Thursday 31 January 2002

Pic of the day: Sad breakfast of the late sleeper. Irrelevant screenshot from The Sims.

Reconsidering

It is well over three years now that I have written my daily journal. It started out as a simple JPEG diary: A picture of my face taken in typical webcam fashion from the top of the monitor, and a few lines on how I had spent my day. It was pretty much a copy of Debs from Cornercam, a 24 hours a day webcam from New Zealand. She made a page like that for some weeks when her webcam was not working properly. I never stole the code, or even looked at it. But the similarity was still striking when I first started, a few weeks later. Even my pictures were scaled to approximately the same size. And I thought I was the only one in the world with an online diary. Really.

Later I met the Open Pages community of online journallers, and learned the stock tricks: Next/prev links, calendar, titles. I think I came up with the idea of an archive on my own, but only after some months. Later I invented my own improvement: The color coded entries. My journal gradually improved.

It doesn't improve anymore. On the contrary, I think it is past noon. Perhaps it is time to reconsider.

***

I started the Chaos Node while I was still in my thirties (albeit barely). In the beginning, it was very relaxed and informal, full of puns, whining and hastily written notes on how my day had been. And the pictures were mostly of me sitting in front of the computer. After a while did the screen shots show up, but also many nature pictures.

I guess the journal has become less fun at the same time as I have become less fun. Being treated as an adult even by my best friend leaves its mark. Incidentally, my best friend avoids reading my journal even though she knows about it. That's not necessarily a good sign, I suppose.

Anyway, the layout keeps up. But the content is sliding, I think. I feel when I compare my current writing to a year or two ago, I simply wrote better. More interesting, more engaging. I rarely have anything new to say, now. I still write, though. It has become a habit. It seems I am able to write more and more about less and less.

And of course, there are times when I am simply not very interested in my journal. Lately I prefer to spend my time in this online roleplaying game. The journal is just a distraction. Not every day - yesterday for instance was not like that - but too often.

***

It can't be necessary to write a sermon each day just to tell that I'm alive. It can't be necessary to have a picture when it has nothing to do with the text anyway. I must admit that it hurts to think of breaking the tradition, but it hurts to write a boring journal too.

I am not quite ready to close shop on the journal. It comes in handy some of the time. But I want to write very short entries if I have nothing to say. And I want to stop putting work into pictures that don't work anyway.

Not that I am doing a great job of writing short today. And tomorrow I have to be at work early. As if that were even possible. Blah. I wish I could leave and fly among the stars.