Carelessly Strewn Life-Parts

For no reason whatsoever, I was just surfing around this site looking at the long, long, ridiculously long lists of all the diaries on this site.  It seems like 80% of them have been inactive for at least a year.  And, in noticing this, I find myself wondering why this is.  What am I even talking about?  Take me for instance.  This entry is #499, and I started this diary on May 1st, 2001.  Five years ago.  There are plenty of people on this site who have tons more entries than me (I really slacked for about two years or so….almost became one of them there "inactives" a few times).  And there are surely people who have been hanging around here for a lot longer than me.  I guess what I’m wondering is….what makes all of us "hangers-on" different from the ones who abandon after a week?  Or a day, even?  Just spend five or ten minutes going through the lists and you’ll find metric tons worth of diaries that never made it into double digits in entries.  Why is that?

I think it takes a few things to make people stick with it.  First, and obviously foremost, is dedication.  If you start something like this on a whim, you’re not likely to make it a week.  I think feedback and readership is also important.  It seems like many of the inactive diaries have no notes on them at all, or, if any, they’re just stupid chain notes or crap like that.  I think it’s easy to get frustrated if you feel like no one is paying attention.  As much as people say they write in here just for themselves……what’s the fucking point of putting out there for the world to see if no one sees it?  Does that even make sense to anyone besides me?  Probably.  Anyway.  The third most important thing, perhaps the most important thing overall, is having a reason.  Like I said before, starting a diary on a whim isn’t going to get very far.  But if someone comes here to chronicle something; a pregnancy, a relationship, a breakup, an illness, personal rehabilitation…whatever….  I think it goes a long way towards helping someone make it work around here.

And me being me, of course, I find myself wondering whatever happened to these people.  What became of the recovering alcoholic who only wrote one entry?  Where did the recently divorced girl whose best friend is still her ex-husband end up?  What became of the semi-devoted girlfriend of the manic depressive guy?  What was the delivery like for the mother-to-be who hated her parents and her childrens’ father?  Or even the ditzy teenager who never has anything substantive to say?  Is the depressed sounding guy that hates his parents for no real reason and hates life still alive?  I’ll never know the answers to these questions, because these people have dropped off the face of OD.

I wonder what would happen if I left incredibly vulgar notes on some of these "inactive for over two years" diaries………………………

Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox:  "The Gift" by Seether and "Our Truth" by Lacuna Coil

There was more I had thought I was going to say on the inactive diary thing……but Will called and I completely lost my train of thought.  Moreover, he broke my three hour-plus silent streak.  I don’t know why it is that I find silence streaks impressive.  I mean, I live alone, I work (mostly) alone, and I’m pretty much always alone (not a complaint, merely stating facts here)………..so why shouldn’t I be silent for long periods of time?  Probably because I talk out loud, to no one in particular, a lot.  I don’t, like, hold conversations with no one.  I just say what most people would only think.  At least I think so.  I mean, do other people do this?  I’ve never even known.  That’s one of the things I always wonder about…..whether or not other people do things I’ve always thought only I do.  And I mean are they widely done, not just if other nut jobs like myself do them.  For instance:  I can crack myself up with jokes out of nowhere routinely, and I’m not ashamed to say the joke out loud (in a funny voice, depending on if the joke calls for it or not), then laugh really loudly sometimes, especially if the joke is extra-good.  I did this in my office at work today, in fact.  I (somehow, I don’t even know how) started thinking about the part of a Simpsons episode where Moe Szyzlak is hooked up to a lie detector and thoroughly embarasses himself, which ends in the line (while he’s still hooked up to the polygraph machine), "I don’t deserve this shabby treatment!"  Then the machine buzzers him, meaning he’s lying.  It cracked me up, then I started analyzing the joke and how funny it is on the surface, but also the deeper level of, "It’s even funnier because him saying it and the machine buzzing indicating a lie means that he knows it’s a lie."  And laughing even harder.

So is that normal?  Doubt it.  I’m just a little out there like that, I think.  Or, at least, I like to think.  I just don’t really have a perception of how others see me.  I’ve always been bad with that.  I know our opinion of how others think of us is always going to be swayed by our opinions of myself….I get that.  And it does with me.  I think I’m weird, so I just assume others do, too.  Even if they don’t see the weird side of me……..hard to miss as it may be.

I guess, in the end, I’m just a strange little hyper-kinetic man.  And it’s moments like these that keep me coming back here and throwing up some words in lime green text.  (Full circle….y’like how I did that, there?).

Sayonara.