September 09, 2008

Eight

This week marks eight years that I've been writing online. That's a long time to do anything, let alone navel gaze. I cringe a little when I go back and read some of the older entries. I was so clueless much of the time, but I was always transparent. Always the truest form of myself. My sense of needing accurate history is grateful for that, at least. I can't fool myself into thinking I truly knew it all at age 24, because the proof to the contrary is floating around out there.

These days, when even grandmothers are blogging, it's hard to believe that there was a day you could journal your thoughts, throw them on the Internet and have them be read only by strangers. My mom found this site several years ago, and other family members soon followed, and now it's a blessing to stay connected this way. But there was a time when such an intimate state of being known would have been unheard of. In fact, it was something of a novelty back in the day (ye days of Internet olde) if someone from your "real life" read your online journal. (As we ye olde folk called them.)

I was always a small drop in a sea of words, but now that sea is a raging ocean and who isn't putting some part of their life online? Whether it's through pictures or cooking blogs or Facebook, it's the new norm. Even presidential candidates are Twittering. In some ways that is comforting. For instance, I don't think twice when someone asks how a friendship started and I say "the Internet." But in other respects, it does feel like some of the specialness has flown out of it. (For this I mostly blame MySpace.)

I'm not interested in traipsing down a nostalgic road (how unusual for me), but it did strike me that even just a glimpse at my entry categories is evidence of the many changes in my life the past eight years. From "Looking for Love" to "Wedding Planning" to "Married Life." From Atlanta to Minnesota, and a whole category just for Montego. (I can barely remember what it was like to only have one pet.)

This state of communication is here for good, I think, so even though I've taken several unintentional breaks and probably will again, (remember when it was all the rage to go on "hiatus"?), I can't imagine not ever having this site.

So if there are in fact still strangers out there reading this, thank you for keeping up and staying on. Let's see where we go from here.

Posted by hannah at 05:35 PM