Eighteen Hundred, and counting

I've been blogging for about ten years now, online, publicly.  When I first started, it was with AOL Journals {jLand}.  Journalling was certainly not new to me, but doing so online was a rather novel move for me.  I made the decision from the start that it would be open to the public.

There are several reasons for that.  I think transparency, honesty, sincerity are good things and very much preferred.  One thing that I noticed has worked well for me, in life, not just online, is that when I am open and not secretive, I have empowered myself and robbed others with harsh intentions of the ability to discover something hidden about me and then wield that knowledge over me.  So in many ways, my life is an open book.

In maintaining a public blog, from time to time, I would prune entries.  Not because I thought that I wanted to keep this to myself or because I thought better of posting this or that.  But because perhaps the pictures were no longer available when I'd changed format from AOL/ftp to Blogger/blogspot, and the picture might have been the point of that particular post.  Or because I felt that a post no longer added to the body of my blog, but was a fluffy inconsequential piece that didn't really carry the weight of who I am, at any given time.  Most of those trimmed posts are from the very early years, when I'd made a commitment to blog daily; in fact the original journal over in AOL was "Debra's Daily Dose".

Over the years, I've left gaps where I've written nothing; mostly because life was tremendously hectic during those times.  Last year, I'd not blogged very often at all; my mother was dying and we did not realize it at the time.  I was eeking every minute I could with her, because I knew something was not right, even if I didn't know how very short time was.  Things were changing so rapidly, that I was exhausted with the idea of trying to summarize anything, to update my blog was one of the furthest things from my mind of what I must do, what I wanted to do.

Now that I've 1,800 entries, I'm thinking it might be time for me to revisit some of my old posts.  Prune out the trite, reacquaint myself with whom I was, how I've changed over the years, and reaffirm who I am now, who I might be tomorrow.  I expect there will be minimal trimming required, as I've been fairly authentic I think.

Within these pages, I've been tentative, ecstatic, confused, confident, angry, loving, celebratory, grief wracked, witty, silly, sharp, dull, manic, deadened, and oh so much more.  I've railed against injustice, advised, shared, coasted, and whined.  I've shown great joy and heartrending plunges.  I've spouted and sputtered.  I've known great love, horrible betrayal, waxed and waned about these ideas and those.  I think it would be accurate to say that I've not shied from very much of anything in the last ten years.

I've maintained others' confidences and attempted to keep a few guiding principles in mind, such as to only share what is mine to share; to realize that once it's out there, it is out there; and to write as I think, for writing is a form of thinking, for me.

While I'm reviewing my own writing over the years, I will probably repost certain entries, or excerpts with current commentary.  I hope that you'll  find some of the material worthy of your interest and consideration.  And I'm pretty sure you might chuckle a time or two.  At least, I hope so.  For life is full of surprises, humor, pain, joy, doubt, sadness, and lessons.  Feel free to comment, or not, up to you!