Concept journals. Briefly considered. Soon forgotten.

I've been doing online writing for about three and a half years now, on and off, most of that time being devoted to a LiveJournal, some of that time being devoted to a Blogger blog. The LiveJournal's been good to me, but lately I've been thinking of either moving on or diverting my attention elsewhere. I think this is partially due to the fact that I recently hit a small landmark when I posted my 1000th post. 1000 posts to a single online journal. That's a lot, I think. I mean, I haven't done any statistical studies of journals or anything, so I can't prove that that's a lot. It sure feels like a lot. Considering that those 1000 posts took me about two and a half years to do, that averages out to something like one point something posts per day.[*] That's over a post each day! For over two years! And sure some of those posts are good[**], but, really, wow, that's an awful lot of me saying "I wrote today" and/or "I just drank some coffee" and/or "Wow breathing in oxygen is totally awesome the way it makes you live".[***]

Another reason I've been thinking I need to move on, is that I'm tired of the Internet. I find the Internet exhausting. It's not just that I spend so much time on it, but that the content of it is just exhausting. Right now, I can get just about anything I want or need, information-wise. All I have to do is open a new tab in my browser, put some words like "italian art" or "refrigeration mechanics" or "anime fiends who dress up as huge-breasted anthrokitties" and I'll have at least some information on the topic of my choice. I have access to samples of just about any type of music I might feel like listening to but won't, the opinions of easily 48 billion people who I can't keep up with, a million recipies for romantic dinners I'll never get up the energy to cook, and more news than I could ever expect Dan Rather to read to me even if he were granted immortal super powers and the television equivalent of academic tenure.
[*4] So I guess you could say that, when I say I'd like to move on, what I really mean is, I'd like to yank the DSL cable out of the wall and go outside and sit in a dandelion patch for a while and think about nothing in particular. But, I live in Cleveland, it's the middle of January, and the dandelions aren't due to bloom for about five months, so until then, the only possible response to this quandry is to move on to the creation of a new blog. Which, despite the presence of who knows how many logic pretzels by this point of this post, makes some sense to me, though not enough to really warrant a detailed explanation.[*5]

So, a new blog. But, why? To what end? What would be the theme, the style, the angle? I'm creating a blog, I'm thinking before I created the blog, because I'm tired of the Internet and it being so full of stuff that I feel morally obligated to fill it with yet more of my own material. What material are I going to put there, I ask myself, a lot, coming up with multiple ideas for high-concept journals, most of which I considered briefly for the amazing ideas they were, then immediately decided I'd never get my act together long enough to actually do them:

• A first-person journal told without a single use of the word "I".
• 52 posts, 500 words a piece, one epic story.
• Photos of my keychain hard drive in strange places.
• Imaginary conversations between myself, Nick Cage, and a ball of wax.
• EXTREME! POLISHED! ESSAYS!
• Daily fan mail, written to (or by) Nick Cage.
  
• Actual references to, like, news, and culture, and stuff.

And while, sure, the last idea is obviously the least valid of the above, it's still the one I'm leaning towards. Because...there's a lot of stuff out there. And....I have ideas about some of that stuff. And...there's room enough on the Internet for my ideas. And I've done enough personal stuff for a while, I think, and there's always the LiveJournal for stories about my cats[*6] or funny stories people tell me about peeing themselves.

But, honestly, I don't know, for sure. Mostly I'm looking for a change. Something different, sometimes. So, you know, tune in, if you like. It's quiet here right now. I'm kind of cool with that. It's a nice change, for now.[*7]
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[*] And yes, I did take some months off in the middle, and I did, believe it or not, hit some other slow points, so the figure quoted above is in fact low, and oh dear god, if the concept of this journal is going to turn out to be "Uses footnotes," I'm going to need to find a way to do this that isn't manual.

[**] I'm thinking about collecting the highlights out of the journal and packaging them up with some other stuff, stuff that's either on my hard drive right now or stuff that I'd like to push out of my brain and onto my hard drive, into some kind of book, something that I might be able to drop on the doorsteps of small presses who might consider publishing such a random collection of essays and true stories and such, and even if they consider it only for a split second before they order me off their property because it's just weird to show up on someone's doorstep like that, it might still be a fun experience. At least until the bit with the shotguns and the attack dogs.

[***] The LiveJournal's been fairly informal, in comparison to the Blogger blog that came before it, which was more of an attempt to write semi-polished pieces of prose that people might actually want to spend time reading. Of course now I look at it and I think, eegads, even I don't want to spend time reading it, but that might just be the whole looking back at things you wrote a long time ago thing kicking in. Because it has been a long time since I wrote that stuff, and I've written a lot of other stuff since then, and, well. I like to think I've learned a thing or two since then. Maybe.

[*4] Seriously how cool would that be. Dan Rather takes the news desk in his hands one day and flings it across the studio before screaming at the camera, "Yeah, we messed up, but what are you gonna do about it, chump?" Then he'd grab splintered wood from the exploding desk and kill some vampires. There's got to be some in the industry. I mean, if I was a vampire, I'd sure want to work for the evening news.

[*5] Though I will say it's partially Maureen's fault, because she picked up a LiveJournal, through which I learned about her blog, through which I learned that my old Blogger account was still active, or at least, it still existed, which lead me to learn that yes, that thing did happen a while back where Google bought Blogger, and unlocked the Plus features for everybody, so I could put the blog on my own Web site, which was way easier than my half-baked plan of installing blogging software of my own, were I to decide to do so, etc etc etc, next thing you know, here we are, here I am, here you are, lovely. Blame McQ for this. I do.

[*6] I have no cats.

[*7] Of course, also note that, this journal is, indeed, on my web site, which is one clue to the existence of another reason I've felt like moving on: the desire to create a blog that will conquer the blogosphere, win awards, gain a broad devoted following, and generally wreak havoc on the nation's political, literary, and weather climate. I admit it. I do. I want to take over the world. Which is why I'll eventually retitle this blog to "Me & Dan Rather: Kicking Your Ass".