Valley of the Trolley Dollies

I used to be a blogger, back when blogging was simply what one did; back before one was daily conflicted by the issue of whether to tweet or not to tweet; to update directly on to facebook or msn with mates? Back before the question of whether it was nobler in the minds eye to chat with friends via facebook chat, or take arms and skype the world became all-encompassing.

And, back available online forum, I recall a friend of mine asking Why? I was, effectively, keeping a public diary.

“I mean,” he asked, “Why would you want to share every single aspect of your life – every thought and deed with the whole world; and why – more importantly, perhaps – why on earth would they want to read it?

It’s a good question (or two). Not that I have any answers. I used the site to write about how David and I met, about our courtship, about the build up to and the aftermath of our wedding. I used it, in the leadup to my 40th, as a way of chronicling my life to date (which, written like that, sounds as though my struggle to avoid pomposity and self-importance has not quite been won yet). I wrote commentary on the world around me and the life I was living; on the books, music, TV, theatre, film, clothing, that was, at any point influencing my life, and I did it so that I could look back, from time to time, and see “Ah, that’s where I was.”

Then, last year, I stopped.

Not completely – there were a few postings over the course of the year, but by and large I stopped writing.

Not because there was nothing going on; not by a long chalk. There was too much going on, to be honest, and all of it seemed to be bad. But none of it was mine. Everyone – dear friends, my husband, family – seemed mired in illness or stress or work shit that just filled the year with one drama or tragedy after another. And at the centre of it all was me.

But I didn’t write about it, because in the past, when I have written about how I’ve felt when bad things have happened, they’ve been my bad things, happening to me. But this past year, they’ve been filling my life, without me having ownership of them, and thus without my having the right to share them with a world full of strangers.

And then, this past weekend, whilst updating my diary, I went through last years diary and was amazed at how much good stuff I’d done, and how much had slid past without comment – some fantastic trips, meeting enw people, seeing places and things I can’t believe I finally got to see and meet; amazing concerts seen without me even putting a note down here about them; records (or digital downloads) that rocked my world and shot to the top of my charts.

It was a year when – interestingly – I resumed my voracious reading habit, working my way through a number I loved, a few I adored, and a handful that convinced me I could do better in a coma. As I child, I’ve come, lately, to realise, I read to escape. To get away from situations I didn’t like, or to get to places or feelings I did, to escape the seemingly terminal boredom of waiting for ones life to begin, to escape from being me, and become, for a while, someone else.

And, of course, as I’ve said before, I do think I got to be the creature that I meant to be: Not an enlightened being by some way yet, but happier.

Perhaps, as an adult, I write a diary to strangers as a way of making a mark of saying “I am / was here.” Perhaps, by blogging, I’m trying to escape the inescapable; for one day – no matter how many friends or followers or readers or commenters we have, we will Not be here.

But, for now, what’s not here is 2009. It’s gone, and with it has gone much of the grief that filled last year. I’ll try to do better in 2010; I’ll try to keep some record of what I’m doing, of where I’m going so that, when I look back in January 2011 I wont say “How could so much good stuff have happened last year yet it still felt so bad?”

I’ll live more, love as much as I always have, and learn to let things that I can’t change be. But I’ll try to stop, from time to time, to look at my life, to see the individual flakes of good and bad and to consciously review and comment on them, ratehr than just letting it all – all this living¬ – just wash over me.

Already it’s shaping up to be a great year.