At first, the requirement to create content drives me. It inspires me. The topics are as mundane as always, but they’re infused with that certain-something thing that I wish I could reference with utter sincerity. That is one of the first things you should know about me. At least half of what I say is tongue in cheek. Most of the time I am being strictly ironic when I use the vernacular. (I will purposefully use “like” to emphasis a point and hide its’ seriousness in one syllable)

I used to find a lot of things to write about. Life DID feel like magic. I don’t need the entries as evidence, because I remember, but the entries are proof that I used to able to talk about certain-somethings without the slightest bit of irony.

[EDIT] I have posted a bunch of stuff from my paper journals, which has thrown off my post count. I feel the need to note that here [EDIT]

I have written 1,166 posts. This makes 1,167. Some of those are private and I’ve definitely deleted posts altogether, but still, that’s not so many posts for seven years. That’s about 166 posts a year. About a post every three days. When I say it like that, it does sound like a lot, as if my life would be completely and accurately (ha!) documented here. But it’s not. It’s missing the months I spent in Europe in 2003 (although I did write that all down and the journal is Somewhere) and when things are stuck, like now, I’m less inclined to write.  And then there are all the things that I hid from myself that I still can’t bring myself to blog publically about.

So I’m sitting here, on a Thursday morning, blogging about blogging, because NaBloPoMo exists, and gives me an excuse to write things like this. I have to post every day for 30 days, and hey, a post about posting makes one! Great!

But it’s more than that. I thoroughly (and unsuitably) miss my old audience. HWSNBN, for all his flaws, and for all the ways in which the situation with him was bad for my sanity and self-esteem and whatever, got me to write. He is the one who made me feel like writing down all these words was actually important. Which is also ironic, because I don’t think he ever really gave a damn about anything I said. And I cringe when I think of those essays I wrote back in 2004-2005 that I let him read.

Things between us ended so long ago – five years ago, actually. But there is so much of him in so many things I do. He is, after all, how I wound up in NYC in the first place. Five years ago, I remember writing something about how it was so confusing to let the same hands that pushed you away, pull you back up. He was always the master of mixed signals (and I, admittedly, was the queen of selective hearing) and for all the ways in which he made me weak, he made me believe in things again. And for that, I still miss him sometimes.

So Evan, this is for you. Because it’s a Thursday morning, it feels like summer, Skidmore won’t stop sending me emails, I miss the city, I’m trying to cull together words that collectively Mean Something and I’m wearing khakis and that makes me think of you.