Looking Back, Looking Forward

If you've known me for any reasonable amount of time, the very first thought running through your mind right now must be, "...it's back?!"

I should explain myself. Yes, I know a very long time ago -- back in the old days of Xanga (that was great, wasn't it?) -- I had another blog, into which I post random observations and lengthy missives and pithy quotes and song lyrics and other such stuff. And for a while, it was great and glorious.

I stopped after little more than a year for a number of reasons:

1) I realized that the only people reading it were people I talked to regularly, so it made more sense to share my observations, missives, quotes, lyrics, etc. with them personally.

2) I grew weary of the personal conflict I was having with blogging in general. While it ends up being a very personal thing, at the end of the day, you're really writing for an audience. I found myself caught between making it strictly personal and using it as something more audience-driven, and ultimately decided it wasn't working as either so it wouldn't work at all.

3) I discovered that there was a small army of people who were only keeping up with me and my happenings through my postings, and that was a bit insulting. I figured if I stopped, it would force the people who really cared to actually keep in touch with me, while also weeding away the trolls who were just going through the motions.

To a degree, all three of these reasons were justified in the period after I abruptly cut Xanga off. Everything I'd hoped to accomplish when I stopped blogging played out to perfection.

Which brings me back to the original question: why am I back?

Quite frankly, because issue #2 really doesn't matter much to me anymore. I've determined that I can say and do whatever I want in my own little corner of the Internet, and not give a damn what anyone thinks or says. There's little to no chance that anyone I don't really know is going to look at this -- and if that were to happen, I feel I'd be okay with adjusting accordingly -- so basically, I'll do what I want.

Plus, over the past couple years, I've begun to notice a marked downfall in my creative output, both in my creative writing and in my songwriting. The juices just haven't been flowing like they used to, and even when I get a good idea, it just doesn't usually happen like it did in the old days. That frustrates the hell out of me. I wrote almost 100 pages last semester, and only 15 of those pages were anything remotely creative. And while I'm insanely proud of all the work I did -- I had the best semester grade-wise to date -- it was my Kiddie Lit short story that was the most enjoyable part of my semester. I had a blast coming up with the idea and writing it, and it reminded me (in the same way the story I wrote for my satire class freshman year reminded me) how much I love writing stories. I love the language, I love the style, and I love the journey -- even when I don't have a starting point, or even the remotest idea of where it's going.

So maybe it's just been Princeton that's caused my creative lapses. If that's true, then I can't let that happen to me anymore. Every writing manual ever written says the best way to sharpen your talents is to keep reading and to keep writing. I'm already reading close to 2000 pages a semester per class, so now it's time to work on that other part.

I can't promise everything that ends up here will be polished or even fun to read. I can't promise that my ranting will go anywhere, that any ideas I come up with will ever come to fruition, or that anything I write here will make any sense. But I'm missing out on what I loved most about writing, and I've had enough.

So damn it, I'm going to write.