1000
"have you ever noticed that silence does not really exist? when you sit in a "silent" room, there forever remains a sound that serves as just that, the absence of sound."
Those were the first words I wrote on LiveJournal a little more than six years ago. I think, if I look just at style, I've obviously come a long way since those days, when I confused unconventional structure with a unconventional style. I didn't capitalize things, I ignored apostrophes, I mixed languages, I ommitted paragraph breaks. I fancied myself a budding ee cummings, not as a future poet, but as a future captain of grammar-free writing.
Of course, back then, I also wasn't writing with an audience in mind. I didn't see LiveJournal as an interactive place, but simply a journal that I couldn't tear pages out of when I decided I didn't feel that way anymore. I didn't think that one day I would actually develop friendships through this strange "community" that developed, that I would share so much of my thoughts and ideas on here, or that I would one day get excited and anxious about trying to write a 1000th entry here, even as I readily admitted that I'm writing more for my own entertainment now than anything else?
I took suggestions for what to write here, and I think the best one was to not make it anything--just treat it like normal. But, of course, as soon as I decided to do exactly that, I began hoping for some sort of a drama to occur, suddenly negating the idea of just treating it like any other day. I suppose that means I had already decided that I wanted this to be an event, which is really stupid because that was simultaneously what I had decided was what I didn't want.
Still, I'm not going to make this long, because there's nothing of interest to talk about. At the same time, I am going to say that I think I've been taking this journal a different direction during this streak I'm on. By updating each and every day--and intentionally making the effort to do so--I've made more efforts to structure my thoughts. I've been experimenting with formats by Live-Blogging the NBA Draft and some of the World Cup of Softball and introducing the bullets, I've been posting more photographs to let images save me a few thousand words, I've been writing retrospective essays about tiny topics, and I've truly made an effort not to force anything. In a sense, I've stopped elevating this into something it's not; I've actually begun documenting my life. I am a teacher and a baseball coach, in addition to the emotional sort of person I am, but only recently did I begin to let this journal reflect that fact. As I've worked to fill every day this summer with something, I've slowly discovered that it's actually just as much fun to write about a baseball game or a particular lesson as it is to write about being heartbroken or lonely.
A few years ago, I made it a goal to begin writing a public, "secular" blog in the mold of Keith Law's The Dish. I failed miserably, ending up with a few odd entries about books, movies, sports, and soft drinks. I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't in my style, whatever that style was. Yet, now, finally, I think that I've found my groove in writing about everything that I enjoy and deem important. I know that I actually look forward to writing now, and, if there's something that excites me about 1000 entries, it's that I actually feel optimistic that I can write 1000 more.
Although I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up (and now am), I also always wanted to be a writer. I won a contest in fifth grade for a short story I wrote, and I wrote a ton of Goosebumps-esque stories back then. I enjoyed writing essays and poems all through high school, and actually, after a break, enjoyed toying with essay conventions in college, too. Now, though I'm not writing short stories or poems anymore, I still feel like I'm playing with words and enjoying the process of transforming life into text. That encourages me to keep it up, because I remember Dr. Zehnder saying that it's those that enjoy using words that succeed as writers. I'm enjoying trying to tell my story in words, transforming perceptions and thoughts into words. And, although I doubt this hobby ever turns into any "real" writing or not, I've enjoyed and valued the ride so far, and I look forward to continuing it onward.
[[Of course, I really hope that I have something exciting to write about, too!]]
Those were the first words I wrote on LiveJournal a little more than six years ago. I think, if I look just at style, I've obviously come a long way since those days, when I confused unconventional structure with a unconventional style. I didn't capitalize things, I ignored apostrophes, I mixed languages, I ommitted paragraph breaks. I fancied myself a budding ee cummings, not as a future poet, but as a future captain of grammar-free writing.
Of course, back then, I also wasn't writing with an audience in mind. I didn't see LiveJournal as an interactive place, but simply a journal that I couldn't tear pages out of when I decided I didn't feel that way anymore. I didn't think that one day I would actually develop friendships through this strange "community" that developed, that I would share so much of my thoughts and ideas on here, or that I would one day get excited and anxious about trying to write a 1000th entry here, even as I readily admitted that I'm writing more for my own entertainment now than anything else?
I took suggestions for what to write here, and I think the best one was to not make it anything--just treat it like normal. But, of course, as soon as I decided to do exactly that, I began hoping for some sort of a drama to occur, suddenly negating the idea of just treating it like any other day. I suppose that means I had already decided that I wanted this to be an event, which is really stupid because that was simultaneously what I had decided was what I didn't want.
Still, I'm not going to make this long, because there's nothing of interest to talk about. At the same time, I am going to say that I think I've been taking this journal a different direction during this streak I'm on. By updating each and every day--and intentionally making the effort to do so--I've made more efforts to structure my thoughts. I've been experimenting with formats by Live-Blogging the NBA Draft and some of the World Cup of Softball and introducing the bullets, I've been posting more photographs to let images save me a few thousand words, I've been writing retrospective essays about tiny topics, and I've truly made an effort not to force anything. In a sense, I've stopped elevating this into something it's not; I've actually begun documenting my life. I am a teacher and a baseball coach, in addition to the emotional sort of person I am, but only recently did I begin to let this journal reflect that fact. As I've worked to fill every day this summer with something, I've slowly discovered that it's actually just as much fun to write about a baseball game or a particular lesson as it is to write about being heartbroken or lonely.
A few years ago, I made it a goal to begin writing a public, "secular" blog in the mold of Keith Law's The Dish. I failed miserably, ending up with a few odd entries about books, movies, sports, and soft drinks. I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't in my style, whatever that style was. Yet, now, finally, I think that I've found my groove in writing about everything that I enjoy and deem important. I know that I actually look forward to writing now, and, if there's something that excites me about 1000 entries, it's that I actually feel optimistic that I can write 1000 more.
Although I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up (and now am), I also always wanted to be a writer. I won a contest in fifth grade for a short story I wrote, and I wrote a ton of Goosebumps-esque stories back then. I enjoyed writing essays and poems all through high school, and actually, after a break, enjoyed toying with essay conventions in college, too. Now, though I'm not writing short stories or poems anymore, I still feel like I'm playing with words and enjoying the process of transforming life into text. That encourages me to keep it up, because I remember Dr. Zehnder saying that it's those that enjoy using words that succeed as writers. I'm enjoying trying to tell my story in words, transforming perceptions and thoughts into words. And, although I doubt this hobby ever turns into any "real" writing or not, I've enjoyed and valued the ride so far, and I look forward to continuing it onward.
[[Of course, I really hope that I have something exciting to write about, too!]]