Missing The Old

I’ve been read­ing Andrea’s blog late­ly. Normally, I don’t read blogs of peo­ple I’ve nev­er met1, and even though I’ve met Andrea, I’ve nev­er had a pen­e­trat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with her, let alone got­ten to know her. Andrea’s blog is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent though. To the unini­ti­at­ed, it’s a reg­u­lar jour­nal, but there are bits of insight and emo­tion scat­tered through­out that leave you feel­ing like you’re look­ing at some­one stoned, naked, and through their kitchen win­dow. The ordi­nary mixed with a dash of extra­or­di­nary is what tru­ly gives one a sense of empa­thy, and it was this that drew me in.

It’s been mak­ing me feel so fuck­ing nos­tal­gic.

I remem­ber being in that stage of life. Back in school. Getting drunk. Chasing girls. Unsure of any­thing but the way I was feel­ing in that exact moment.

It’s made me real­ize that I don’t write like I used to. My entries used to be so exper­i­men­tal. Aside from a sin­gle sen­tence as a last, con­clud­ing line2, and a pen­chant for being a lit­tle too per­son­al, I had­n’t devel­oped a par­tic­u­lar writ­ing style. Back when I post­ed some­thing almost three times a day because I had to. When my posts had no titles (the same way Andrea has noth­ing but an incre­ment­ing num­ber and loca­tion stamp) because they were about every­thing and noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar.

Now, there’s too much pur­pose to my writ­ing. Carefully planned out posts, try­ing to express some­thing spe­cif­ic, with­out the stream-of-con­scious­ness I used to enjoy. Lost is the old whim­si­cal nature, the ordi­nary mixed with the extra­or­di­nary. I nev­er used to care whether some­thing was sig­nif­i­cant enough to post, and would just write it and hit that pub­lish but­ton.

I miss it.

But I can’t tell if it’s the way I used to write, or my life back then, that I miss.

  1. Blogs rarely inter­est me when I don’t have a bit of per­son­al insight from a first meet­ing. []
  2. Almost every sin­gle pots in this blog ends this way. []

11 comments

  1. How true, how true. I’ve a dozen dif­fer­ent posts a day, itch­ing to splay them­selves across the web, yet I hold back because of what I think a “blog” is and who I feel I need to write to.

    Everything I write is first-draft; some­thing I’ve been chas­tised for my com­plete strangers in the past, yet still script­ed and orga­nized as I know you know what I mean.

    I think we lose our stream of con­scious­ness, not as adults, per say, but as indi­vid­u­als, putting our wares on the street know­ing oth­ers are read­ing. It’s changed my writ­ing for sure, despite the lack there­of.

    Keep push­ing, Jeff. FTW. Write the moment.

    • You under­stand exact­ly what I was say­ing in this post. I’ve also tried the first-draft approach, but then I just end up think­ing a lot and plan­ning out my entry before I start writ­ing any­thing.

      I’ll keep push­ing if you do.

  2. I too noticed a dif­fer­ence, but just could­n’t quite put my fin­ger on it.

    On the one hand the pre­vi­ous spon­tane­ity cre­at­ed beau­ti­ful writ­ing, on the oth­er the way you now write reflects more matu­ri­ty and ratio­nal­i­ty in per­son­al devel­op­ment, plus emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. I’m not sure which I think is bet­ter, but I sure miss the beau­ti­ful writ­ing. Can you alter­nate ?

    • I find it inter­est­ing that you could tell how much my writ­ing as changed, because I don’t think many peo­ple could. It takes going back through the archives, which not many have done since they span six years of con­sis­tent writ­ing.

      It’s hard for me to alter­nate, or to go back to my old writ­ing style. I feel like it’s more rough and incom­plete, and hence infe­ri­or, even though that’s exact­ly what makes it inter­est­ing.

      • I did read your archives, way back :)

      • That’s very impres­sive and flat­ter­ing.

  3. I don’t miss my over earnest inner mud­dles of dra­ma and the Need to Express. The pre­cious­ness feels now like a preamble;can final­ly get down to some­thing with­out the clut­ter of Mattering Terribly.

    Seeing you step into the present and say­ing, wow, that was nice, but tran­si­to­ry and hon­or­ing the ephemer­al with faith that more will come, that’s a nice devel­op­ment to see.

    • Preciousness to you is pur­pose to me. If I could lose it, I don’t think I’d miss it either.

  4. I miss myself ter­ri­bly. In print and out.
    Things began archi­tec­tural­ly and have decayed for me.

    • Missing the self (out of print) is some­thing dif­fer­ent entire­ly. That says a lot more about you than an old writ­ing style.

  5. I’ve read that four times and I’m still not sure how you mean that.… tell me else­where?

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