I’ve been thinking about writing recently. If I had to describe what I do in life at the moment, besides being a student, I think I would say that I am a writer. I’ve spent a large portion of the last four years of my life reading and writing about all kinds of different topics, and I’ve come to really enjoy writing just for its own sake. Sure, it’s part of my education, but it’s also sort of specific to what I’ve studied at university. No doubt, my future will involve some kind of writing, perhaps technical, perhaps not – but it will be something that will draw on my ability to put thoughts on paper.
I can’t talk about any of this without mentioning my writing here on the web. Writing on this site for me has been a very difficult process. At first, I had no idea what to write. I had no perceived audience. I had no expectations of what should be written on a web log. But a major part of the problem was that I had no firm opinions about anything. My personality was undergoing serious changes, changes I had not learned to articulate. I’m still changing, but at least now, after four years, I can speak somewhat intelligently about it.
I think my early entries on this site prove that last point. I consider them unreadable. Not only are they often completely incoherent, they say nothing (at least to me) about the person who was writing then. Well, they may say something: that the author was extremely confused about his life generally.
Often, these early entries have a strange echo (I find) of David’s humor and personality, and I don’t think it would be too far of a stretch to say that I was lifting a great deal of what and how I wrote from Dave. This is not so strange to me as it may seem to you because I admired (and still do) the natural humor and optimism that is intrinsic to Dave’s personality. However, I am not Dave. Thus, my early writings here are embarrassing to me because they are both immature and inauthentic (to some degree), two qualities I absolutely detest. Ironically enough, my then-girlfriend Katie mentioned that she didn’t like to read my web entries “because they just weren’t me”. That conversation stayed with me all this time because when we first had it I had no idea what she meant. Looking back though, I know now that she was right.
Later entries show me developing some ability to write seriously, to write more than a daily complaint about school or work. However, the instability, the immaturity is all still there. This web space has always been a forum for me to mix my interests in poetry, fiction, comedy, drama, journaling, and academic writing, and my mid college entries I think reflect those influences even if they are often ill-conceived.
Hurricane Katrina marks a distinct break for my writing here. I don’t think there’s been enough distance between that event and now for me to really articulate what happened, but something very real changed about how I approached this website. I began writing about topics I actually was thinking about at the time, things that meant more to me than the day to day happenings of class and the routine (or lack thereof) of college life. My journal entires became more open and often in these later entries I wear my heart (perhaps unwisely) on my sleeve.
Strangely though, I realized that though this kind of openness was more risky that just goofing around here, it was also more rewarding. In some ways, the more controversial the writing, the more rewarding it becomes, if for no other reason than because I was not afraid to take a stand about something. That’s one very valuable lesson I’ve learned writing here: people need to have something to say, even if it means disagreeing with or upsetting the status quo.
Journaling here provided me with an outlet to explore all kinds of non-technical writing, the kind of thing I’ve been belabored with in school. This web space gave me the opportunity to discover the genre form I’m now most interested in exploring: the short essay. The best kinds of short essays begin with a kind of question and at the end tell you something that you didn’t know before. Often, both the writer and reader discover something and it’s that kind of more formal exploration of ideas that I’m now much more interested in devoting my free-writing time too.
However, this log has also been kind of a journal for me – running on near four years – the longest I’ve ever journaled about anything. I know I will continue to journal, likely using my computer, in the future. It’s a good habit.
What I’m leading up to here is the fact that I’m going to slowly be phasing myself out of the “blog” portion of this website over the next six months. There’s a bunch of reasons for this and I’ll try and explain a few of the most important.
First, and perhaps the most obvious one, is that I wanted this blog to document my college years and well, my college years (as an undergraduate) are almost done. In May, my life is going to change direction radically. I’m not sure where things are going to go yet. But it’s going to be a new start and I feel like my “blog” presence here will be a thing of the past.
Second, as I mentioned previously, I’m less interested in writing or reading things in a “weblog” format. I want to continue to write, but in a way that’s more structured. I don’t see myself doing that if I continue on here.
Third, I’d like to cut down on my time on the net generally. This may seem strange, but there are other things I’d rather be doing (playing, being outdoors, reading real books especially) that my habitual internet use cuts into. I find I’m much more discriminating about what I want to do on the web these days and more and more that involves gathering very specific information and moving on with life. Despite how interesting reading the whole internet has been, I feel like I’m at the point of diminishing returns.
Really all these reasons reflect my changing priorities. I hope to still contribute to this site in others ways: with music, maybe some art and pictures, and perhaps even update the somewhat defunct writing section. As long as Dave will have me, I’ll be glad to contribute.
Someday soon, I hope to have my own space on the web, a place where I can put things together the way I’m interested in doing nowadays. Perhaps, I’ll even return to blogging, but for now I feel like I need to move on, to do something different.
I’ll still be posting here, probably once or twice a month, through May, just to complete my college plan. After that, I’ll be completely phased out of this portion of the website.
No matter what I think about it, the “web log” is here to stay and is becoming more and more important to the way people interact with one another. This has been an enjoyable, albeit difficult, experience for me, and I know its going to stick around in the future should I want to return to it.
