I have created many blogs throughout my life. My mother, an English professor and lifelong lover of "the narrative," inspired me to do so around 2007 or so, when blogging was a new, hip brand of literature and not something everyone did as long-form narcissism (and now, as an optimistic path to extra income).
On my first blog, I wrote stories about a bizarre elementary school teacher named "Mrs. Ragamuttin." There were endless references to my fifth grade and my best friend since kindergarten, Zoe. I think in some ways I felt I was both the students in the elementary school classes and Mrs. Ragamuttin.
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| A post about Mrs. Ragamuttin from my early days of blogging |
This time--third through seventh grades--was a period of my life in which I wore bright red glasses and had just been allowed to wear a few articles of clothing from Limited Too, the fabric of which was very thin, leading me to purchase my first training bra from the same venue. I felt absolutely disconnected from any sort of static identity in those years. I embraced feeling like an "outsider," researched things I thought would distinguish me from other nine to twelve-year-olds (atheism, 60s music), and had a dream of someday starting a fashion eyewear company for other tweens with eclectic taste. I wanted to grow my hair out very long and I felt this kind of self-differentiation would be possible in the expansive halls of my middle school.
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| Me, circa 2007 |
Certainly, I was wrong about middle school as an entire concept. I spent the first year feeling exactly like a fifth grader. I got contacts in seventh grade and got my braces off and generally decided I was going to "put away childish things" and embrace the fact I was growing very tiny breasts and seemed to be approaching true personhood (something I desperately wanted). I spent the next six years settling into the type of self I would continue to inhabit until probably sophomore year of college.
I did not intend this post to be an abbreviated life history or a chronicle of my sense of self. Yet, I think in some ways I
am taking stock of the various identities I have held throughout these months. I made this blog because I have just graduated college and am assessing the type of person I have been, how the past four years have changed me, and the plans I have for the future. At this moment, I have very few plans for the future (something that has never been true before this year). I have shame about this. I have shame about the way college ended and other intensely perfectionist feelings about my college accomplishments. I have decided to handle these feelings in the way I always have, in writing. This urge is amplified by the fact that I am spending another summer working with the archives of Bi-Co alums. A Bi-Co alumna myself, I am reading the papers of these people and wanting to document my postgrad years. I have often fallen into preemptive retrospection, as if I am an archivist reading my own papers after my own death.
Like with my future, I'm not sure I have any particular plan for this blog. Will posts be organized by subjects, thoughts, my jumbled mind? Will I share pictures of my brand new Fishtown bedroom, all mind-numbingly white IKEA furniture and the same decor I had in every Bryn Mawr dorm room? Who knows. My only aim is this: to talk authentically about the experience of being in my early 20s, of being confused, of having 40 years of labor left in this capitalist hell and no clue how I will spend it. And because there are simply thousands of us, maybe reading this blog will be of use to some other lost souls. If no one reads it, at least I will have expended some energy and found a hobby.
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| The only decent photo of me from graduation. It is a selfie because my father took god-awful portraits (god. awful.) |