To New Beginnings

Beginnings are important. Starting something new, or restarting something that has been a point of frustrated contention within yourself, will have its inevitable pitfalls. The first time I started a 'blog' it was over on Live Journal. I used it sort of like how I use Facebook today: as a way to keep up with friends. Later, I tried moving over to blogger, partially because I was bored at a job where I was pretty miserable (though in hindsight was pretty good for a solid paycheck and hours) and for some perceived sense of growing up and accolades. At the time blogging was a big deal, a way to be some sort of runaway hit that resulted in me becoming Internet famous. At the time, I wasn't hugely aware of my motives, but looking back, that's pretty much what i was doing. 

The first post was very carefully crafted to sound airy, quirky, and thoroughly not me. At the time I was trying this persona of what is not, something that I have done for most of my life. My niece tells me that picking a type of look is known as an esthetic, and what I was going for at the time was Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl. I have many friends whose online personeas make them seem super happy and carefree with their ridiculous pictures and frequent adventures. I tried writing in the same way that Cracked does, using fun images to break up my writing and create content that was funny, snarky, and clever. Ultimately, that didn't work out well. I tried using a blog post naming convention, which I shamelessly stole from Friends, I attempted to try on who I wanted my online self to be and in turn who I wanted to be.

Like most things having to do with me trying on a new me, it didn't work. The person who was inspiring me dropped out of my life and I fell off of the blogging wagon again. 

Many years later, that blog is thoroughly defunct. Before making the decision to not post over there and start this blog, I thought about restarting there. I've read and re-read the posts and have come to the conclusion that I'm just not that girl anymore.

"'Course that star struck girl is already someone I miss," Ani DiFranco

Why am I starting this now? Because I've been toying with the idea of a blog. I miss LiveJournal (and the friends I made there), but I know that I can't always go back when you want to. I'm a drastically different person now. I've been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, something that I am actually happy to have named. Being a Borderline means that my moods go every which way. That on Monday I could be on top of the world, fulfilled by what I am doing and getting chores done, and feeling loved by my community. Tuesday, I could be in a deep dark depression, feeling like I am completely isolated and unable to do anything about it. Living with Borderline is hard. Living WITH a Borderline is hard. 

Part of living with Borderline is that I'm in therapy twice a week, once with my personal therapist and another with a skills group based out of WJCS working with Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Part of that therapy is becoming more mindful, and part of that mindfulness for me is journaling.

I'm starting this now for a few reasons. Journaling is hugely important for the success of me. ANother is that Borderline has SUCH a bad rap and I want to be public about my illness as well as teach people that mental illness CAN be normalized and shouldn't be something people are afraid of discussing. 

I'm partially because of the Cred Bureau (once we go live, I'll hopefully write about it), a movement of female and non-gender binary folk who verb games in some way. The Cred Bureau is something that came about because my partner Avie and a few others came together to try and combat the lack of room for female game designers, it quickly opened up to accept the non-binary folk and moved on from there. 

I'm partly doing because I have thoughts on so many things that I want to put out there: feminism, film theory and analysis, LARP adventures, trials with make-up... there is a lot I want to say and and writing about it on a consistent basis should be good for me. 

Mainly, I want to be writing again. While on LJ, I posted almost daily, working on content and thoughts that I threw out there for people to respond to. I wrote more short stories then as well and I can only assume that was partially due to the frequency with which I was engaging on a blog-esque level. 

I started writing this blog post while standing in line at Taco Bell, 5 days out from Metatopia, the gaming industry's premier event of the year for developers. I have finally gotten the nerve to do this thing and hopefully I'll have another blog post next Sunday (did you know you can schedule that shit so it just posts? Freakin' magic man) and I'll get this thing moving.

No promises. ✩