A cemetery where nothing ever dies

In a recent interview with Marc Maron for his podcast, artist St. Vincent said, "the Internet is a cemetery, but nothing ever dies." This came to my mind as I was setting this blog up. What you're reading is blog number four for me. I've started new blogs instead of continuing to update my old ones because I outgrow them (and because, honestly, who reads Xanga anymore?). 

For some reason, it makes more sense to me to start over with a blank slate rather than keep updating a blog that I started when I was at a different place in my life. My old blogs remain as a snapshot of who I was and what I was doing at that particular point in time.

In total I have written three other "first posts" for my previous blogs. Instead of writing a completely new one, I copied and pasted the last "first post" that I wrote and and added present-day annotations/commentary/updates. This post was written on December 11, 2012.

I kind of hesitated to share this, because things that sounded good to 21-year-old me don't sound good to 23-year-old me. So I just took out the cringiest parts. You can enjoy the rest.

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I write. I don’t know if I would consider myself a particularly exceptional writer, or an excellent writer, but maybe I’m just being modest. Writing has just always been something I’ve done.

Still true.

I started my first journal when I was five. At that point I could only write letters, I couldn’t form them into individual words. Luckily I loved to draw, so I could make a picture of something instead of writing about it. I learned to write soon enough, and kept several journals up until I was about 17. I started a Xanga¹ account at 13, and kept using it way after everyone abandoned Xanga for MySpace. [Nobody was reading it, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to write. And that’s still the point today.] Yes, yes, yes.

Currently I’m pursuing a degree so that one day I will (hopefully) get paid for writing.

Done and done! In December of 2013 I earned my B.A. in journalism, and I currently write for a living.

I kept a different blog for about two years. It was a good experience. Eventually I abandoned the blog, and when I felt the urge to begin blogging again, I decided to start anew with this blog.

And I'm doing the exact same thing now. The cycle continues.

I began considering blog names. My name is Ann. No shit. I immediately decided that anything that was a play on my name was out. My last blog was named, [Redacted because no doubt I have some embarrassing stuff on there] There are many ways my name can be inserted into a blog title, for example, “ANNtastic.” I actually have a political blog called “LibertariANN.” I'm letting this one slide because it was just a Tumblr with a bunch of re-posted stuff. But, a play on words would be too easy.

I was trying to be much more creative and clever with my blog name last time.

A blog’s name implies what the blog will be about. This is where I ran into a problem. I can’t do a “themed” blog – e.g. healthy living, political, religious-based writing, etc. I just can’t. I have so many interests and I want to blog about all of them.

[Redacted - some boring stuff]

However I should put an asterisk at the end of my blog title. There are some things I don’t want to blog about.

I'm not sure why I cared so much about explaining what I was and wasn't going to blog about.

[Redacted - two paragraphs in which I explain, in detail, what I won't be writing about. Which is actually kind of funny ...]

So. This blog is not “themed.” I’ll write about whatever I feel like writing about at that moment, with two exceptions. I think we get the point, Ann.

I’m calling this blog, [Redacted, I don't want you going through my living cemetery] because that’s what I’ll do.

And I like memes. I go on about memes. Yes, really.

Right now, this blog is like an apartment you’ve just moved into. It has the bare minimum features it needs to make it functional. But I want to paint the walls, hang some pictures and bring in a rug that will really tie the room together.

It’s unfortunate that I’ll be engrossed with sprucing up the blog this week, because it’s finals week. It’s also unfortunate that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is streaming on Netflix now. How will I get anything done?

Must keep my sights on what I mentioned earlier. Getting paid for writing.

Now that I get paid to write, I watch an embarrassing amount of TV.

Happy reading. I’ll be happy blogging.

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Footnotes - Which I thought I was so clever to do.

1 – Ah, remember Xanga? Out of curiosity I went and looked at mine while writing this post. Surprisingly I remembered the password. Reading the musings of my 17-year-old self reminds me of why I don’t miss high school. At all. And you'll never see the link to this one, either.