On longevity
I’m coming up on my 10th year of blogging. Crazy, right? I’ve been putting my thoughts and fears and hopes and complaints out into the internet for ten (long) years. In an angsty, yet fleeting moment of maturity, I deleted my Xanga when I went off to college. I so badly wish I could see what 13 -18 year old Mayan was up to back then…what bands I liked (suspected: NOFX and Red Hot Chili Peppers), what alcohol I was claiming to be drinking but was definitely nowhere near touching (suspected: ‘voodka’ because I thought that’s how you spelled it), what I thought about my first boyfriend (suspected: …I can’t even imagine) and if I ever wrote about my (brief and tepid) foray with cutting (suspected: yes, but cryptically).
Blogging has given me all the feels for a really long time. These were my people. Always ready to connect and support virtually at a moment’s notice, though even now it always feels much more real than that. In high school, I had tons of friends on AIM who I didn’t know in real life but, virtually, we were so connected. I remember passing a high school in LA one time and saying to my dad “Oh, I have a friend who goes there.” He didn’t say anything at the time, but I’m sure he thought I was crazy—and maybe I was, er, am. I’m not sure why I’ve always had an itch to share my life with complete strangers, but something tells me it’s an always-home-alone-and-there-is-no-one-to-talk-to thing. The internet gave me a place to come home and unwind (in some cases, get wound up) after long days at school where I often lived on the fringe of different social circles, never completely accepted or dismissed by groups of girls. That was always the hardest—being invited to birthday parties because they needed the one girl to prank or pretending to be intently concentrated on my fingernails as I waited to be called last for kickball.
Now I’m waaaaaay down memory lane over here but the point is that I didn’t start blogging to have a big following or to post insufferable posts about my clothes or to complain about people or to launch a business—and I’m not faulting the people who have. I’ve always used my blog to talk and to share and to hope someone wants to listen. My blogs have never been a means to an end. They are so integral to my way of life that I literally don’t know how to live without blogging. It seems severe, but it’s really true. It’s a habit, like always brushing your teeth before you walk out the door (if this is not a habit of yours, please consider it because of reasons).
I think I have a lot of feelings because of my current quarter life crisis (which can be reserved for another post) but I just wanted to acknowledge that I’ve been here for what feels like forever and I just really like sitting here and observing everyone and their lives that are all running parallel but at different speeds. Every day is a new snapshot of your life and I like that. I hope that when my time with this blog is over, I keep it open, so I can revisit it and can be reminded of my funny haircut and how deeply in love I am with my life. I hope that you’ll do the same.
Always,
m.
As always, feel free to send messages or Q’s?
Notes
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evanithatsme likes this
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sometimesihavethoughts likes this
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sometimesihavethoughts said:
You are my people. Also… every time I drive through your neck of the woods I think- hey I have a friend that lives here! And feel slightly crazy, but also happy. Haha.
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sleepingtyger likes this
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brigiddnyc likes this
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travels-with-charley answered:
”..and observing everyone and their lives that are all running parallel but at different speeds.” I love that so much.
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