There will never be a shortage of JournalCon anecdotes that I can share. I figure that by the time I run out, it'll be time for JCon 5, and there will be a whole new slew of stories to laugh over. But I can only share them a bit at a time. Every so often, a memory will pop into my head, and it will be so dear to me that I'll need to record it here, for everyone to see, so that it may become real, and I can live it again.
I've always admired anyone with the discipline to be able to tell their stories in a 'then we did this, and then she said that, and then we laughed and then we went there, and boy was it fun' kind of way. Honestly, the amount of organised thought that it takes is incredible, but poppets, my mind just won't flow like that. It's all a jumble of goodness and joy, and it all has to come out at once. I swear, the only reason half my tales poke their head out is because if I don't stem the flow, they will break through the dam and shatter into a million little adjectives all over the floor, incomprehensible, their magic lost forever.
Really, I'm protecting my memories. If I don't make the attempt at sharing, then I don't take the risk of mangling them with ill-chosen words.
And if all that don't squawk of pure chicken, I don't know what does!
If there's one thing I came to understand last weekend in Texas, it's the risks people take daily with their sites, their journals, their diaries, their blogs. Writers are putting themselves out there everyday, going on political tirades, sharing horrible and ugly pieces of news, offering the absolute balance of their lives - the good along with the bad. Jobs have been lost, friends have been banished, husbands and wives have turned their angry heads. Weight has been lost. Weight has been gained! God knows, weight has been gained, but some of us (ahem) are too afraid to share those particular details.
And the time! The time that has been devoted to each word that's posted, so that an everyday entry about a drive home from work suddenly turns into something that someone else wishes they wrote.
And then, I look back over the last year of my own little piece of cyber real estate, and see how much I haven't told, how much more I could have made of this, or that, or the other.
So many words lost. So much I didn't even try. Will it change? God, I hope so. I hope I have the courage to take risks with my sentences, to play with syllables until they lilt and flow with a cadence of their own.
There is so much I don't know how to do.
When I started to dance, I knew nothing. No, really, I barely knew my left foot from my right. Cuban motion was something that may as well have been part of a communist regime, and salsa was nothing more than something in which to dip a nacho. Then I took a few lessons, and learned a few steps and a few figures, which started me moving with a little more grace. Top that off with a few more lessons, and I was ready to put my face to the sun and scream out, "By golly, I can dance!" And then I took a few more lessons, and understood that, by golly, there was so much more to learn, so much I didn't know.
Really, it's all very distressing, poppets. In fact, I don't know what's worst - the idea that there's so much more I could be doing in this little box, or the fact that I just spent an entire entry talking about my diary, in my diary.
Ew! Quickly, quickly... focus! Purses! Shoes! Earrings! Purses, dammit! I feel pretty... oh, so pretty...!
Really, all that thought. It hurts the head! Self-awareness... As if!
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