Secondly, I’d prefer that you comment HERE on this site. When I write, a little stub get sent to LiveJournal. A notification also gets Tweeted. Friendfeed also picks it up. Facebook republishes my Friendfeed, but I also make it a point to “share” the link on my Facebook page too, so if there’s a photo you all get to see a snippet of it. Some of you subscribe via email, so you read it that way. Most importantly I want comments. And if that means you write it on a cocktail napkin and mail it to me, then so be it. But, if you can be troubled to leave them HERE then I benefit from the fact that other people will read what you’ve written and maybe have something to say about it too.

Thirdly, I’ve integrated lots of ways to login to leave a comment so that it’s easy. You can log in with Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, Disqus, Yahoo, Google, or any OpenID provider.

Finally, I think my comments are broke right now, and this is a test to see if that is true.

Update: I figured out what was wrong with the comments. Feel free to leave one and test.

cookie monsters

Rows and rows of empty boxes,
waiting for their fills.
Peace, alone, time to waste,
and this handful of pills.

I used to keep a small paper notebook with me at all times. Throughout the day I’d often pull it out quickly to jot down an idea, a daydream, the remnants of a short story flashing through my mind, the chorus to a song, or a quick blurb of prose that seemed profound. Once or twice, I’ve even tried to write while driving or quickly at a stop light. In fact, I really should have gotten one of those personal recorders but hearing my words in my own voice after the fact always ruined it for me.

I don’t keep that notebook any more. I’m still filled with ideas. I still get those quick flashes of clarity. I still find myself tapping into the mind of some imaginary someone and then falling back out again. I still find ways to frame my own situation in the lives of people who are not me. But, I don’t keep the notebook any more.

Much like all the photos I take, there is just never enough time to sort through them all, polish them up, and show them off to people that might enjoy them. In a lot of ways, both the notebook and the photographs are for me alone. But even then, my time is so short, I rarely take a moment to look back over them.

So all of these notes and all of these photos stay with me. I carry them from place to moment as if packed tightly into box after box after box. A few times in the past, either by choice or by accident, I’ve emptied all of those boxes. Seeing them that way brought a sense of peace but, in the end, it was mostly just lonely.

So instead of emptying the boxes, over time, I’ve just stopped filling them up. I take fewer photos. I jot down fewer notes. Yet I maintain the illusion that I’m keeping these days with me always because there are all of these boxes forever following me around.

It’s just an illusion, though. I feel as though sharing my words, my thoughts, and my photos with others will cause them to live forever. Whether it’s peace, clarity, happiness, sadness, arousal, understanding, or knowledge, when something I’ve done carries forward into another life, it’s as though that thing lives on forever like a beneficial virus being passed from carrier to carrier.

With this in mind, it seems simple enough to just share these things, even unpolished. But that conjures up new fears. What if being so prolific and unfiltered in those things causes it to suffer the same fate I often do here in thought? What if all of these photos and moments and thoughts and dreams and ideas so precious to me become nothing but brain vomit to be kicked through and cleaned off of shoes and feet with disgust? What if it just gets in the way? Not only would I have trouble accepting that, it would have an effect the opposite of my intent.

As I see it, there are really only 2 options.

1. My own website powered by WordPress
2. LiveJournal

The big deciding factor between the two is whether I want to write in public or private, and how much I want to cater to lazy people.

First, the lazy factor.

I’ve found that, for entries about Life, I get far more comments in LiveJournal than I do on the same entry posted on my website. It seems that LiveJournal users are either too lazy to click the link and read at my site, or are too lazy to bother to comment once they do.

Question 1:
Do I want to cater to this? Do I care?

Secondly, there is security.

If I’m going to really get deep into the “locked entry” writing, LiveJournal makes the most sense because it has tons of features in this arena. It means that some people will be excluded if they don’t have a LiveJournal account or know how to use OpenID. It also means I’d lost a lot of control over the look, layout, and functionality.

If i just intend to write something locked once in a great while, I can find some other means for distribution or use WordPress password protection and not really worry about it. In which case, I could just write on my own website like I’ve been doing and call it good.

Question 2:
So I ask you, do you think I write enough about my personal life? Am I candid enough in public? So you think I’m too candid in public? Should many of my life entries have a lot more filter on them?

I’m really twisted over which way to go on this. Your comments are appreciated.

Yet still he held on as tightly as he could
to the one piece of her that was left.

OneWord // Held