Just doing it

My forays into blogging were always mediocre at best. As a teen I kept up with xanga, livejournal, and even a gaudy webpage I used to show off the few bits of code I knew. All of them, of course, were subject to my adolescent melodrama and I promptly deleted them all as soon as I was old enough to feel embarrassed about it. (As an adult I kind of wish I could look back at them.)

In the past few years I made a blog for my parents to get updates on my study abroad in Japan, attempted a "beauty blog," and for a short while co-ran a blog with my best friend. I started on a photography blog but I never published it. Nothing lasted, life got in the way, blah blah blah. I always felt this tug to try again. I came of age in an era of the internet when we shouted into the void, hiding behind avatars and silly graphics. The internet was this overflowing record of joys and heartbreaks, of teenage angst and shared secrets. For years, many of my internet friends never saw my face, and yet they knew my intimate feelings better than most people in real life.

After all my failed attempts at starting (and keeping) a blog, I felt overwhelmed by how saturated the blogging sphere seemed. I didn't have a brand. I didn't have a theme. My life is decidedly un-shiny. But I'm not waxing poetic about "how things used to be." All of the negative feelings and self-doubt allowed me to drift away from why I really felt drawn to blogging in the first place, and to focus on all the elements that provided me an excuse from just doing it. I don't need all those things, and not because being a brand or having a theme is bad, but because I'm not trying to "be" anything. I'm just trying. I'm a person going through a weird time. I'm a person who likes to talk about their feelings on the internet.

So thanks for reading, double thanks if you found this at all interesting, and triple thanks if you think you might stick around to read some more. I'm finally just doing it.




Kate