Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
For no apparent reason, today I suddenly got the urge to keep a diary. Seeing as I have this LiveJournal account lying around which thus far contains one post about alcoholism and several posts about various money panics over the last year and half, it seems the perfect opportunity to kill two problems -- first, my LiveJournal account disturbingly containing nothing but wine and NatWest, and second, my needing somewhere to write a diary -- with one, teenage-angsty regressive stone.
The last time I kept a diary for any length of time was around the age of 14. At the time I was apparently so concerned at the thought of someone reading the dull goings-on of my life that I invented my own phonetic alphabet in which to write it. Read from that what you will. Anyway, I rather like the polar opposite of just broadcasting this stuff publicly and self-indulgently, so I'm here.
It's the self-indulgence that bothers me, really, rather than the public thing. The appalling egotism of millions of nobodies publishing mundane online diaries is such an old internet phenomenon that commenting about the phenomenon has itself become old hat. 'So why not embrace that in a post-ironic way by doing it on LiveJournal?', I hear you ask. Why not indeed.
Anyway, I guess all that verbiage is my way of apologising for writing about this new endeavour of mine as if it's some incredible new thing, when it's very much a well-trodden path, not new at all. But it's a new thing for me, you know? So fuck you, haters.
(As you may be noticing, those of you who don't yet know me so well yet, I am cripplingly self-conscious.)
So, look, why am I doing this? Like a piece of paper folded in two, the reasons are two-fold.
First, my memory is increasingly atrocious. I don't just mean, 'God, what did I have for dinner last week?' stuff, I'm talking about recall of semi-big happenings and life changes. For instance, I have this part-time job now, playing the organ at my old school a couple of times a week. But I have absolutely no recollection of what led to me getting the job, or how I got it, or why I started doing it. All I know is that I currently do this job. I go to it every week. It's a bit weird. So I'm hoping that writing some stuff down might allow my future self access to my past. Because, heaven knows, I do like to reminisce. (About job interviews, evidently.)
Second, despite several big changes in the last year (like moving out into my own place, and getting a new job... wait, two new jobs), I still have this big looming cloud of 'personal development and progress I should be making' looming over my psyche in a looming way. I'd call it 'standing still', except that that almost implies some kind of purpose, like somebody standing still so as not to disturb the delicate flowers they are observing out of sheer interest and joy at life. No, this feels much more like a 'fallen asleep' sort of situation. So maybe if I set myself the challenge of having some interesting to write about in a diary-like form each day, it will force me into making some interesting things happen. Who knows? You may just get three hundred posts about chocolate. It's an experiment.
Today, then. I woke up at 2pm, went to the shops, ate some stuff, tidied up my computer, went to bed early and couldn't sleep.
This is the standard we have to beat, folks. Go Go Gadget Tomorrow!
The last time I kept a diary for any length of time was around the age of 14. At the time I was apparently so concerned at the thought of someone reading the dull goings-on of my life that I invented my own phonetic alphabet in which to write it. Read from that what you will. Anyway, I rather like the polar opposite of just broadcasting this stuff publicly and self-indulgently, so I'm here.
It's the self-indulgence that bothers me, really, rather than the public thing. The appalling egotism of millions of nobodies publishing mundane online diaries is such an old internet phenomenon that commenting about the phenomenon has itself become old hat. 'So why not embrace that in a post-ironic way by doing it on LiveJournal?', I hear you ask. Why not indeed.
Anyway, I guess all that verbiage is my way of apologising for writing about this new endeavour of mine as if it's some incredible new thing, when it's very much a well-trodden path, not new at all. But it's a new thing for me, you know? So fuck you, haters.
(As you may be noticing, those of you who don't yet know me so well yet, I am cripplingly self-conscious.)
So, look, why am I doing this? Like a piece of paper folded in two, the reasons are two-fold.
First, my memory is increasingly atrocious. I don't just mean, 'God, what did I have for dinner last week?' stuff, I'm talking about recall of semi-big happenings and life changes. For instance, I have this part-time job now, playing the organ at my old school a couple of times a week. But I have absolutely no recollection of what led to me getting the job, or how I got it, or why I started doing it. All I know is that I currently do this job. I go to it every week. It's a bit weird. So I'm hoping that writing some stuff down might allow my future self access to my past. Because, heaven knows, I do like to reminisce. (About job interviews, evidently.)
Second, despite several big changes in the last year (like moving out into my own place, and getting a new job... wait, two new jobs), I still have this big looming cloud of 'personal development and progress I should be making' looming over my psyche in a looming way. I'd call it 'standing still', except that that almost implies some kind of purpose, like somebody standing still so as not to disturb the delicate flowers they are observing out of sheer interest and joy at life. No, this feels much more like a 'fallen asleep' sort of situation. So maybe if I set myself the challenge of having some interesting to write about in a diary-like form each day, it will force me into making some interesting things happen. Who knows? You may just get three hundred posts about chocolate. It's an experiment.
Today, then. I woke up at 2pm, went to the shops, ate some stuff, tidied up my computer, went to bed early and couldn't sleep.
This is the standard we have to beat, folks. Go Go Gadget Tomorrow!