Now, don't get me wrong, I totally agree that the word sounds uncomfortably like the onomatopoeic version of losing one's lunch. But it's just been "blogging" for too long to really get the word out of my head. Because when Finney started his E-chron, I re-opened my blogger site (after much comment spam on the privately hosted site), and there, in the corner it says "Member since December 2001". This is actually deceiving. I've been a member of Blogger since December 9, 2000 - but I changed my username. So coming up this December, I will have kept an online journal for 6 years (with more or less consistency).
It's seen many permutations, from a standard blogger layout, to my earliest dabblings in HTML, to a full hand coded site, to a move onto my own domain (www.amar-prestar.org), and then to LiveJournal, and then back to blogger, in another standard blogger layout - mostly because I"m too lazy to learn the new blogger tags. I still cross post between blogger and LJ though, since I know people in both places.
What's funny is to go back and look at the old posts - from when I was a Junior in highschool. Posts about classes and tests (not much changing there, I am still a student, after all), quotes and bits of poetry, stuff about Lord of the Rings (not much changed there either), and my random musings on stuff. More ranting though. I go back and read them and sometimes I think "wow - I really was pretty on top of things for a 16 year old". and other times I want to bonk my 16 year old self with a nerf bat and tell me to get over it.
The first real journal hiatus I took was during/after an abusive relationship. The second, when I just dwindled down because of being too busy and not really having seen or talked to any of the people in months. On and off through college I've written bits and pieces. Mostly just daily life. Occasionally something that I've seen or heard. Rarely my "thoughts" on something. I used to track my journal hits too (ooo! I had 25 people look at this page today!), but funny, I don't want to anymore. When I started playing Warcraft, even though I thought I would write more since I was writing stories and RP, I stopped writing almost completely.
And then I ran into the Defenders of Valor - a guild that doesn't exist in that form anymore, but whose members are still a writing group of that name, with forums and storylines and characters. I found that, through them, I wanted to write again - but not just about whether or not my dorkwad professor took a point off of this or that because he wont give perfect scores (which admittedly, I still do), but about things I see and things I've done and things I think. And things that the characters that I've worked with for the last year and a half have seen and done and thought. And they're probably not good stories - definitely not worthy of being published, but the more I write them... the more ideas I have. The more I look at the world from the standpoint of seeing what in it I can write down, the more things I see as being noteworthy (pun intended). The change didn't happen overnight - it took several months of talking to and reading and being inspired, and it's still occurring, but I really am thinking of myself more as a writer than I ever have before.
And someday, the 30 year old me will come back and look at the things that 22 year old me is posting, and probably have the same reaction. "Lauren, you know, sometimes you really get it. And sometimes I just want to whack you with a book and tell you to get on with it!"
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