Awkward first steps: in my second blog post ever (January 3, 2004), I am already riddled with doubt, as I find myself without good material. I panic: if I post daily, will I resort to writing about the weather?
Eventually, I discover that I can write about the weather, or I can Write About The Weather. Eventually. But there are months when I worry: can I sustain this?
Happy anniversary to Ocean…
Is Ocean an extension of me? A small subset of nina expressions? Notably, I have never invited guest bloggers (kep doesn’t count)…
Happy anniversary selfish nina…
Hey, but I invited commenters this year!
Happy anniversary to me.
January 2nd, 2004, Ocean first popped up on the Net. A painless birth.
And now it’s been two years. AND I NEVER SKIPPED A DAY! People died, marriages crumbled, barren mountains beckoned and against all odds and perhaps for no good reason, each day I blogged, only once adjusting the clock by a couple of hours because while posting, I sort of kind of fell asleep at the computer and did not wake up til 2 am the next day. There, confession done with, let me go on.
If you don’t have anything to write about, why don’t you skip a day? Why force yourself to put something down? It’s your blog, you can write as often as you feel like it. Like, when you have something to say?
It is never the case that there is nothing to say about any particular day. Sometimes it takes a minute or two, okay, an hour or two. Once I must have taken (wasted?) three before I felt satisfied that a theme was good (enough) to develop into a (very short) story here on Ocean.
And so each day, I write.
I’m tacking onto this anniversary post a celebratory photo, taken just after midnight on New Year’s. What’s it like to live here, on this side of the ocean? What’s it like to put on striped hats and red white and blue leis? What’s it like to travel to Evanston just to eat dinner here at midnight? Ocean stuff. Pure Ocean material.
Just yesterday I got asked yet again (this time not in the context of blogging): why do you do things in such a crazy way? The answer? Obviously, to me, it doesn’t feel very crazy. Nutty people think themselves to be walking a straight line even as they zig zag all over the place.
Oh, and thank you. For reading. These daily posts. God, I can’t believe I’m still doing this. Okay, I can see the insanity. In a lucid moment that comes every once in a while. I can see it. But it still feels right.
