I started writing in journals when I was in the fifth grade. Someone had given me a Hello Kitty and Friends diary in pale pinks, greens, and yellows. Flowers and cute rounded creatures adorned the lined pages, with barely enough room to actually write. I wrote one or two entries then forgot all about the diary until the next year, when I was in the sixth grade.

I guess I thought back then that the diary would last me a lifetime and that I should probably save up the pages — one page for every year — as though I’d still be writing in it when I was 80 years old. I wrote to help me remember how stupid I was as a kid.

Well. I must have been really stupid; I ended up writing at a much more frequent pace. I think it had to do with my reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Here’s a girl of no consequence whose writing made her known — and suddenly I was the same girl; people were going to read my diary, too. Oh, goodie. An audience. I wrote without stopping, and I ended up buying more and more books in which to write, filling them with drivel. I wasn’t writing for myself now; I was writing for my future audience. ::insert eye-roll here::

Later, I got cheap and used spiral-bound notebooks instead of hardcover blank books. I think I filled out at least 4 or 5 a year, and I sent most of them to my pen pal. It was instant gratification disguised as correspondence; I had an audience at that moment.

These days, I use the computer — and now this, a web log.

I’m pathetic. I’m seriously pathetic. There is nothing new or different about this log, nothing to set me apart from all the other journal writers out there. It’s really all just an ego-centered orgy of masturbation, an announcement to the world in general that says, “Hey! I exist! Look at me! Look at me!” Like a footprint in the sand, or a graffiti message on the wall.

Yes. That’s right. April was here.

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