Oh, young self.

I was thinking the other day about why blogging every day this month was something I felt like doing. I've had a blog for the last eight years, though the first incarnations were before the word "blog" and before blogging sites and sadly have been lost. However, most of them are still around. For example, here is what I wrote on April 30th, 2004:

I had to be very fancy yesterday because I've needed to do laundry for the last week or so, and the only clothes I have left are really very cute skirts and things, but they're skirts, and it's cold, and I feel like I have to wear far too much makeup with them.

Yesterday I figured I'd make it worth my while and go run all my errands while being all cute and hope that Prince AlmostCharming spied me from afar and accidentally hit me with his bike. This would prompt him to apologize profusely and take me inside to the nearest cheese shop, where he would say something like, "You eat these skeezy cheeses that I can't describe," and I would say something like, "Will I look good when I've gotten old? When I get so old and wrinkly that I look like David Brinkley? Oh, and by the way, your eyes are beady," and he'd say, "This is my verse, hel-LO!" then we'd know we were meant to be. He'd give me a glow in the dark band-aid because I hurt myself when he ran me over with his bike, oops. Then we'd have to go outside to find my shoe which had flown off when he hit me with the bike, where he'd find it in a little flower patch and while he retrieved my shoe he'd pick me a bunch of gerber daisies. He would of course give me a ride home on his bike, which would have a little basket in the back with a french baguette and some wine in it, and we'd sit on my couch to drink the wine and eat the baguette and the cheese while he gave me a massage because he felt so bad about hitting me with his bike. (But... really he did it on purpose, except for the running me over part, and he would say so, only funnier, because he'd be very funny, did I mention that?) He would know sonnet 116 and think it's was hilariously wonderfully coincidental that I have that on my door next to a big long Tolkien quote. I'd mention I was getting hungry, and he'd make me dinner using only the things he had in his bike basket and the stuff in my cupboards because he'd have wonderful creative culinary skills. It might taste a little bad because a lot of the stuff in my kitchen is probably stale, but it would be mostly good because he made it. We'd eat this dinner out on the balcony and listen to the pteradactyl in the marsh trying to attract a mate, and then we'd realize after some witty banter that I needed some lovin because I was still a little sore after he ran over me with his bike, and after that I can't tell you what would happen, because this is a PG journal.

Anyway, that didn't happen.

I returned a shirt to Shop-Ko and found stupid little errands to run all over the city in the hopes that someone would appreciate the trouble I went to to be cute because really, it's a pain not to have any clean clothes, but I don't think anybody noticed.

I'll have to try again next week. I can go a few more days without washing my jeans.

This was during my extra-fun senior year of college, and shortly after this I got a job at a really terrible place. It was the kind of place that sucks the joy from everything, not unlike Mordor. I've always used my blog as a sort of escape, and back before I took the job in Mordor it was a rare thing for me to miss a day posting. I didn't post nearly as much while I had that job, because it was very hard for me to find good things to say about it. After two years (I still can't believe I lasted two years in Mordor) the job in Mordor, I went to grad school, and research papers on [insert topic you'd be very impressed to hear I've written a research paper about here] come before blogging in grad school. Since then, I've been out of the habit.

I suppose I was just curious about whether or not I could actually make myself post every day for a month. I've obviously been having trouble coming up with stuff to say, but I haven't missed a day yet. Maybe what I can learn from April 30th, 2004 is that it isn't necessary to have anything to say at all. What did I really say up there? That I didn't feel like doing my laundry, which seemed to be enough.

It seems fitting that this is my 200th post on this blog. How exciting!