I reserved this blog in order to gauge interest on a blogging project I am considering. Ever since I was a child, I have felt the compulsion to document the goings on of my day-to-day life. In 2001, at age Fifteen, I started a series of journals that I called “Darkest Dreams and Tales of Mystery”. Over the course of the next five years I journaled religiously. All told, I filled twenty five volumes with the ultra-melodramatic ramblings of my adolescence. By 2004, my archives started to become quite heavy and burdensome. I switched to blogging at http://soulwindows.blogspot.com in the fall of that year, and have been running the same domain ever since.
(Of course, there are major disadvantages to putting all of your recollections in digital format… In the fall of 2007, I lost a great deal of my archives. I’m still not certain whether that lost was due to malice, or electronic glitch.)
When I was Fifteen, I sincerely believed that I would grow up and publish DD&TM as books. I felt that my dedicated documentation of the human condition from the perspective of a teenager growing up in a post 9/11 world would be like GOLD.
Of course, going back and reading these things as an adult is quite traumatic. It’s embarrassing, really. I have found that my teenaged rants were equally brilliant and melodramatic.
I am fast approaching the ten-year anniversary of the date which I committed myself unto this journaling tradition.
In part, I feel like I owe it to my Fifteen Year Old Self to do SOMETHING with all these heavy volumes I’ve been lugging around for years. I am considering transcribing all those journal entries into blog format. The catch being, I will post each of the entries in chronological order – from start to finish. It will be a flashback blog. Each day, I will blog the corresponding entry from my journal exactly ten years ago.
My journal series began July 3rd of 2001. Meaning, if I can drum up enough interest in this project, the blog series will begin July 3rd of 2011.
I’m not going to lie. The entire project is going to be a humiliating experience for myself. It’s embarrassing enough for most people to look at photographs of themselves ten years ago… and I’m considering publishing my most secret thoughts from the most awkward years of my life.
There’s definitely some intriguing plot material in the series, that’s for sure. The dissolution of a forbidden romance between two teenage girls… The prisoner mentality of a homeschooler… Secret crushes… Insecure fits of self-loathing. Social commentary… Angry rants about the “injustices” committed by my parents.
I’m worried that it might stir up a little controversy with some of the folks I mention in my entries. It’s been a whole decade… Hopefully everyone is mature enough to concede that the statute of limitations has long since passed. I won’t use last names, if any of you are concerned.
This is definitely a time when I am looking for reader feedback. I don’t care if you’re just a lurker. I don’t care if you accidentally stumbled on this page looking for fetish porn. If you’re reading these words RIGHT NOW, I want to know: In your opinion… Should I do it?
I’m looking forward to your input,
Manda
