Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Croaker's Corner

Anyone who cruises Blog Explosion comes across Croaker's Corner at one time or another. A very cool and hip blog with one of the coolest headers I have ever laid my eyes on... and extremely well written.

Well today I came across this post over there and after reading it I began to seriously think about evolutions.

I used to have a bunch of different journals throughout the years. I had a spiral in junior year of high school, a marble in my senior year, and in college I graduated to one of those specifically designed books made for journaling with the faux leather cover.

In fact, I became a journal connieusser. I bought way more blank books than I ever wrote in... and there were at least half a dozen I started but never finished or continued past the 5th or 6th entry. Travel journals, wine journals, movie journals, game journals, life journals, and of course the journal journal.

Of all these journals there is one that stands out amongst the rest. I'm not sure if you would call it a Love Journal or not... it was written by both myself and my ex-wife. It was one of those black sketchbooks enveloped in a green leather cover with Celtic Knots decorating it. What we would do is write something in it, and then leave it somewhere such as the nightstand or the pillow or the computer or the kitchen table where the other would find it... and write something in it. Odes of adoration, poems of love, and of course the whimsical "What were you thinking?"

This went on longer than I realized, at least a year. In that year life between us was not easy. I know that flipping through the pages you can see exactly where the fights occurred... obvious by either the lack of writing or the quality of the writing. During our first real break-up, before we were married, she took it away from me. After that we were married, and then divorced, and yes... I stole it away from her. It was, is, and probably always will be the best journal I had ever written... or maybe I should say co-written.

Of course this is a post of evolutions... and to leave out my second favorite journal would be wrong. I wrote it from September of 2004 to December of 2004. I had just separated from Pudding, and this gave me a non-destructive focus. I wrote in it every other night at the very least... often filling up 5-6 pages at a time. What did I write? Letters. Not letters like the alphabet, but they were for all intense purpose individual letters. Some of them were humorous letters, some were sad letters, some were happy letters, but all of them were written with love from my heart. It was the easiest thing to do... a way to focus my writing by starting every entry with "Dear...". It was all written to a girl I loved deeply.

Then I did something else with the journal... something I needed to do as a personal reset. When I was in my early twenties I wrote this horrible piece of junk called Radioland that can still be found on Amazon today. I had published it in the beginning of 2001 as a way to close out my past and move forward with Pudding. Well I re-opened the past... and wrote another chapter in the "saga" it had become in the neighborhood.

I layed it out, and then pasted it in backwards and upside down from the original journal (which I only wrote on one side). Of course the ending to the story for her was sort of along the lines of "Choose your own adventure"... the classic Red Pill or Blue Pill argument.

So what did I do with the second favorite journal? I gave it away to the girl who had inspired it. Call it cliche' but I gave it to her as a Christmas gift... as a testament of my love and adoration. Okay... you can all barf now. Originally she red pilled... but then she blue pilled. Was my heart broken? Of course it was... but not so much over the girl... over the fact I had lost probably some of my best writing never to be seen by my eyes again.

So now we come to my next serious journaling/writing attempt after a few more false starts and a serious writing block made of bricks... this blog. It too has evolved from the very beginning int something more than just a place to jot down odd thoughts and work on some writing to break the block. I've surprisingly maintained it pretty well... and even have a few beloved loyal readers (Hi Jessica... I know your there... don't try to deny it) who for better or worse see what goes on here.

A part of the evolution has to do with the RFP I put out for a new blog design. Thus far I have received zero proposals. I mean really now... how can all these creative forces out there not have an IDEA of what to do for this blog. That's all I wanted... a simple paragraph in an e-mail describing how they saw my blog... but not even that. Am I really that hard to remake?

I guess in closing... we all continue to evolve... both as people and as blogs. Yet we should not forget that before the blog... was the journal... who itself was pre-dated by the diary. And all the pretty pictures... all the pretty links... all the delicate words cannot compensate for heart.

Posted by New York City's Watchdog :: 3/07/2006 12:47:00 PM :: Permalink :: 4 Bones Added to the Pile

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