Figured Something Out

I've kept a journal - a written one, in a bound notebook - since I was fourteen. Since mid-1967, to put it in an ancient context.

Between the years of fourteen and twenty-one I was a student, and had to spend hours each weekday in a classroom; I was expected to take notes on the coursework, so finding time to make journal entries was no damn problem at all. And no instructor EVER asked to see my notes.

(Even so, a lot of my entries, both pre and post-high-school were sporadic, brief, and cryptic).

Cut to post-college - struggling lazy writer, slightly more successful and less lazy musician - journal-time became more precious, and some good stuff resulted. Still, sporadic.

Marriage. Parenthood. Plunging into the who-gives-a-fuck-about-your -art workplace. The journal suffers. But, hey. Does not die.

But now it's mostly summaries - children being born, parents dying, the tides of fortune or lack thereof. Some good shit in the mix, but again, intermittent. Seriously. A volume that took three months to fill at fourteen now takes three, four, five years.

Then: Dawn of social media. (Not a brilliant, rich coinage, re: description. Isn't ALL media social?)

Facebook: OK, a verbose multi-media ham like me says, HEY, this is GREAT. Especially well-suited for short, punchy status updates and links to favorite music. No complaints!

But after a year or more, I realized I needed to create a more formal, enduring presence, and started this blog in October 2010. While acknowledging that I was still just building sandcastles, they were at least indexed and had some editable layout elements.

Seven months in, and I'm overall pleased with what I've built. I can only hope my visitors are too.

But meanwhile my journal gathers dust. And while the blog is in many ways a fantastically liberating blend of writing, music, and images for someone like me to mess around with, there are limits to what I will include, knowing that it's designed to be read in close to real time. So anything too explicit, too dark, too alarming, gets clipped.

All by way of saying, I need to share some of this energy with the old journal. Which you may never see, or at any rate, not for a long time.

Where to start? Or should I say, to continue?