my first diary entry
Dear Diary,
It feels silly to open with that, but I think approaching diary entries as letters to somebody makes them easier to construct. So, hello diary! It is nice to meet you! I am very excited to write my thoughts down somewhere that isn't my poor friends' discord inboxes at 3am. I know they don't mind too terribly much, but I still feel a bit obnoxious prattling on about myself for too long - and since it's disappointing when people don't reply, I figure this will be less disappointing since nobody can reply anyways!
I am so so excited about this website. I wrote (most) all of it myself! That is so cool of me! I first started learning CSS and HTML back in the Neopets era, but I barely remembered a lot of it and javascript is completely new to me so there's been a pretty steep learning curve. I am so grateful for all the websites that exist to help me figure out how to make all these things work, and I'm so excited to keep learning more things I can do to make everything look prettier and work better.
My ADHD medication has been really not working lately, which is super duper annoying. It makes focusing on much of anything feel impossible, especially stuff like this where I want to have a halfway consistent tone throughout my writing. I'm on vacation from work right now - really more of a staycation, but it feels like such a waste to have all this time off and nothing to do with it. Until my brain is more functional I probably won't be able to write much in the way of proper articles or stories or anything, but I have so many ideas for things to write once I am able!
It is funny to admit that I have rewritten the following sentences dozens of times, but perhaps that proves my point better than anything I could actually write would. I created this site, first and foremost, to help me find my voice again. I have spent most of my life attempting to be the most mild-mannered and likeable version of myself that I could be. That version of myself may be likeable for others, but I think I have come to terms with the fact that I don't particularly like her very much.
In elementary school, I remember being told I was pretentious. A know-it-all, stuck up, so on and so forth. I was a know-it-all, I'll admit it. I knew a great deal of things, and I enjoyed learning and sharing that knowledge. But no matter how much I stopped raising my hand, it never made it any easier to make friends. I eventually quit reading for fun, hoping that if I quit reading I would know fewer words that made me sound so obnoxious and pretentious to others. By middle school, I barely spoke at all. Whatever self-confidence I regained in high school was washed away in the years following graduation, when I was constantly told I was too argumentative or snooty or obnoxious or unlikeable all over again.
Nowadays, I spend more time thinking about my next words than I would my next move in a game of chess, so paralyzed with fear of saying something that may set someone off. It is not my job to manage anyone's reactions; so long as what I say is not unkind, I should not be afraid to say it, and I should rely on others' reactions to interpret information about them rather than information about myself. But actually behaving that way is much easier said than done, and thus - a website where I can practice! If I can learn to speak freely in a corner of the internet where it is unlikely anybody will ever read it, then hopefully I can learn to speak more in my real life as well.
Maybe someday I will even add a guestbook or a comment section - when that day comes, I suppose we can consider this goal achieved, and set a new one for this site instead :3 I do really want to hear what others have to say about my silly rambles and thinkipieces, but I also know that hearing those opinions right now would do more harm than good. It is much easier to be true to yourself in a vacuum, and making things easier for myself is also something I need to remember to do more often.
But! Goals aside! My life is going quite well and I am doing my very bestest to enjoy my time off. I think I will endeavor to do something a little bit brave tomorrow - maybe I will bake after all, or actually paint something if I can keep my cats from eating my brushes. At the very least, I really ought to finish up the dishes tonight so that I feel slightly less like a cat loaf and slightly more like a functional member of society.
Have a good night, diary, and thank you for listening >^w^<