I've been thinking for a while about signing off of this thing, and now, I think it's time. As I've grown older, I've begun to cherish what privacy I can still call my own. That doesn't mean I'll stop writing. I've decided that nothing can ever stop that. Heaven knows I have enough empty notebooks lying about to guilt trip me into rambling over hill and dale with pen and paper.
I made this blog on a whim when I was a junior in high school. Looking back, I cringe at my skewed priorities and sentences-ending prepositions. Beyond the prose, however, I'm much more deeply ashamed of who I was--that scrawny little kid with an ego the size of the Milky Way. I'm still a bit like that, more than I would like to admit. In a way, I feel like blogging has become a bit of an ego-stroking activity--Hey, world! Check out what I did today! Here's a story about my childhood that I hope is funny and witty and super, super cool!
I've only ever shared this blog with a few friends, and that was at the very beginning. It was never meant to be anything big. I wasn't diving into the TMI world of social media to get attention. I just thought I'd like to have something I could scroll through when I'm old and the world runs out of trees for paper printing. In that sense, I think this blog has served its purpose. I really cherish my memories of high school, especially those of the relationships I had that now are gone. I get to look back on them with a mixture of fondness, regret, and no little self-loathing, which I suppose was part of the plan all along.
The bottom line, though, is that I'm tired. Although (nearly) daily blogging has forced me to write regularly, too much of it has been forced and falsified and glammed up for the likes of a strange, vaguely threatening public. That, I think, has been the worst of all, stifling my thoughts in a truly pathetic attempt at concealing private thoughts and stories that never should have been voiced at all. I'm trying to return focus to what I'm doing with my life, which ultimately is not my own. I need to slow down enough to grow and learn.
I'll be taking most of this blog down throughout the week, stripping it down to what I'd always hoped it would be: a focus on my writing.
It's been a good run, and I'm sad to see it come to an end. Like so many things, though, it's become an exercise in passing. That version of me has been dead some time now, and I believe it's about time to rise and shoulder the responsibility I've been given.
So it goes.
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!”
~C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
