Over a decade ago, I began a very personal blogging project. This was circa 1997, when blogging was still a relatively new thing and the Internet wasn’t spawning a thousand new blogs a second (or whatever we’re up to now). I was inspired to start it by an Asian girl who went by the name of Chunk. Chunk overshared the minutiae of her life in the lengthy, intimate way that’s since been largely overshadowed by tweets and Facebook status updates. She had no thesis, no purpose, no agenda; just the charming self-absorption of someone youthful and articulate, trying to lend insight and meaning to the drab circumstances of everyday life.
When I started that project, I was pretty certain no one would care — I was and am, after all, not a cute Asian girl, despite all my best efforts — but to my surprise, people did. People emailed. People commented. For a short time, people would occasionally recognize me on the street, which freaks me out even in retrospect. That would never happen now, amidst the din of a billion cleverly-produced Youtube videos, but back then, this was all relatively novel. I never attained the Internet fame of, say, Jennicam (how’s that for a hoary old reference?), but I did all right.
Chunk’s site is long gone, as is mine; I took it down some time ago and am grateful for its absence and obscurity. I’m not even going to mention its name (although you could probably find it quite easily with a little effort), because it’s a thing whose time has come and gone. Sure, nothing is ever truly lost on the internet, but I like to think I’ve come pretty close. Mostly, I’m afraid that if I read it again, my eyes would roll back so far in my head that I’d get detached retinas.
Stick with me a little longer through my vague nostalgia, this is going somewhere.
Recently an old friend of mine asked me about that project, and told me it had inspired her to start her own introspective journey — although hers has more practical value, in that she’s trying to motivate herself to write regularly and mine was a highly dubious search for personal profundity, taking the red pill and seeing how deep my own navel went. I find it curious and gratifying to inspire someone at all, much less thirteen-plus years after the fact. It’s good to know that my defunct old self-absorbed blog served a purpose after all, albeit posthumously.
Anyway, this is a very long-winded way of saying that I decided it was time to start a new blog. My old site, dimfuture.net, has been suffering from an identity crisis since about 2001, and it’s hard for me to even think about giving that old jalopy another overhaul. I decided it was time for a fresh space, dedicated to one subject: the art and craft of writing.
So here we are. The world may not need another writing blog, but it’s getting one anyway. If I manage to entertain, then I’ll consider the whole thing worthwhile. If I somehow manage to inspire, then that’s a big heap of delicious gravy on top.
I’m still not a cute Asian girl, though, for which I am truly sorry.