[introduction to 'fifth' my email journal: an all-pervading, infinitely elastic, massless medium.]
It's hard to know where to begin this story, sifting, shifting. I started journalling in 1999. It was catharsis, the burden of proof, a memory - all those cliches. My journal moved from place to place as it suited, or did not suit, and the most recent stop has been livejournal.com.
In August of 2001, self-consciousness took over. I deleted six months' worth of entries and stopped writing there. I started a new on-site journal using Greymatter. It didn't take. I went back to livejournal and fully embraced writing for an audience. What I wrote was no less true than it had ever been, but it was no longer just me talking to myself. And that was satisfying for a time.
But now I find myself in an odd situation. I find myself wanting to erase everything, my thoughts, my poems, my pictures. Even the entirety of shiver.org. To do so would be selfish for a variety of reasons. So I have decided on a compromise.
I'm going to start talking to myself again. I'm going back to that fine balance between the illusion of privacy and the spine of a perceived audience.
If you'd like to read whatever I manage to write (which, all things considered, probably won't be much), you need to join the list. It's not a discussion list, it's notify only, and I seriously doubt there'll be more than one entry per day even if I somehow heave myself out of this abyss I'm sunk in. You can join any time and leave any time. I have nothing to do with the maintaining of email subscription.
It's hard to know where to begin this story, sifting, shifting. I started journalling in 1999. It was catharsis, the burden of proof, a memory - all those cliches. My journal moved from place to place as it suited, or did not suit, and the most recent stop has been livejournal.com.
In August of 2001, self-consciousness took over. I deleted six months' worth of entries and stopped writing there. I started a new on-site journal using Greymatter. It didn't take. I went back to livejournal and fully embraced writing for an audience. What I wrote was no less true than it had ever been, but it was no longer just me talking to myself. And that was satisfying for a time.
But now I find myself in an odd situation. I find myself wanting to erase everything, my thoughts, my poems, my pictures. Even the entirety of shiver.org. To do so would be selfish for a variety of reasons. So I have decided on a compromise.
I'm going to start talking to myself again. I'm going back to that fine balance between the illusion of privacy and the spine of a perceived audience.
If you'd like to read whatever I manage to write (which, all things considered, probably won't be much), you need to join the list. It's not a discussion list, it's notify only, and I seriously doubt there'll be more than one entry per day even if I somehow heave myself out of this abyss I'm sunk in. You can join any time and leave any time. I have nothing to do with the maintaining of email subscription.