GREETINGS!!!
See, not dead! (and I know some of you suspected different.)
Ok, so this isn’t a post per se, just a quick note. I’ve watched several people visit this blog recently from my GoodReads profile and They tend to start with my navigation section on the left, hitting my Author’s Note, the Preface and Prolog, and then they start in on some recent posts. They usually find one of the last “What I’m Looking For” posts and then peter out. Mostly I blame the ridiculous length of my average posts, but I also realized (ok, someone emailed me and told me) that navigating within the larger sections is pretty much impossible.
So, I’ve added a top page for the “What I’m Looking For” series and stuck it in the Navigation Pane, and also put some line by line links in the posts. I’ll try to keep up with that as I add more.
Which brings us to the next point, i.e. adding more.
I’ll be honest, I’m struggling with this right now. Not because I don’t know what to say, or I have a hard time writing the next few lines…it’s because I don’t like what the next few things say about me. So far the sequence has largely followed events from my youth and teen years, and while I’ve really learned something from writing some of them, for the most part they don’t make a statement about who I am now. Mistakes or victories that happen when you’re a teenager (or younger) are meaningful, but they’re not necessarily indicative of who a person is as an adult.
I just finished reading an autobiography, and I was reminded of a quote a college professor once passed on: “Autobiography is when we tell the story of our life the way we want to remember it. Biography is when someone tells it like it really was.”
So far I’ve tried to be relatively true to my personal history, even when I don’t look particularly “cool” or “suave” or “with it.” Not being “with it” isn’t something that is particularly bad, or even particularly unusual; especially for teenagers and young adults. But what comes next is largely bad. And ugly. And I don’t get to hide behind the “I was just an awkward teen” defense anymore.
I once started to draft a post about all of this titled “The Lesser Angles of My Nature” that never got past paragraph one because I’m terribly disappointed in myself when I read back through it. But, I’ve started to recount my past, and what makes me “me,” and that means being true to the history, even when it’s not the Autobiography I wish I could write.
Bare with me, the next few lines are coming. Perhaps slowly, and with stops and starts, but they are coming.
[Word Count: 466]
“Cool”, “Suave”, and “With It” describe my state of being at all times. So when you do finally finish the “What I’m Looking For” series, I shall read the remainder through that filter and judge you harshly.*
I understand and encourage that.
*By which of course I mean: DUDE, if you could introduce me to a person whose Autobiography is the same as their Biography, I will pay you a BAZILLION dollars.
Really, there can be only one response to this, but I’m not sure if it’s a Chuck Norris joke, or “WINNING!!!”
I don’t know what you are so worried about, honestly. You are obviously your harshest judge and critic. No one who reads this blog is going to think any less of you for anything that you may have done in the past. And those passers by who may judge or critique you, well, the good thing is, they don’t know you! There’s no reason to feel embarrassed or ashamed about what some random person is going to think about you.
Just my thoughts.
Ok, so to your point: first, for random people I don’t “know” in the interpersonal way that knowing people used to mean, I completely agree. Second, even for the people who come here from my facebook profile or via goodreads or whatnot, again…yeah, it’s my life and I don’t REALLY care what you think of me.
Expanding on that, I think that the line between “people we know” and “people we know online” is beginning to blur. I have pretty much stopped defining that distinction for people who come here regularly. You can learn a lot about me here, and that only happens if I share a lot about myself. Do I stay awake at night worrying about what people think of me? no. Is it easy for me to write down and process things about myself that I myself do not like about my past choices and behaviors? also, no.
I appreciate your kind words, but believe me, I’m about to write down things I’m not proud of and absolutely should be ashamed of, by any way you want to define it. These aren’t things that I’m worried YOU will think poorly of, these are difficult because they’re things I feel poorly about.