I Learned The Truth At Seventeen

Seventeen years ago today, as the world seemed to crumble around us as our numbskull president squandered international goodwill in favor of petty revenge against a tyrant he thought dissed his dad, a tyrant who had nothing to do with said numbskull's hand-holding buddies whose country shepherded and produced the majority of thugs from the previous September, I decided I needed to express myself in a one-to-many fashion again. As I mentioned in that first blog post, I've written since I was a teenager.

When I was 13, in the days of 6¢ stamps, I had about 150 penpals. I wrote “Dream Marriage” stories (like they used to have in the bubblegum teen mag Tiger Beat) and passed them around in class, I wrote for the school paper and club newsletters. I started a diary and kept it, on and off, through the beginning of my first real courtship (which led to my first marriage), when I found someone I could chat with regularly. Even so, in my 20’s I self-published a zine (actually two, but this one was more specialized and not as seminal) and participated in lots of apas. In my 30’s I discovered e-mail and Usenet. Now in my 40's, I write the occasional comic book story (usually for a charity book) and post a lot to message boards. So I'm still doing lots of chatty in-print conversation and essays; only the medium has changed.

And in my 60's it continues to change, as does the world, because of course it must.

Now it's Facebook and Instagram, where visuals often dominate words. And of course Twitter, which is often filled with the petty over the pithy, and which helped birth (along with powerful people who realized they could demonize intelligence, science, etc. and lead the resulting stupid people by the nose to hate "fur'ners" more than the powerful people exploiting them) our current (purposefully) dysfunctional, corrupt government. And yet, the intelligent, the caring, the kind people persist and persevere, even in these times and with those modern media.

I still prefer long-form blogging. At least in theory. The older and more tired I become, the less I write. I'm putting it off, you see. Until work slows down, until the cat doesn't keep jumping on my keyboard, until I retire, until I'm able to implant a device into my brain which will serve as my memory and memoir from whatever hospice is still around when it's near my time to cross over into whatever's next, or nothing.

But it's all right. You do what you can. Nobody has expectations of me in terms of my writing other than myself, and I've given myself permission not to be too hard on myself. I do a good deal during my workweek, which is appreciated and rewarded, and that allows me to enjoy myself in my off-hours. I have a loving husband, cat, mother, brothers, other relatives from both sides of the pond, coworkers, and more friends than I probably have a right to. So I'm not as uncertain of my personal worth But I miss the art and the act of writing, of weaving my thoughts into a screen and seeing them come out like I want them to, or even like I never expected them to. I enjoy essaying. And given time and energy (which again, I give myself permission not to have much of the time), I foresee myself continuing with this here blog for at least a few more years to come.