In seventh grade I started up a blog. I kept it for a couple months before I forgot about it, another trivial piece of my online life that I did not really care about. I never posted anything particularly interesting anyways. However, when this year started I was unimaginably excited that we would be building new blogs and using them to our academic advantage. Maybe this time it would work, something would click, like those cheesy romance novels that everyone eats up.
And for the beginning of the year, it was just like that. Before most people had twenty posts, I had fifty, and was feeling fairly celebratory about this fact. Like all new things, though, it did not stay quite so invigorating for long. I eventually grew tired of my blog and my posting slowed to a snail’s crawl. Instead of furiously typing away on my laptop every now and then, I began to simply sit and stare at the screen, lazily searching my brain for more bull to fill the gap where words were meant to be. The blog became just another assignment, like a child weaning from its exhausted mother.
And for the beginning of the year, it was just like that. Before most people had twenty posts, I had fifty, and was feeling fairly celebratory about this fact. Like all new things, though, it did not stay quite so invigorating for long. I eventually grew tired of my blog and my posting slowed to a snail’s crawl. Instead of furiously typing away on my laptop every now and then, I began to simply sit and stare at the screen, lazily searching my brain for more bull to fill the gap where words were meant to be. The blog became just another assignment, like a child weaning from its exhausted mother.
Though, as I look back, I realize that my blog has had quite an impact on my life. When I started my freshman year of high school, I felt that I was an amazing writer, destined for success and fame and there was no way I could get any better because I was damn perfect. Having the blog helped change my perspective on that. I started to criticize my writing more for one thing, and it did not take long for reality to start screaming out the flaws in all of my pieces in bold, italicized letters. All of my posts became works in progress in my mind.
Of course, I do have a few favorite posts that I might rather leave just the way they are. My post titled “A Love of Music”, for example. This post marked an intense change in my writing style. I no longer wrote out exactly what I was thinking, copying and pasting the surroundings into my posts in dull ways. I do not know how the change happened, though I know that at the time I wrote it I had been severely tired and suffering from a stomach ache (I tend to write my best poetry when I am tired, so perhaps there is a connection?).
It was today that it finally clicked. I was sick from drinking coffee with an empty stomach, and in an exhausted haze I stumbled up to the piano and lifted the lid, staring down at the black and pale yellow. Before long I was mumbling to myself, squinting at the black and white blobs on old, wrinkled paper.
It has got something to it that even I have not fully comprehended. I guess I have just got to wait until the middle of the night, maybe toss in a fever, and then everything will make perfect sense.
And as the school year comes to a close, as all things do, I find an interest sparked once again in my blog. My problem now is not a lack of interest, it is a lack of knowing what to say. There is a wall in the way, some kind of syrup on my fingers that keeps me from typing like I know I can. It is the dreaded writer’s block. I do not know if it is because I am more awake and alert (which may or may not be a hindrances) or if it is because the year is almost over and my brain is starting to relapse into summer wonders.
The good thing about the end of the school year is that I’m tired more often. Whether I’m just burnt out after a long and vigorous year, or if I’m just not getting enough sleep in general, I wake up each day groaning and exhausted. As I said earlier, I tend to write best when I’m on the brink of passing out (especially when it comes to poetry). When I’m wide awake, there isn’t much I can do without it coming out sounding forced and weak.
At least I have something to be proud of. Unlike the ‘perfection’ that I used to scrawl out on binder paper during lunch, my works have definitely improved. My poetry, for example, is no longer the depressed ramblings of a preteen who thinks she knows all there is to know and then some. My poetry no longer focuses on deep, dark emotions and coldness and sadness and things like that.I have found that my poetry now reflects on my interesting topics,, which is something I have also found pride in. Early on in the year I posted one about a soldier, which, now that I look back at it, is terrible compared to some of my newer poems, like this one (yes, it is an older post, but the poem is actually from a time much more recent). I am not saying that my poetry is the best, though. I am constantly reading others’ poems and mentally attacking myself for not being ‘good enough’.
My vocabulary has also improved greatly. Instead of saying something like, “She had really tan skin, which showed that she spent a lot of time in the sun,” I would say something like “Her skin looked like light syrup, gleaming in the sunlight she spent so many tiring hours working in.” Or, if it was a poem, I would say something like, “The sun beats down on California kissed skin.” Though I often criticize my own works (“Oh, jeez, that conversation is completely dull” or “This poem is totally unoriginal”), I do acknowledge that, when I truly want to, I can use fairly interesting words.
The life of my blog has been full of ups and downs, like one of those roller coasters that goes in loops and makes half the passengers throw up.
