight of someone else's beer bottles. He also told me that he had a blog. That night, I found these words of his, and spend hours reading them. He'd even written about me. Although his writing tapered off soon afterwards, he was the one that told me, with all the thoughts bolting through my mind, I may want to think about blogging.

And, on January 12th 2006, I took his advice.

So, here I am, 2 years later. Strangely enough, despite my fears otherwise, my brain has yet to run dry. I still get sudden burst of inspiration in various locales, jot down descriptions on scrap paper or in my phone, run through lines I don't want to forget over and over again in my head. Blogging is almost a seamless part of my life now.

Even more shocking, perhaps, is that I have managed (I seriously did just knock on wood... well, pressboard, really) to write anonymously over all this time. Sure, there have been a few close calls, like friends tapping me on the shoulder unexpectedly (resulting in lightening fast window minimization), blogs popping up in search histories when someone uses my computer, and on the spot lies about people I have met or who are on my Facebook. Still, though, my obsessive site meter usage reveals only one or two other readers from my general vicinity, and despite my occasional fears that it is my boss or an ex, it is actually surprising I don't have more random readers from a city of several million.

Does my anonymity really matter all that much? Probably not. My world wouldn't collapse if the link got sent about. Sure, a few people would probably be stung by my keeping this large part of my life secret. There are a few other people who may smart from particular entries. Most would probably giggle about the idea of documenting one's life over the internet. But, really, it is more about the freedom and having this wonderful little side identity than hiding from one person in particular. I've been invested in keeping these words separate from my day-to-day life for two years now-- it just doesn't feel right to let that go. Even if I do get the occasional yearning to send someone a specific entry (though I have no idea how to explain why I am writing about such things), or I wish I could share some of my piece in a more public forum and truly claim them as my own, not the work of some little avatar with a silly name.

Over the years, what has blogging done for me? It has put me back in touch with myself, after years of unknowingly just going through the motions. It has helped me pay better attention-- to my thoughts, to the beauty around me, to people's motivations. It is amazing how much more you watch when the idea to write about it occurs to you. It has made me feel like a writer again, a feeling I thought I had lost years back with the entrance into real life adulthood. And I actually feel good at it. It has brought some amazing people into my life, people who, whether through emails or even a single sentence in a comment, I sometimes feel may know me better than the people who see real-life me on a regular basis.

So, thank you to all of you for making me feel good at this, like my words may be a little important or meaningful. And thank you, little red blog, for helping me feel like me again.