Beginnings

I'm terrible at this. I am a bad diarist. I always have been. Even when I have something to talk about I lose interest fast. It's a fact.

I remember the first time I ever tried to keep a journal. I was 10, I think, and I had this little red diary that someone got me for Christmas or a birthday or some such. I had to keep a diary for 30 days for some reason or another. School project, Cub Scouts, something. I did well -- for about a week. After that pretty much every entry was "I have nothing to say today" or "Today nothing really happened." I'm just bad at it.

I tried again when I was in high school. The usual mundane stuff: who I was dating, what was going on, lots of really bad poetry. Didn't last.

When I was in college I kept a journal for a good while. I had a little brown notebook that I carried with me to class. I recall many days sitting in the auditorium pretending to listen to art history and instead just making fun of the professor -- and writing it all down. This was probably the best of all my attempts. Unfortunately it contained a lot of semi-paranoid ramblings and one day -- in a moment of either some clarity or even more paranoia -- I burned it. Even when I'm good at it I'm bad at it.

When I was first stationed overseas I tried again. I was lonely and had too much time on my hands. Didn't work then either, though I do have a pretty decent document of our deployment to Haifa, Israel in August of 1989. That's more than I can say for all the other attempts.

So why now? What makes me think I can break the pattern? What prevents this from turning out like every other attempt I've ever made? What's different this time? Well, nothing, actually. I've probably spent more time setting up the software than I ever will using it. This will probably go exactly nowhere, just like every other project I start.

I'm bad at it -- but at least I'm honest.