Posting here has the effect of taking me back to the LJ days. Mentally, not literally. Of course, but you knew that. Anyway, some minor details in the presentation, combined with prompting from friends and the whole vast community weirdness of it, well, it impelled me toward journal posts of a personal nature. I mean, I didn't share stuff that I didn't want to be made public! I'm not that stupid. I knew I was, by definition, making that information public. I don't think I was foolish to share the things I did, but there's a marked difference anyway. Well, I note the difference, but I never really pinned down the reason. Still can't.
Maybe it's just that I'm older. More grown up. Time has passed, of course, but I don't buy it. Could it have been the interaction with friends? Seems like a more plausible explanation. I was not and am not consciously worried about some sort of unforeseen social consequences for my public sharing of personal details and meandering introspection. In fact, I remember, years ago, coming across this strip...
It resonated with me then, and it still does today. I haven't been holding back because I worry what other might think. Instead, I've been holding back due to some inexplicable torpor. I didn't stop sharing out of fear or maturity or because I decided it was wise. I stopped sharing out of habit. I stopped sharing because it felt easier, because it felt like journaling was becoming a chore.
Even in the LJ days it wasn't all personal. I used that site as a sounding board for everything I wanted to say. I shared links, I posted essays of a kind, I created strange and wonderful communities, and I created a kind of narrative that bound myself and others up into something I'd not initially expected. Oh, it was probably trite or banal more than I'm remembering now, but I did produce some real content and managed to do so on a surprisingly regular basis. I did all that when the whole plan at the start was just to have a "journal." I wrote about what was on my mind, about what was going on in my life, and anyone could see it. My dad even found my LJ one time, and I remember that well. Now I have a blog no one reads. This started out as something more serious, something I was going to use to devote more time to longform content. More editorial, although not truly professional. But I think it's been forgotten by everyone except me. I could say anything and probably no one else would see it. On LJ I refused to censor myself even though people probably were going to see it (and did). Here on Blogger, I changed to a platform that was effectively private, but I couldn't be bothered to talk about things. The irony isn't lost on me.
I know I've brought it all up before. It's important to me, though. When I've reviewed my old content, it's restored memories that were seemingly lost, and it's left me wondering about the gaps. But this place, this half-assed effort, is too sparse. I earnestly want to change that. Go back through my posts for the past several years though, and see that I've expressed that sentiment before.
My last post on LJ, titled "#600" was my goodbye of sorts. Reading it again now, it's surreal. So much that's important is still the same. But strikingly, so much has changed. And I filled in some of the gaps using this blog, but I forget how and when? I worry about those details that weren't filled in? How much did I talk about my graduation from Green River? How much did I talk about my trip to Europe? They both happened later that same year! And then I moved to Seattle (temporarily) and went to the University of Washington and graduated there too and floundered in unemployment again for a time and then got a job again and, well, on and on it went. Life happened. Time progressed. So much to talk about. I think, in a way, I became paralyzed by how far behind I was. Such a stupid excuse for my lack of activity here, but it rings true. I had some ideal in my head for all the things I'd say when it came to my experiences at the University of Washington, but I didn't take the time to post about it here. It dragged on and I know I thought I'd make up for it some day with some giant retrospective post. But that became too daunting and inertia took care of the rest. So much time passed I even went and got a job there. Huh. I feel like I probably mentioned the job at some point, but did I?
I can't really undo the lost years. I can't repair this. Not fully. But let's try anyway. And instead of trying to play catch-up, let's start here. Let's start where we are.
I bought a house. There's more to it. A whole lot of things happened that led up to this. But we'll catch up on those matters or we won't. The important part here, the focus, is that I bought a house. I have moved to Auburn. That's where the house I bought is, so it seemed sensible to move there. I am calling my house "Schloss Grünfluss." It's my house, so I get to call it whatever I want. I don't mind telling you that it's actually kind of between the Green River and the White River, so I had in mind some variation on the name "Mesopotamia" but I gave up on that. No, Schloss Grünfluss it is.
The move is pretty recent. I had some plans for getting settled in, and they've hit a bit of a snag in the form of the heaviest, most prolonged snowfall that the Puget Sound area has experienced in a long time...
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