I finally finished archiving every single blog I've ever written. They're all saved in Word documents on our hard drive. Now I will never forget who I have been. I also will never forget how fickle I am about blogging... Always changing, always taking sabbaticals. What do I like about blogging? Why do I keep coming back? But what then bores me when I do, making me leave again?
My blog is, I guess, a journal of sorts, although it isn't really a journal since I envision a journal as being a private, secret thing, whereas all of my blogs are out in the open. Unless I make them friends only, which seems to be a bit of an oxymoron, since friends only on the internet is like shouting a secret on a street corner and then saying, "Oh, everyone who heard that who isn't my friend, ignore and forget what I said."
Do I really have important things to say? Important enough to display it to the entire world through phone cables (and now cable cables)? I've never really been able to keep a real journal. I get bored with it. I guess it's sort of redundant, to write your thoughts down, when at that moment, they're kind of in your head already, so what's the point in making sure they're in two places at once? Unless, of course, you use a journal as a kind of history book, and you go back and read them after you've forgotten what you've written.
But some of the appeal of the weblog is that other people can read it. I can connect with millions of people all over the world, and I can tell them all my secrets, my desires, my wishes, my problems. Maybe sharing it makes it feel real, like it's not just something happening in my head, and I know it's not, because other people are reading it too, so it can't be fake, right?
And maybe that's true, that the internet is more reality than actual reality, since anyone who logs onto the internet sees the same exact thing on one page, whereas in real life there are so many different ways to look at just one single thing. No matter how many inferences anyone puts on my words, or I put on my words, my words are constant. Once they're there, everyone reads the same letters, everyone sees the same thing. When I speak, it's not so easy. My inflection changes what I mean, what other people see me doing changes what I mean, all of our senses play a part. The internet is just sight. Does that make it easier to validate, that it's only one sense, and it's always the same?
Maybe I'm going crazy from looking at a fucking light bulb all day.
On a completely other note, I've been starting to seriously consider how happy I am at my job. Sure, I like what I'm doing most of the time, and I like most of the people most of the time. There's only four, so it's not that hard. But is it really what I want to do? What happened to my collegiate aspirations, my librarian dream, my creative careers and life plans? I'm working at a fucking shoe store. And I make about as much money as I made at the newspaper. The only difference now is that Shane supports me, so we can live on our own. I'm a leech, a little kid playing dress-up all day while my caretaker goes out and brings home the bacon. And when I have days off, I sit at my little computer, or my little piano, or on my little couch, and I do useless things like a lump, with no real direction, no real passion.
Although--and here's the rub--I've sort of made a commitment to my employer. I'm more competent, electronically, than pretty much everyone there, and I'm really more competent, in all ways, than one of the employees. In fact, my employer's plan is to use me to replace the employee she no longer thinks is an asset to her business, but she's afraid to fire her in case the unemployment she pays goes up. So while I dream about working in a real office, with a phone and a desk, and pictures of my family, and little chotchkies everywhere to make the space my own, I feel half-trapped, half-glad that I have this other thing that I'm pretty okay at, and have probably the best job security I could ever have. I'm trapped in it because part of me wants to do more, wants to make more, and I'm glad of it because it means I don't have to try. It means I'm safe.
I secretly go to
www.careerbuilders.com and
careers.wa.gov and the Timberland Library website, looking at jobs that I could do instead, where I'd work every day, and I'd make not quite as much as Shane, but at least more than I do now, and I'd be satisfied. Would I?
I honestly don't know. But I know that there's a nagging part of me that isn't happy with settling for a part-time job where my skills greatly exceed those required for the position, where my pay is hardly enough to give myself spending money, where I'm safe. I don't want to be safe, I want to be dangerous. I want to take a risk. And yet I'm deathly afraid of the consequences of my actions if I quit or even start seriously looking for another job. For one, I have some sense of obligation to my employer (whether it's warranted or not), and for two, what if I can't find another job? What then?
I can feel the itch. I want something more.
private journal
