2 Points 4 Honesty

This blog is a result of not being able to answer the following questions:

What are we afraid of?

Why not be honest?

Why not be so honest as to hurl yourself full speed at world and splatter fearlessly on life’s windshield?

What are we afraid of?

Why are we so afraid to share ourselves completely with the world?

Why do we hide?

Since I was eight-years-old, I’ve kept a journal. These pages are the roadmaps to my past. By knowing who we were yesterday, we have insight into who we are today. Those ragged, rarely-read notebooks are my most valuable possession. They are an extension of who I am. While memories fade and people change, these pages will not.

Anyone who keeps a journal can relate to the two contradictory feelings I have towards mine. In the one sense, we fear someone violating our privacy and reading it. This would make us feel violated, like someone entered our mind uninvited and rummaged through our thoughts. But at the same time we all secretly hope that someone will read and relate to what we have written. We hold out the hope of one day finding someone in our lifetime to share starkly who we are, or we hope that after our death someone will read and relate with what we have written.

Last year I lost that someone in my life and I miss having someone to share my innermost self with. Maybe that’s the reason for this website.

Or maybe it’s because the thought of sharing an intimate diary with the world scares me enough that I want to conquer that fear and drag myself out on an emotional ledge so that I can see that I need not fear of falling.

Really, I’m not entirely sure of the impetus to share my last 18 years of life with whoever stumbles upon this blog. But I do know that our lives our short and our worries many. We live in a world where people tweet about their bowel movements. There is a new openness emerging in our lives. But even through the mass de-masking that Facebook, Twitter and their counterparts have given us; it’s still possible to hide our true selves from the world.

Today, starting with my first journal entry from 1994, when I was a rabble-rouser of 8 years old, I am going to post my journal entries. To some all included a context or explanation, and for other’s I will just put them out to the world. It’s going to take me a while to get to the present, so I’ll also be posting thoughts and whatevers from the present day.

One thing I’ve learned in my 26 years of rabble-rousing is that the road of life is filled with delicious detours that lead us back and forth from the boardwalk of bliss to the lonely gravel road of grief. Life is about the ups and downs. It will lift you up and smack you down. But above all, it’s beautiful, and I’m lucky to be a part of it. Life is too short to keep it to yourself.

So, world, here’s my life. Here’s the good. The bad. Here’s the beautiful. The ugly. Here is who I was. Here is who led to who I am.