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1) Anytime someone recounts past events, they recount them from their own perspective, usually portraying themselves in a more reasonable or sympathetic light than the people/things around them. It's hardly a new observation to say that every memory is a lie we tell ourselves, but it's something that fascinates me. 

2) More specifically, I wanted to discuss that first principle in regards to my blog. Particularly the story of my sophomore year of high school as told by my blog. Reading the entries for September '04-June or July '05, I found that they told an extremely skewed version of the events. The story of sophomore year as told by my blog is the story of a young man, lonely but full of idealism and hope, reaching out to the people around him. Those people, through careless or outright malice, betray him and leave him crippled, despondent, and emotionally inaccessible. 

This is inaccurate, though if you proposed that as a summary to me around May of 2005, I probably would have approved. What can I say? I was stupid. I was fifteen years old. Cut me a little slack. 

The point is, on the whole, my blog gives a very limited view of my life. I'm not concerned about that for your sake (you, the reader); if you read this you probably know there's more to me than the bitter asshole side that comes out in my journal entries. I'm worried for myself. When me and my roommates were reading our old blogs, I came away from mine with the impression that I was constantly sad during high school. That feeling sort of hung over me for a few days, and I even started believing it was true. 

But it's not. High school is, as everyone who's been through it knows, a lot of things. And a lot of those things are bad. Not all of them, though. The reason I get such a negative vibe from these old entries is because I blogged mainly for negative reasons; I wanted attention, I wanted everyone to know how sad I was, I was indirectly communicating with someone because I lacked the ability and the courage to confront them directly... take your pick. In short: I wasn't sad all of the time, but I only blogged when I was sad.

But then again, who knows? Maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe it was something deeper, something fully imbedded into the core of this site. The impetus for a lot of people (in my social circle) joining Mindsay was, after all, a petty high-school fight. Maybe that ugly, childish incident left a stain on the site itself. Maybe Mindsay is haunted, like some virtual Overlook Hotel, by the violent sins of the past, and it compels the troubled teen Jack Torrances of the world (me!) to madness. Sheer madness. The kind of madness that twists reality and distorts everything around you, so that you can no longer tell the truth from the lie. The kind of madness that turns brother against brother, man against kin. Beast against beast. The kind of madness that wakes up at four o' clock in the morning, screaming and covered in sweat, all alone. The kind of madness so horrifyingly unknowable that to even glimpse upon the face of it would leave you twisted and scarred. The kind of madness, in short... that can drive a man mad.

You know, something like that.