For a few years in college, I wrote a blog on Xanga. As I recall, I stopped blogging because the password recovery email was a school-based email address, and once you graduate from school, they delete your email address. I duly forgot my password, and that was that. College kids everywhere, take note: your school email address, which you probably switched to in order to avoid using "b8rsk8r4evRR@yahoo.com" when emailing professors, will be unceremoniously ripped from your life shortly after graduation. (Aware of this, of course, I then completely ignored my graduate school email account. Turns out that's not a great idea, either.)
Anyway, after the blog's inane demise, I wrote in journals. Then I wrote poetry. Then I stopped writing altogether.
And then, one evening on the porch as an adult with a wife and a kid, I decided to look up the old Xanga site. It's gone, of course, but the good old Wayback machine saved a lot of entries from about June 2006 up until the end in June 2007.
I like what I wrote. I'm sad that a lot of it is gone. I had some dumb moments, and more than one post was really more blather than thought, but the quality was actually a fair deal better than I cynically remembered of myself. I had a pang of regret, knowing that there's really probably no way to get back those entries that are gone now--and then a pause.
I'm not dead, or whatever. Sure, I've quit writing, and it will likely take some time before I write well again. But I think it's time I quit quitting. Writing was a significant part of my life, and I think its absurd that I've stopped. I still do stuff, and I can write about it.
So there, foolishly-limited Wayback machine. So. There. I'm going to create more internet with which to burden you. Deal with it.
I wrote from the age of 10 to 18. Short stories, poetry, journals, and I believe a novel and a half. I was certain that I wanted to be a writer. Then I started studying English and Comp Lit and writing magically trickled away from my life, retreated patiently until I was ready to take it up again at the tender age of 30. I didn't miss it while it was gone, I didn't wonder what had happened to my writerly sensibilities. I just lived. And when it returned, not only did it help me make it through a hard time, it also led me to the man who is now my soulmate.
ReplyDeleteI was lucky to have my pre-18 writings in notebooks so they were always within reach. Whatever I blog now, I keep in a separate file on my laptop. Although, if the Interwebs breaks down, that probably means the planet has broken down and we need to start anew. I follow more than a few exceptional people on Blogger but it always makes me extra happy to find writers. So, yes, there is no need for quitting. I look forward to reading.