Blog: Take Two

The last time I wrote a blog, it created waves within my world. I was a teenager, on the verge of turning Sweet 16, and had a brilliant idea. During my Sophomore year at my small-town high school, I had gone from preppy cheerleader to the rebellious teen that wore thirty too many bracelets on each wrist. Along with my flat-ironed hair, and thrift store tees (which I still rock out in at the age of 23), I had this pissed-off attitude like everyone else my age.

What made me different in my class is my little red journal (LRJ) that I carried around dutifully during that Sophomore year. It was the winter of 2002 and I had this burst of writing that I could not control. I have to admit that this obsession with the journal had everything to do with the Princess Diaries. I admired the way Mia carried around her journal and made her life seem like a flowing diary. I wanted that. So I grabbed my nearest empty spiral one night and started furiously writing.

I always knew I loved to write. I still remember my English teacher's assignment in third grade which started out fun. Color a scarecrow. We were tricked! I colored it so crazy that I had every single shade in the Crayola box on that damn thing. Then she asked us to describe it. Oh, how I fell in love with descriptive writing that day.

Back to the story of the LRJ -- I carried it around obsessively. If I was in history class, I titled the page, "March 22, History class, 2:08 p.m." You get the point. So with diligent writing, I chronicled every thought and feeling, no matter how unimportant it was to anyone else. I was determined. Then one night, I thought, "Hey, I should post this entire thing on Blogger." Great idea.

Until I copied it directly; no name changing. What a great idea. I only convinced myself to do so to keep it true and accurate. After all, blogs can be very much about yourself (as this one might turn out to be, no doubt.) I spent days and weeks copying words from my journal, typing endlessly into the night. Might I add, this was also a popular time for MSN Messenger. Everyone who was no one had at least five chats going at once on that thing!

Naturally, I had changed my status name (when that was the million-dollar idea and cutting-edge at the time -- no FB statuses yet!) to an interesting lyric from my all-time favorite band, Rooney. Those fateful lyrics caused the whole LRJ thing to spiral out of control. "Bow down Daisy Duke" were the words that caused one of the biggest embarrassments in my teen years.

A certain male was curious as to what exactly my status with the lyrics was referring to, and upon searching (no Googling then!) he stumbled upon my very own blog. I must have quoted these lyrics directly in my blog to discuss the theme of the song in relation to a certain person. He soon found his first name in several different entries (at least I left off last names, which I thought was safe enough).

The blog definitely would never have been linked to me, since I, of course, never mentioned my name. In the world wide web, I never thought anyone would actually run across it, anyway. I only had a few views until he found it. But then, he devoured every single word of it. Yay! I finally had an avid reader of my journal, despite my insistent "CLOSE THAT BLOG, NOW!" pleas.

So, here we are seven years later. Let's hope this doesn't happen again. Despite this writing fiasco a lucky seven ago, I ended up with a print journalism degree. I'm willing to give this a shot again, since I currently do not have any formal writing responsibilities in my position at work. I need an outlet. I think it's time to start a new Little Red Journal.