Of A Much Needed Change

I’m thinking of overhauling this blog, or deleting it completely.

When I started blogging in college, I loved the anonymity and the odd pleasure of making online friends (and meeting them in real life!), reading journal entries written by strangers from all over the world, and leaving nice notes on their guestbooks.  I can still do those things now, heck I bet it’s even easier now that the internet has become more accessible (although it is of course not true that everyone has access and that one can change the world through the internet).  I started blogging again last year because I had the time, and maybe because I was a lonely kid. But most of all, I started blogging again because I wanted to write frequently, while knowing that some people out there actually read what I wrote.  I was writing for strangers, really, they were my target audience. Not family, friends, or acquaintances.

The problem is that I tend to blog, mostly, about personal issues. Blogs are (or used to be) online journals, after all. I’d like to think of myself as an introspective person, and I did share a shitload of juvenile rants before. The difference in what and how I blog now is a matter of restraint–because even though I don’t have illusions that a lot of people read this blog, there is always that nagging idea that a family member or a friend of a friend might stumble upon this archive. So I am consciously editing, consciously deleting specifics that might give away too much. In other words, I don’t think the nature of this blog as (primarily) an online journal is helping me become a better writer. I feel that my writing, here at least, has become vague and safe. A few years from today, if I try to go through what I’ve posted in the past year, I might not even understand my own writing.

There is always that option to create a screen name and a new personal blog that’s more “private.”  And I’m considering that option, too. But what’s funny is that while I am longing for that imagined anonymity, in a way, I also want to declare my identity. I also want to say Hey, if you like what you’re reading, this is me, Caloy, nice to meet you! The internet makes you want to do that, maybe because of the notion of online “publishing.”

Anyway, while I’m still undecided, I’ve decided to go back to old school journal writing. Last week, I bought myself a new leather notebook (not a moleskine because I think those are sinfully expensive). I have  other notebooks that are gathering dust in my drawers, but I purchased a new one as an incentive (for myself, who else hahaha). It’s covered with black leather and has reasonably lined off-white pages, and it’s got this nice page-marker–I don’t know the technical word for the marker, but it’s that thin strip of cloth often found in daily planners. I made the mistake of using a dull grayish pen for my first entry, but now I’m using a sign pen which makes writing clearer, literally, and in the sense that it’s easier to review what I’ve already written.

I wrote my first entry one night, when I was fuming mad at something that happened at home. I wrote because I was angry, and I couldn’t articulate my anger. And I felt better after doing that, a kind of satisfaction I no longer get from blogging. Since then, I’ve been filling it up constantly, although I don’t write on it everyday. It’s not the frequency that matters, after all, it’s the personal significance of what is documented.

So... There will be less personal shit on this blog, maybe more creative shit, haha. Or maybe I’ll come up with a theme, like a 365-days-challenge or some other focus, which will still allow me to share ideas online, just not too much.

Take care kids!