Hold the Goodbyes

The ranks of old AOL journalers, the ones who have been with it from the early days, are continuing to dwindle. In the last two weeks, two of the very few journals I read were abruptly mothballed by their authors. Many of the most prominent people on the original scene are long gone…moved on…ran out of things to write about…decided they were too invested in journaling and went back to their "real" lives. Played with the toy, tired of it, and tossed it aside.

My own journal experience has been one of ups and downs. The up of realizing that for the first time I was writing stuff that other people were actually going to read. The down of feeling I’d lost my voice in an attempt to lure and/or please those readers. The high of discovering the unimagined benefit of becoming part of a community. The low of realizing that the community was as inconsistent as the ether it was built upon.

But through it all, blogging, journaling, call it what you will, has been a tremendous rebirth for me. It rekindled my ardor for the written word. Though I had never really stopped writing since scribbling my first independent (non-school-assignment) story when I was about thirteen, my writing had degenerated to a form of self-psychiatric-treatment. During the hardest times of my life, writing was simply a form of venting; penning the circular answers to the unanswerable questions with which the act of living had filled my head to the point of bursting. Written by me, for me. Though a spark of desire to once again put the written word back to the work for which it was intended—communication with other human beings outside myself—always remained alive deep inside my soul.

Posting my first several journal entries, the ones that nobody but me ever read, I despaired that I had lost "It." The gift, the zeal, even the language…all buried under decades of selfish, inward prose that did not have meaning to anyone but me. But as I immersed myself in the blogging experience, I swept away those layers of mold, rot, dust, and cobwebs. Reading and thinking about the other voices out there, I rehabilitated my own long-disused tongue. As the weeks and months went by, I polished my skills. Remembered how much I loved to write. Remembered that I actually do have a talent for it. Wondered how I ever could have let myself get so far away from it.

I’m left to believe that we who remain here on the journal scene after the eighteen-month "honeymoon" period, are those of us who, on some level, are serious writers. Some published, some not, some whose writings will never see print beyond the world of the blog. But all of us are people who have something to say and feel most drawn, most fulfilled, putting our thoughts on paper, even if only virtual paper. I don’t see myself giving that up any time soon. And I hope there are at least a few more die-hards out there that are going to stay here with me.