It's been so long since...

I've done any blogging that I forgot my password!

But today I was struck by the urge to blog. I’m not sure where this comes from, or where it goes when my blogging activity is silent but I try not to question these things too much. I blog just for me. It helps me process my thoughts, but the side effect is often a blatant self centeredness which makes it hard for me to ever read what I have written. Maybe I am like the two year old with a fist full of finger paint, the actual end product is only incidental to the fun of smearing the creamy, cool paint over a clean white canvas. I love the feel of the words as they take shape on the page as much as I loved the feel of the aromatic slime squishing between my fingers. The pictures I create in my posts are probably very comparable to the finger painted masterpieces I made in preschool. But I feel neither inhibited nor advantaged by personal skill level because from my perspective, none of this matters. I do not long for awards. I don’t consider myself a formal or polished “writer”. I have no aspirations of landing a regular column in the New Yorker. I don’t care if I end with a preposition. I don’t care if my page is littered with sentence fragments. I don’t even care if I have an audience. May I reiterate? I blog for me. It is an entirely selfish endeavor. But if this were true, why blog at all? Why not just keep a journal? Why open up the possibility for an audience? Because when I have a journal, I always destroy what I’ve written. I come to hate it that much. I have had journals before, pages and pages of them and with one spontaneous strike of the key, it is all gone. Before the computer, I’ve been known to burn part or all of a journal. I don’t yet understand why I do this. It’s a little like unexpectedly hearing a recording of my own voice, or accidentally walking in front of a mirror in a department store before recognizing my own reflection. Those first few moments before my brain can process its own shell exposes my naked and objective truth. Truth told by how I hold myself, my posture, facial features and expressions. Do I see a happy and confident woman, the woman I aspire to be? It’s a brief glimpse of me from a stranger’s eyes. I have to admit, my usual response is tinged with repulsion. When I later read what I’ve written, I get a similar reaction. What exactly is behind this is still outside of my full understanding. Maybe it’s my attempt to deny, erase or rewrite history. Maybe it’s the blatant self centeredness that I’m trying to destroy, both the tangible and intangible forms. Maybe it represents something inside of me that I do not accept. It's not usually the form that I abhore, but the message. However, when I blog, it nearly always stays put because in theory once it’s “out there” it becomes shared information. I let it stay because I feel obligated to allow it and maybe eventually to face it. It's the mere suggestion of "the other" in this whole process that changes the rules. I don't write for "the other" and in fact I try to ignore the other as much as possible (probably breaking some cardinal rules of Writing 101). But without you, whatever I write is as good as gone.