Hi everyone. I’m finally back to do my first proper post as promised and it's all about what led me to start up a new blog…
I love writing. Especially about things happening in my life (cue the narcissism). Ever since I was very young I often found myself narrating events in my head as they happened to me. Then I would spend seemingly endless time, after the fact, rewording the event details. Again in my head. I dunno why, as a kid, I never thought to write down my thoughts like a normal little girl. Probably because I was a weird child. For real though, it’s quite possible that I came out of the womb thinking too much.
When I got a little older, just shy of puberty, I found out that some kids in the US and abroad kept diaries to store their thoughts. I was living in Jamaica and my experiences could not be more far removed from American kids yet I decided to have one too.
Now, I imagine that American girls my age probably had diaries that looked like this one.
Me? I took one of the free yearly agendas my parents had gotten from some store.
Yes, one of those agendas with very structured but limited space to write down short to-do lists and meetings. It was certainly not the right book for a diary. But use it I would. I declared to myself that it would be my secret diary.
I don’t remember what my first post was about. I do, however, remember what I wrote in the next two entries, written within days of each other. My second entry was a mean-spirited rant about a cousin who, not surprisingly, had wronged me in some seemingly large measure on the day I wrote it. The third entry in my oh so treasured diary was about a crush I had on a boy at school aka MY BIG SECRET. It felt nice to get things off my chest and write things out. The night after I wrote about my crush, I put the agenda in its hiding place between my mattress and bed frame. I made sure to push the book in as far as possible so that it was situated near the middle of the bed.
It is here that I should mention that EVERYONE in Jamaica knows that one of the best places to hide your valuables is under your mattress.
Clearly, I forgot that this was common knowledge. In fact, I thought I had a great hiding place. Oh how wrong I was.
The very next day I was to quickly learn that writing my secrets in a diary was a big mistake. It was a mistake you see because I am the oldest of three girls. My sisters did not (and still don’t) understand the concept of personal space and privacy. They are always digging through my belongings, wanting to wear my clothes, use my things and borrow my possessions (often without permission). As younger sisters tend to do. Thus, despite the pains I took to hide the book, one of my sisters found the diary and read it. Much to my fury and embarrassment. That day when my entire being was burning with anger and shame at the knowledge that she knew (SHE KNEW!) my thoughts, I swore to never write down my most personal thoughts again. Because writing them down meant that someone would find them. And for me, a very private person, that prospect was intolerable.
Needless to say, my diary-writing pastime was quite short-lived.
However, writing has and will always be a passion of mine. So while it was more than a decade afterwards before I ever wrote down my thoughts in a diary-of-sorts again, I took many a writing-heavy course where I got the release I needed. A few years ago, after I graduated from university, I started a blog but I stopped posting when life got too busy. Nowadays I share snippets of my thoughts on Facebook. I will shamelessly admit that I am a Facebook Jezebel. Added to that is the fact that, while I am a recent MBA graduate, I have yet to roll in any dough and am currently unemployed. It's no surprise then that, with more time on my hands, these days my Facebook status updates get the dreaded “...See more” link tagged on them more and more often. It was time to do something.
So here I am. With a new blog. Idle and writing.
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