readtheroomjess - Tumblr blog

[readtheroomjess]

I’m really enjoying this. It doesn’t really feel like a novel. It reminds me of a memoir told in little vignettes and random anecdotes, except it’s fiction. The protagonist is a bit younger than I was, but I can identify with a lot of her thoughts and feelings while going through divorce, dating, and everything that does along with those things. I really hope she gets her cat back.

[readtheroomjess]

Remember when blogging was fun?

When I was a youth in the early 2000's, I found a website called Blogger. I was only starting to explore the internet now that I was in college and had regular access to a computer, and the most interesting things to me where blogs and message boards. I loved that I could meet people with whom I shared a common interest and talk incessantly about that thing. I also loved reading people's random journal entries and vague thoughts on their own lives. I had always enjoyed reading and writing, so I started my own. Only a few people ever read it, but I didn't really care. Mostly, I just wanted to reach out into the void with my thoughts. If someone else happened to notice and reach back, that was just a bonus.

Fast forward to now, and the internet is less a library of human thoughts and feelings and more of an endless corridor of those mall kiosks where someone is shouting at you to buy things you don't want or need. Blogging has mostly been declared "dead", but you can still "make it" with one as long as it's strategic, planned, aesthetic and rigorously on topic, on trend, and on brand. You must have something specific to say, and you must be using that topic to sell something, even if that something is only yourself. Perhaps especially then. No one just writes to write, to share, to reach out. It's all push. No pull.

I've tried to reach out via writing a few times over the years and I always lose interest. I think it's because I don't have any desire to pick one topic and stick to it, or to be "professional", or to be a brand. I just want to find a place where I can whisper into the void and someone might whisper back.

That's all I want to do here. It might be inconsistent; too much at some times and too little at others. Depending on the day, I might write about something going on in my life, books I'm reading or have read recently, various fandoms, quotes, memes, photos, Dutch Bros drinks, etc. Sometimes I'm funny, but not always. Sometimes I'm a sad, dramatic fool, but not always.

I'm old now. 41 and counting. So I can't imagine my thoughts and feelings will look or sound the same as they did when I was 22. But I do know that is when I felt the most free, the most like myself, and the most open with my thoughts. I'm curious what living similarly might look like now. This is an attempt to find out.