Well here it is.
The 200th entry of this humble little collection of binary plodding along in the slow lane of the "information super highway". I have paused to reflect upon this event because I never intended to likely have 100 entries even, much less 200 in less than a year. Additionally, there might never be a 300th ever, so...
I started this just to keep up with a friend who would refer to her diary with a link in emails so as to not have write out what happened redundantly. So I made up a name and used it merely for that. Then I thought hmmm. do a few entries here and there for fun. It was dreadful. I listed the everyday events of my life. Booooorrrinnggg. A mere handful of years ago? Oh yeah, it would have an interesting record to have of my life. But my currrent life is quite sedate and I can't imagine it being interesting to myself to read at a later date. This is why I don't usually write those events. It's crept in some and that's cool but it's not my goal.
But what to write, I wondered, that I could come back and find interesting months or years from now? You see it never occurred to me that anyone would ever read the drivel I write. I decided to take small snapshots of what I thought when I was totally alone and truly myself. The fleeting thoughts you have when you lay awake for a few minutes at 3am or in your car driving to work and you hear something on the radio. The thoughts you would likely not say to people at work or anyone else. Those thoughts. Some have wondered why I don't put more of my personal self in my entries. I counter that what I write is way more personal than if I posted my face all over my journal and wrote just the facts of my everyday. Because in my case anyway, it would not represent who I am really. Already I go back to older entries and have forgotten those thoughts I am reading. I remember the basic outline of my life from Feb mind you, but I might have forgotten what I thought about something then. So I have found this an extremely wonderful exercise in leaving a small indentation of the sometimes great, sometimes awful way my mind works.
This is not to say I am unaware that my "buddies" do indeed read this diary. I will sometimes write a line and think "oh yeah, so and so will LOVE this" or "hmmm. this will get so and so all fired up", but it's not why I write what I write. In fact, there is freedom in writing to please no one but yourself. As the late great Ricky Nelson wrote: "you know you can't please everyone, so ya, gotta please yourself". Werd up dead teenybop idol from the 50's.
But the most pleasant surprise of this whole process has been discovering others out there. If you are on my buddy list, I read all of what you write. I had thought that journal writing or letter writing or the act of thought on paper or whatever was a dead art. But all of you who put your thoughts, your views, your heart and soul into the written word give me hope for this world. I find all of you to be thoughtful, intelligent people from different countries, different backgrounds from down the street to across the world. I really, really take pleasure in all of it. From my "eavesdropping" on your thoughts I learn things, I think about things, and revel in the fact that someone out there maybe 3000 miles away and I share the same thoughts on something. It's a small world after all you know.
So as I marvel that I ever accomplished 200 entries I salute as well, all of you who sit down and glare into that empty, little white box and put your fingers on the keyboard and fill the void. Bless you all.
gutterpoet