piecing it all together (or, why i blog)

if you are not anna, or sue, or a member of my direct family reading this blog, welcome.
i don't expect there to be more than three or four of you a year who accidentally stumble upon my page and skim it before moving on, but your fleeting presence raises some questions that i feel partially ready to address. i accept the challenge (although no one voiced it but myself) to--what? redeem? justify?--the space i occupy on the web.

this started as, and continues to be, the most important form of communication between anna and myself--we are two sisters divided by the distance between our respective cities and colleges, and we don't have the luxury of talking or skyping or texting each other as much as we would like--our free time rarely corresponds. so we blog. i speak only for myself, but this process consists mostly of recording significant (or mediocre) events or thoughts or ideas, and the social/political/academic commentaries found on most popular blogs rarely make their way here.

i'm okay with that--i understand that my words provide no measurable worth to the general global/internet community, and that this blog serves to help me more than any of my readers (perhaps including you, anna, although i'm not sure i can make that call). it is, as you might have noticed, an almost uninterrupted chronicle of all that is bad in my life--my worries and depressions and hopelessness--and it might be surprising, but this is the way i bring balance to my life.

i am, in most social circles (with my coworkers, customers, peers, instructors, and even friends) typically light-hearted and positive. my perspective on life is fairly optimistic--i like to give people and situations the benefit of doubt and i tend to expect things to turn out for the better, even when they appear quite hopeless in the moment. but like most (if not all) of us, i have my crushing doubts and paralyzing fears, and i need an outlet in order to function--i need to drain the negativity in the most effective way possible.

this is why i blog. the world that communicates with my physical self does not usually see the gloomy, messy side of me. this is not always true, of course; the more i know someone--or rather, the more comfortable i become with him or her--the more i project a more balanced image of my inner thoughts and feelings. but for the most part, i don't feel at ease sharing my troubles. i am fiercely--almost detrimentally--independent, and i work through my issues on my own as they come, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not.

it is through writing about recently-encountered obstacles and recent failures that i manage to purge the emotional refuse that gathers on the perimeters of mentally-demanding activities (i.e., choosing a transfer college or a future career). the fact that the contents of my posts might hold little value to all but a handful of readers does little to influence a change in my intentions or methods of blogging. i just do what i have to do, for myself more than for you.