I've been thinking about moving my diary-writing to the online medium. I've spent some time looking around at other journals on the network, and found that it seems to give people a real outlet, a real way to communicate something of themselves to others.
I'm not entirely comfortable with that degree of exposition or self-promotion, so expect that this won't be a true parallel to my paper-based diary. This will be something of a condensation, an extraction from it. This will be a place I can put things that will help you know something of me... without knowing too much about me.
Where to start?
A quick tour of my life:
I write for a living, and a year or two ago started also doing graphic design for some companies that are developing their own websites. I don't do the web development, I just develop the graphics and sometimes write things for them. It's remarkable how much in demand that sort of thing is. At a time when the market for freelance writing isn't particularly good, writing for the web might be the next thing I take on.
Presently, I write feature articles -- local interest, personal profiles, specials, things like that -- for some suburban and neighborhood newspapers in the Chicago area. Most of these publish weekly, and so tend to focus on human stories rather than the latest from City Hall or Washington.
Doing this gives me a place to write, it gives me money to live on, but it doesn't give me that much consistent contact with people. I never see the same people two days in a row, and while the diversity of people I meet is pleasant, I like consistent, long-term connections with people. I don't get that.
About two months ago I interviewed and wrote a piece on a woman in Schaumburg -- a suburb of the city -- who had just turned 105 years old. She had recently moved to an assisted living facility, and the staff put on a big party for her 105th birthday. She was energetic and interesting, yet the more I talked to her, the more it seemed that she had outlived all the people she had known in her life and that somehow she shared with me that same lack of consistent contact with people she knew, and that same desire for it. Her husband had died in 1966, at age 77, her only daughter had died three years ago at 78. All of her old friends were gone, and I sensed that she, too, was looking for some contact that might last a while.
I've thought of going back to see her again. I'm not sure why I haven't. I'm not sure of a lot of things.
I live in an apartment not far from the University of Chicago. It's one of the nicer neighborhoods around... there's lots to do, there's a place for me to keep my car, a 1988 Honda I bought while I was in college and which has been good to me, and there aren't many worries here about crime if you're careful.
At the end of June, I arranged to adopt a kitten. Fargo (I'll explain the name some time) has his own page so that you can see what a mite he is. I am certain he must have been the smallest of the litter. I adopted him from a woman at one of the newspapers I freelance for. Her cat had had five kittens and the woman offered me one. By the time I got back to her, Fargo was the last one left. And tiny! Even now, four months old, he fits in the palm of my hand and has a tiny, squeaky voice that he uses a lot.
I play oboe. The only time Fargo ever seems to stop moving is when I'm playing. He sits and watches up into the end of the bell, almost expecting something fun and exciting to drop out of it. He can't reach the oboe, though, so he hasn't developed a temptation to swat it. And, most importantly, he doesn't criticize my playing.
I've played since I was 11 or 12, and in high school and college was considered quite good. At one time I had an idea about a music degree, but something led me to writing and graphic arts instead, though I didn't really put the oboe in mothballs until a year after I graduated. I had nowhere to play and no one with whom to play, and I was moving often enough that I could not seem to make those connections.
Lately, I've gotten inspired to play again, and even though I still don't know where to play or with whom, at least I've loosened up and can at least play for myself. And Fargo.