[1] False starts
Thursday, 9th January, 2025, written between 19:00 - 21:00 in the evening.
I hung a curtain up in my office space today. It’s taken me months, and it was frustrating to do, but I’m happy enough with it that the effort was worth the reward. Yesterday I did some annoying chore, too, but I don’t remember what it was.
I’ve tried to keep a diary. I tried when I was a teen, but it quickly became angry and confused, because I was angry and confused. I tore canyons into the lined white pages in black biro and then my mum read it so I stopped.
I’ve tried as an adult, but I oscillate between two states: I either have so much to say that I’ll write pages upon pages in one sitting, my hand cramping. In these rare moments, my thoughts run clear like spring water, so it’s important I jump on the opportunity and write until it’s dark and late and dinner’s ready. The entry will end ‘I have more to say - back soon’. The other, more frequent state, means every page after that point remains empty, the diary forgotten. My thoughts remain erratic electrons bouncing around the inside of my skull, refusing to be bound by order.
However, I think it’s important I try to keep a diary. This is because:
I am extremely forgetful.
I struggle to observe how I feel in both the short and long term (partially because of point one).
I like to write and should practise writing.
As I’ve said, I’ve had a couple of false starts. I’ve tried journaling, too, but my desire to gather data on most everything makes noting it down on paper feel useless. I try to strike a balance between living my experience and cataloguing it, but if I’m going to be habitualising the categorising of my feelings then it may as well be in a spreadsheet where I can observe myself over time like some sort of zoo animal, no?
I think an online blog will be a good middle ground. Plus, I tend to find writing on paper isn’t fast enough for a brain that struggles to keep a grip on thoughts. I could romanticise it; say my thoughts are like swifts, birds who dart though the air with style, landing only when absolutely required, but it’s not accurate. No, my thoughts are more like mayflies: they gestate, nymphs below the surface of the water, then emerge as adults desperate to make a connection. They die 24 hours later, whether they succeeded or not.
I’m also trying to step away from social media, while continuing to satisfy the desire I have to shout into the void. My relationship with social media has never felt on my terms, and I think it’s just not good for me. It’s regrettable fast food, the salt and the grease not worth the stomach ache that follows. I don’t involve myself in discourse - I’m a passive observer - but even so, I feel the urge to ratify my existence by talking about it, and I feel strange when I don’t. Disconnected. That feeling won’t change, I think. It’s the way a lot of people in my generation are (I was born 1995, so I’m 29, 30 this year, as of early 2025). I’ve been sharing my thoughts online since around age 12, through some medium or another. At least if I keep a blog it feels on my own terms.
I want this blog to help me achieve goals. I tend to keep goals in a dusty Google Doc and don’t do a great job of actively trying to achieve them unless they, beyond my control, wriggle aggressively to the forefront of my mind, where they suck up all the oxygen in the room. If I talk about the progress I’m making, maybe it will be easier to make that progress in the first place. In future, perhaps I’ll talk more about what those goals are, and why they’re important in the now.
Lastly, something I want to do on each post is check in on things I’m reading, listening to, watching, or doing. See that below.
Thanks for reading.
Dad’s been going on at me to read Wool for ages, and the first season of the show was ace so I’ve finally been influenced. I’m not totally sure how I feel about it so far, but it’s definitely very readable. I’m hoping the second season of the show - which I’m finding painfully boring - doesn’t mar my experience of the books too much.
