Hello world!
I am aware that the title of this blog is a whole lot like saying "I don't know how to speak English," in the very same language I am speaking. But it's far from the first time I've taken an interest in blogging - I spent my teenage years in their entirety trying to figure this whole thing out - but it turns out much the same each time; I sign up, I consider what I'd talk about, I can't decide and I leave the site untouched.
I don't particularly like hearing myself talk, and I change my mind on just about everything every other day. To run a blog, to talk and talk and talk to no one in particular about nothing in particular and change my mind and leave the old entries up... That's out of my comfort zone for sure. But it's something I've always thought would be fun. Somewhere in between Lilly's post on New Year's Day - a plea to get everyone back into blogging (shown below) - and watching my feed fill up with friends' blogs... I decided to take the leap!
Ultimately it was this blog, by my mutual Nat (hi Nat!), that stood out to me and made me want to go for it. Reading it, I was struck by how I've felt similarly, and I've tried on various occasions to pick up blogging. LiveJournal, WordPress, even Tumblr which I still use regularly but I don't exactly "blog" there. I found it easy to drown out anything I had to say in reblogs, and most other blogging sites felt too intimidating. But these days writing always intimidates me and posting intimidates me more and I don't think it should stress me out to think about expressing myself.
I miss when I was younger, and I would feel creatively and socially fulfilled posting terrible half-baked writing and doodles for all 3 of my friends to see. I hardly have an audience, nor do I want to, but everything feels more high stakes now. As though there is a certain standard I have to meet, and nothing I make is ever good enough to meet the nebulous standard of the internet.
I'd like to get back to when the internet was a place, rather than an overwhelming specter burning a hole into my pocket at all times. I live in a city full of restaurants with QR code menus and tap to pay systems, digital tickets to live events. That might just be the world we live in now. Sometimes I meet up with my friends and at a lull in the conversation we all find ourselves reaching for our phones. Sometimes they are already on their phones before the lull begins. I don't know what to do about it, I don't even particularly have anything to say about it.
So, maybe it's nostalgia that's making me want to start a blog, properly this time. But I want to mend my relationship with writing, and with the internet. I want to stop having ideas and concepts and start making things with them. Maybe it'll work out this time!
