Why does it seem that as you get older, the time goes quicker? Well, in some respects. I found myself thinking yeterday “December 1st already? I must get all the Christmas decorations out today.” Then the next minute I find myself saying “When was it we went to see U2:3D on Imax in Birmingham? It feels likes AGES ago? March? Seriously?! It feels farther back than that!!”
I’ve been finding myself thinking about how I used to keep my diary and wish it translated onto my blog a bit more than it does. I think I had more to write about at thirteen than I do now. Which is worrying! I wish I could write more about things. I used to keep a thing going on a site called Ourstory. You’d be asked a whole set of questions about your life that you had to answer. I worked on it for ages. It became a bit cumbersome in the end and I haven’t done anything with it in over a year. I loved the piece I wrote about losing my virginity and my sexual awakening. It didn’t quite read as I wanted it to in the end, but I loved putting it “out there” as it were. I really love writing and wish I was far better at it than I am. I love reading books and always have from a young age. I admire anyone who can write a book. Everyone is supposedly meant to have a book in them. I wish I felt I had one. I dare say mine would be more – whatever is thought to be universally a crap book – less To Kill A Mocking Bird. That was Harper Lee’s only book – and what a book to have in you! I suppose keeping a diary/journal/blog has been my way of writing a book all these years. There have been LONG gaps in between. My initial reasoning for keeping a diary was nothing to do with self-promotion or any sense of ego. It was prompted by me reading Anne Frank’s diary at thirteen and feeling as though the diary, for her, was a way of combating loneliness. Which is why I started mine. I even used a similar ploy to Anne Frank and referred to my diary in the second person and gave it a name, Pet, much in the way Anne Frank wrote to “Kitty” and referred to all of us readers in the second person. It was like letter-writing and gave me the sense that I was writing to a friend. One that I obviously didn’t have in real life at the time. But one I desperately wanted.I see the blog as another friend, in much the same way as I kept my dairy all those years ago. The only slight worrying problem with the blog is that I am aware I have an audience! Be it ever so small. I know people are reading, unlike when I kept my diary, which was a totally private thing. I don’t mind that so much – knowing there are people reading. It has its advantages. It keeps me motivated to keep the blog up-to-date. But on the odd occasion there are some SUPER private things I’d like to talk about that I wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing here.
It’s odd because I don’t consider myself too much of a private person – HELLO – I have a blog for Pete’s sake! And not just that, my own domain names: www.larelle.co.uk and www.larelleread.co.uk (both with my blog page). But there are thoughts and events that you do want to keep to yourself. My diary probably was incredibly cheap therapy! That, and talking to myself. Another thing that I’ve done for a VERY long time. And another thing that combats loneliness, I suppose.
I don’t know where this post is headed. I suppose I just wanted to air that I wish I had more flair at writing. Even if my time on Earth is boring, I wish I could at least write about it with flair. Or write down more of my inner thoughts. After all, what did Anne Frank (bless her heart) have to write about from day to day other than the mundaneness of being trapped within an attic for a home, sharing a confined space with her family, the Van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer for two years? But she brought it to life. All that mundaneness. All that claustrophobia and tedium. All the fear that at any moment they could be discovered and captured, which mores the better is what eventuated. But without it, I dare say we wouldn’t have been blessed with her incredible diary.
I wish I had the writing prowess that she had at 13/14 that I still don’t have at 38!
