Settling in

Because I moved my diaryland archives over manually (as it were), I’ve had an extended period of exposure to my recent past, densely narrated. What strikes me in particular is how stressful I’ve found my job, on quite a regular basis, and how often I’ve felt isolated as a result. There are also many many entries about keeping the depression wolf from the door, making me thankful for the relative equilibrium I these days enjoy. In light of my struggles against the black dog, it makes me feel good that I’ve had all the happy adventures I’ve had.

I feel perhaps most pleased about the way I’ve shifted from being a thwarted writer who doesn’t want to call herself a teacher to a writer who teaches or its inverse, a teacher who writes. Both identities sit quite easily with me now; I don’t feel like I have to explain myself to the world as once I did.

I noticed too how when I first began writing at diaryland I had a far more arch, epigrammatic sort of style than I do now, and that I relied heavily on subtexts implicit in juxtaposing blocks of text: paragraphs with lyrics or poetry and so on. Even at just a few years’ remove, the original ironic intent is almost invisible now and the writing seems mannered as a result. This suggests to me that I have, by writing online, achieved in part the goal of improving my writing. It also suggests that, if at any given moment I think a particular literary tic is cute or witty, then it probably won’t be in a month or two.

With any luck I’ve passed through the time in my life where I maintained my mental health by maintaining my webpages, and need to write fewer soul-searching entries as a result. (The most excoriating or incriminating of these I’ve password-protected; if you really must read them, then email me for the password.) At the same time, I feel excited about the shift in possibilities afforded by the shift to this new site, and hope for something of a renaissance in my online writing as a result.