I recently found this blog again (and my login for it) so I thought it about time to reemerge.
Hello! Welcome (back) to my blog.
This thing has existed since one night when I was nineteen and bored and saw a bunch of online friends doing it. I’ve been going back through some of those early posts, and my word, I truly thought I was saying something. Besides the cringey late-00s internet nomenclature, there was just nothing to it.
The posting cadences, and style, fascinate me the most. I think maybe I was using it kind of like Instagram (without the classic filters) and kind of like a diary (not dissimilar to how I used to post on my Windows Live Space). I think it would have been another year or two before I got Instagram (that was 2009 or 2010, I think?). I do remember in that early period, in a desperate attempt to force productivity from myself, I set a posting schedule of once every three days, come hell or high water. What resulted was a lot of "I have to post so here is a post of me saying I have to post" and little else.
There was also slew of posts featuring a photo, with the title serving as caption. The images are so old they no longer load, but the captions persist as a mystical clue to the graphic they pertain to.
Don't go searching for these posts, I am in the process of archiving them. I’ll keep them for posterity, but the world needn’t see. There's plenty of nonsensical slop on the internet (thank you AI). I needn't make the problem worse.
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I return to this post with edits and additions, in the form of further observations.
I just read through, not all, but a good handful of my existing posts. What stuck out to me, besides the above, was:
- I was always so hard on myself. Such pressure to post to a schedule and 'punish' myself when I failed. Why did we do that to ourselves back then; why was that the prevailing culture?
- I posted a lot for the sake of posting. The still-very-fresh thrill of publishing myself to the internet was my driving force. For the dopamine, probably. Sure is a fun way to post, and a terrible way to read.
- (Though at 36 I am still not diagnosed,) This blog could go a long way to convincing medical assessors of my neurodivergence. My prevailing theory is AuDHD, but until ratified by a professional I remain an enigma lol.
- The internet slang of 2007-10 aged TERRIBLY, and my use of it was also terrible.
- The 'bit' of me talking to my 'audience' must have been fun to write (otherwise why stick with it with such commitment?) but wow it is grating to read. To any readers who ever read those posts and felt condescended to, I'm sorry. I had insufficient social skills to guide my communication or writing, as a result of the insufficient guidance that defined my upbringing.
- I think the part I am saddest for, is the girl I was. I remember feeling so trapped by a lack of direction. In retrospect, I needed a lot more support than I had access to, and a lot less judgement than I was subjected to.
- The religion shit pops up every now and then. As a writer’s note, I spent the majority of my upbringing trying to be a good girl, and my parents defined that as a good ‘Christian’ girl. My twenties were largely comprised of my deprogramming from this way of thinking. This had a simplifying effect on my life - religion, and all its inherent contradictions, had a complicating effect on everything. I may expand further on this another time.
- I truly thought graphic design would be my thing. Maybe I was just excited to have a career direction for the first time in my life.
- I wrote many posts before developing the capability to self-edit. I am pleased to report I have since acquired this skill.
