My history of publishing things on the internet is spotty at best. I was very dedicated to updating my AOL Hometown page, which I recall prominently featured a picture of Sailor Jupiter (of Sailor Moon fame), when I was in middle school. It was all downhill from there. I tried to start a movie quotes website in 7th grade – even though my parents still wouldn’t let me watch Rated R films – but never got around to actually putting any movie quotes on it. I have no idea if either of those sites still exists, but I hope that they don’t and I don’t plan on finding out if they do.

Honestly, I’ve never been that good at updating personal websites or internet profiles. (For evidence, please see here and here. However, I’ve more or less stayed on top of Twitter.)

I’ve had the same journal since my senior year of college, which I only feel like writing in after I’ve seen an ex-boyfriend or am annoyed by my parents because my emotional age is somewhere between 16 and 22. I also make a lot of lists in that journal. Of things I need to do, things I want to do, books I need to read, places I should travel, stories I should write. And then I never do anything on the list. Or like, I do one thing and then I forget about the list and when I come back to it weeks or months later I think ugh whyyyyy did I ever write this I knew I was never going to do anything. The one exception to this is my list of Time’s 100 Best Novels 1923-2005 (in 2009). My list only because I wrote it out in cursive and have (very neatly) crossed off each of the books I’ve finished since. I’m too lazy to go find it now but I’ve definitely read at least 20 of those books since the time I wrote it out. And I regularly consult it when I’m trying to decide what book to read next. However, I almost never end up reading anything on it now because I’m still upset/embarrassed about failing to finish The Golden Notebook.

And I guess that list is sort of related to the point of this first post. I think a mixture of laziness and self-consciousness has prevented me from starting and keeping a blog of any kind. BUT I don’t want to get too serious right away on here. (I’ll be honest, I was totally sober when I wrote the first sentence of this paragraph but I’ve had a couple glasses of prosecco now so I’m feeling less like public self-analysis?) I just want to state that I’m trying to make a change and would like commit to writing here consistently – for a while at least. And that’s mostly because I paid for emphatichands.com and I don’t like to waste things I pay for. (I do go to the gym a lot more now that I pay for it.)

Here’s to hoping that the middle and end of this blog are as good – in the sense that I’ve already written a lot here – as the beginning.