Mindstride: A Primer

Ah. Feels good to be back in the old chair again.

Hi there. I’m T.

“T”, of course, is short for a full name, but maybe I’ll tell you that later. I’m extremely identifiable by my name, and I’ve always appreciated my anonymity.

This blog is a third incarnation of a chronicle of my life—my long-term goals, my interests and hobbies, my thoughts, dreams, and other cliché stuff.

I first started blogging in February 2005, when I was around seventeen, pushing eighteen. I had an old Xanga account—ha. I still have the account, and the blog is still up, but I stopped updating it—I think the last posts are from sometime in 2007. If you want to look at them (and laugh along with me), the address is xanga.com/princessfedora.

Aside from feeling ready to move on from Xanga (at the time, I was just hopping onto the Myspace bandwagon), I fell into a point at my life where I just wasn’t really sure what to say any more. For some reason, I felt stretched for subject matter. To a certain degree, I still feel this way. My Xanga blog was about current events, tangential thoughts, and Michael Jackson. Yes, really. That Michael Jackson. As an ardent fan (to this day), I found that there was actually a fairly active fan community on Xanga, where other young fans found a place to discuss his impact on our lives in a positive, supportive place. I actually met (and still talk to) some of my closest fan friends through Xanga.

After Xanga, I started posting blogs on Myspace. The address is here, if you’d like to see. The funny thing about Myspace though, is that blogging is probably one of the last things people really do on that site. It’s kind of like Groups or the Forums. Utterly useless. Who joins groups on Myspace?

Interestingly, I didn’t have a problem being one of only a few people who ever read my blog. It served as an effective outlet for my thoughts, even though I have a hand-written diary. I guess this was part of the problem, though. After a while, my Myspace posts turned into a pit of self-pity and adolescent angst. I mean, I never cut myself, I never wrote dark lyrics or poetry, I never did any of the things that people associate with angsty blogs. But my posts became tainted with a sort of negative vibe. School was getting to me. My job hunt was getting to me. But the most pressing of my concerns was my self-doubt, my fear that I was not, and could never be, the writer my heart longs to be.

As much as I’d like to say that I’ve gotten past that fear, I will freely admit that I have not.

My return to blogging is sort of my way of working to overcome that, not to mention my way of making up for the time wasted in worrying about writing instead of just writing. Now is the time, maybe more than ever, that I cast my doubts aside and work toward my goals with a renewed sense of ambition. After all, I’m not getting any younger. ;) Please feel free to join me along the way.

One last thing: today is my birthday. I’m twenty-two years old today, and holy crap, the years are actually starting to add up. I mention this because I would like to present myself with a challenge. All I want in life, at this point, is progress. Here’s to hoping that by my next birthday, I’m closer to where I want to be, and that this entry marks the beginning of real efforts—emotional, physical, psychological efforts-- to get there.