Introduction

As I'm writing this, I have yet to choose the name of the the blog it will eventually introduce. I'm hoping that maybe I'll be able to discover one that fits within the assorted tumbling thoughts that end up on the virtual page.

I want to tell you what this is. This is a collection of transcribed revelations of a mind that is not naïve enough to call itself experienced. (Does that contradict itself? If I'm not naïve enough not know that I am naïve, does that lend me experience? I think not, but perhaps I'm wrong.) This is the place where the most important things go. And this is anonymous, disconnected not from reality but from the life within the reality from which it stems. This is not the only place I exist on the internet, and I have no doubt that some of you who are reading this know me from elsewhere. I can ask only that you not use my name if you decide you need to comment here; call me whatever it is I have decided to call myself. I haven't chosen that yet, either.

Apart from this being a shelf of sorts for my ideas and philosophies, this is also practice. I've been writing for seven years (which is a lot for a girl of my age, but I dislike the idea of telling you how old I actually am), and I've called myself a writer for maybe four or five of those. But recently I've stopped writing. I've lost the ability to stay coherent and eloquent for any extended period of time. I could blame school, as I am still a student; I could blame technology, and the unceasingly increasing amount of hyperactivity produced by things like Twitter, Facebook, and the like; I could blame lack of subject matter and new situations—I am not known for being an extroverted, try-everything-once type of person; I could blame that relative lack of life experience that I mentioned earlier. But in the end, I know the blame falls completely onto myself. I have stopped viewing the world as something to record, and I've started looking at is as something tom experience, to live and breathe and take in. And that is good. I like it.

But I can't forget how to write, because life cannot always be like this.

I don't usually label myself an optimist or a pessimist, because whether I'm one or the other often depends on the emotional climate in my immediate vicinity or the events of the most recent few days, but when I stop, take a breath, and force myself to be honest within my own mind, I have to admit that at my center, I have the smallest, indestructible grain of pessimism. It whispers in the back of my head, reminding me of everything I hate and the disturbing things I've learned that I wish I didn't know. It's also the voice which nags me to write; something, anything. Scraps on restaurant napkins that will get thrown away or poems in the backs of my school notebooks. It tells me to write because, one day, life will go back to being closed off and dark and quite solitary, and I must have something within my own power to help me keep my sanity.

I think that voice is right.

I almost hate to type it, because I feel so strongly the opposite of that right now—life is bright and new and exciting and just generally good—but I know it's true. It's a distinct possibility, even a probability, that in the many years that comprise the rest of my life, I will be set down gently or dropped like a heavy box where the bottom gave way and the items it held came tumbling out, scattering across some rough and heated summer pavement. And all I will have to fall back on when the sodden cardboard finally gives way with a wet, slow sort of tear, will be my writing. My thoughts, my words, and the shape of my own handwriting on paper. (I write best in longhand when I'm overwhelmed, over-full with emotion that's negative. Typing works best for me if I'm happy.)

To double back to my original point, I am writing this for myself as well as all the eyes that ever take it in. And I am not without inspiration. Nightmare Brunette (found here on Blogger and also on Tumblr) and the now-deactivated turntowards of Tumblr both offer a continuous font of ideas, styles, and influence. They (NB in particular) are what inspired me to do this.

So. Are you going to join me on this journey? I'd be glad to have you.