Venting on Journals

Last night was bad. Slept for a total of about three hours. Endless hot flashes and hormone-induced insomnia raised me out of bed in the middle of the night. I curled up in my leather chair and picked up my laptop to pass the sleepless hours. Visited many new journals. Wish I could say I enjoyed the experience.

I keep running into references to the Outstanding Journal Awards. I believe I expressed my distaste for this whole concept once before :-P. But I thought maybe I should give it another shot. Decided to go visit some of the perennial favorites.

One guy had a total overload of graphics, stuff, and do-dads on his page. Aside from this being completely distracting, I tried to leave a comment about five minutes after the beginning of my visit, and I couldn't because the page hadn't finished loading yet. The piece wasn't interesting enough for me to waste fifteen minutes waiting, so I left. Two or three others were so bent on being fast-paced and off-the-wall-funny that they were an exercise in literary hyperventilation. Probably I was crabby due to the circumstances surrounding my being on the internet in the middle of the night...but I just thought, "Bleah!"

In the past couple of weeks, I have found myself getting increasingly wrapped up in the idea of other people reading my journal. I was unduly bummed that I had apparently lost a few readers who had once been regulars. (I HAD a regular readership of about three people...guess that spectacular success made me hungry for more.) But after cruising some of the sites with the big "this journal has been visited xxxxx times" numbers, I understand that's NOT what I want my journal to become. As usual, I'm slightly out sync with the rest of the children. But that is, and always has been...me.

I do, however, come in contact with a really gut-grabbing journal once in a while. A couple of days ago, I stumbled on to "Watching My Sister...Disappear"---a log of a woman's daily phone calls to her younger sister, whose mind is being speedily devoured by Alzheimer's. A lovely tribute, displaying the kind of human connection that I can only aspire to. I'll use her as the target of my journal-envy, for now.