Looking back, looking forward

While I have been revamping the look of this project, I have gone back and reread entries from my past blog on livejournal. The intent of my entries on livejournal was to keep friends that lived in other parts of the world updated about my activities. Then I joined facebook and I sacrificed content for silly snippets and sharing videos. I enjoyed reading my posts on livejournal in the way that others say you will enjoy your high school journals. I tossed my high school journals, unread, without a second thought. The petty dramas and emotional insecurities of teen-me are not something I needed to revisit. Not that my livejournal entries are free of drama – they were written during my university years and one is not that much more evolved at that age.

But I could revisit things that I had done and events that I had forgotten about. The everyday interactions with my friends and eventually my work colleagues. I was also able to read the entries in my voice – the one thing my writing has always been called is conversational. While that’s not really appropriate in an essay or in much of fiction, it is something that I like about my writing. It is distinctively Kirsten. I don’t think that these entries are missing that characteristic but I do think they are often more stylized. When I picture the audience for this project it is not just the crowd of friends that were my livejournal audience. Which is a conceited notion since I know that the only people who do read these entries regularly are my friends. (And thank you for that!)

I think that my revised goal for this project will be to keep more of the essence of my voice while refining my techniques. If only because when I read other’s work, such as The Bloggess, I am reminded of the humor and voice that my friend Karlos and I have. I want my writing to improve but I also want my voice and perspective to remain. This means that continuing with the intent of this project is all the more important. Writers must write to improve; soccer players must run faster to become faster. What I have always had a hard time doing is balancing my investments. I either give into lassitude or over commit myself to grand plans. Hence 100 words a day, a modest proposal.