cacophony

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” — Anaïs Nin

So the question has to come up. Why? Why do this? What’s the point? What’re you trying to achieve? These are all things I’ve asked myself while considering and putting together this blog. If you think about it, the personal blog is a funny thing — the private diary made public, in real time — but then again, maybe it’s not. Writing intended for publish, even in this rather inelegant way, can’t ever really be private — so it becomes less about writing for myself and more about something else. Is it a basic human need to communicate, or is it just some of us who are wired this way? Is this some kind of search for validation? I don’t know.

I am and always have been enraptured by personal writing. Diaries, journals, logbooks, collections of letters — they are a well of endless fascination for me, always serving up something I can use to quench the need for connection that I have. I am in love with the idea of personal journals, records of the journey and how all of us travel it differently. I’ve kept a journal, on and off in some form, since I was in the sixth grade. I’ve always had conflicting desires — lock them away in the most secret hiding place I could devise AND share them with anyone — anyone! — I could find to sit still long enough to listen. For years, all the journals sat in a filebox in the garage or in the attic or somewhere locked away. Right now, they are all lined up on a bookshelf, next to knitting magazines and books about bookmaking. I leave them there trusting no one will pick them up. I think I’m going to have to move them soon.

So I couldn’t do anything but be infatuated with blogs, ever since I first learned of their existence. It’s been a fascination that I’ve explored from the outside for years — reading other people’s blogs, reading about blogging. It was inevitable that eventually, finally, I would end up here — publishing my own public personal journal, throwing my words and pieces of myself — my own constant cacophony — out there into the world to see where it leads me.

I don’t know why I’m blogging. I don’t know why I keep journals. I don’t know where the force inside that pushes me to record, to explore, to “spill words all over myself,” came from. I only know that it is a siren call and I will follow merrily.