I was reminded today of how awesome blogs sometimes are, and how awesome it can be to keep a blog. If you know me (or have ever read my wayback archives at Diaryland... or my waaaay wayback archives, from before the word blog existed [brag brag], which probably aren't even reachable anymore, and that's probably a good thing) you know that I understood that possibly too well at one point, recent evidence on this site to the contrary. Spewing words onto the internet used to keep me sane, before I wrote for a living. Those stupid, silly words earned me the hugest compliment of my life from one of my all time heroes, and part of it was about how I "couldn't help but write." It was true. It probably still is, except that I wouldn't have the chance to know anymore since writing is no longer optional.
As soon as I made the transition into work writing, I remember someone wrote to me to say I probably wouldn't write for fun anymore and he was bummed about that, and I was like "Pssh, whatever" but he was right.
Especially these days, when I am churning out content (blog entries, actually) every day, the last thing I want to do is write more. I don't even want to be in the same room as my computer. But I'm starting to suspect that maybe I would be happier if I did something on the side for myself. Maybe it would be nice if everything I wrote didn't belong to someone else as a 'work for hire in perpetuity throughout the universe.' Maybe it would be nice to have something more to show for my time on earth. Maybe I could be a little more proud of my ability if I used it again, somewhere other than under Viacom's thumb.
The thing that's hard right now is that I write for a young audience, and sometimes they find out my last name and find this site, and so I have to walk this line between being able to express myself here in my own territory, but not saying anything that they would go paste on our message boards and get me yelled at or worse. That sucks a little, but que sera sera. This writing job set up is still better (for me, for my constitution) than being a QA engineer, at least.
As far as catching up goes, I would say the main things that have happened to me in the past year are buying a house and adopting a dog. Both have been immeasurably wonderful. Having a house is everything I thought it would be and almost none of what I feared. I would say the only fear that still creeps in is the Fear of the Mortgage... that feeling that dropping everything and opting out is just not in the toolbelt anymore.
But it always is. As long as I could bring my dog.
There's more to say, but I think that's a good thing. Maybe I'll be back before the week is out.
