Musings From A Reformed Attention Whore
I graduated a little over a month ago and since then, I’ve managed to turn in a few writing assignments and two episodes of my Sex Really web series while traveling sans wifi. Not too shabby, but I haven’t had much time to think or much time to do substantive first-person writing, the sort of stuff that could potentially help me craft a memoir. In other words, I am well on my way to not starving (thanks to a few regular freelance checks in the mail) but my energy should really be focused on trying to write the bajillionth draft of the book proposal I’ve been ignoring for the entire length of my relationship with Patrick.
I am not blaming the Roomie for my lack of creative output. But due to the various controversies that have ensued since we met, I prefer to keep him and our relationship off my blog and unconnected to my online identity. In general, that’s been a good policy when it comes to my friends as well. You know all those gals with whom I partied and puked throughout all of college? Yeah, they grew up, got jobs, and would really appreciate it if I could refrain from broadcasting their walk-of-shames to thousands of people. Which I can understand, despite my employer-less status. Of course, this wasn’t always the case, not when I was regularly blogging about boys and booze. (Remind me some time to tell the story of the Reality Television Show That Never Was. We were young, impressionable, and terribly misguided, but there are really no excuses.) And because this wasn’t the case, Sex and the Ivy got a brilliant two-year run, in which all sorts of embarrassing and endearing anecdotes about my friends and crushes were relayed with gory details intact. But none of us are 19 anymore, and honestly, I don’t even have any gory details to share (unless you count menstruation stories, which I really think you could do without).
And due to this combination of Growing The Fuck Up and Keeping A Low Profile, the previous two years has gone unchronicled and my blogging has evolved to detached commentary on gender and sexuality. These are subjects which are certainly worthy of attention, but I used to approach them from a much more personal perspective and revealed too much about myself in the process. I really don’t do that very often anymore. In fact, I actively try to avoid doing that. The problem is that you can’t really expect to write anything that’s even mildly close to “memoir” when you have no idea how to end a sentence that starts with the word “I”. As so many of my detractors like to remind me, I used to be a self-obsessed attention whore. I like to think that I still am, but perhaps, I’ve been letting myself go.
It’s time for a change, don’t you think? In the next few weeks, I will try to write (more) honestly about my life, which includes all these lovely insecurities which I’m sure will make you feel better about yours. I’ll post snippets from my old blog entries that are going into my book proposal and reference all those cringe-inducing drunken escapades that made my college years simultaneously memorable and hard to remember. I’ll also try to make a regular habit of keeping an off-line journal, perhaps my best chance at preserving thoughts without sacrificing privacy. The entire point of getting a Moleskine is to stimulate all those literary impulses that have been repressed for fear of having my privacy invaded and my personal life dissected. Sure, I could have tried (and did try) to keep secret online journals. But it’s hard to get myself to type up thoughts and send them into the blackhole of cyberspace when I could type up thoughts and send them into Google history. With a paper journal, there’s pretty much only the former option unless I die famous and worthy of posthumous publication. Let’s hope for the latter.
Otherwise, let’s hope the subjects of these Moleskine musings aren’t particularly litigious.
