In Continuum.

So, blogging, I've been at this business for years, and it is even hard for me to believe it myself. It started from a simple and uncomplicated idea of boredom, and then a short whiff of inspiration. It was in the summer months of 2003, and for some reason I started blogging regularly on this website. Oh, wait, actually the second entry was posted about three weeks after the first, which was just a test run for blogging as an idea. One line after I started blogging for the very first time, I thought it to be a dumb idea and swept it under the rug for about three weeks. I'm not sure what came over me in the length of three weeks, but for some reason I started blogging again, and this time about school and how hungry I felt that afternoon. Of course, if you are skillful enough, you might be able to find my old blog and thus, the first few entries I have ever typed in my life. However, I will not recommend such a foolish venture into Google's search engine, as you'd only dig up the worst of me in the form of endless and mindless blog entries. Seriously, some of the worst stuff I have ever written appears on that old blog of mine, and I have no idea how people like Felicia has the courage to link them on their current blogs. I am not ashamed of my past, of course not. I am just shy, really. I am. 

What was wrong with me, anyway, to be typing the way that I was typing back then. I mean, I didn't even have proper capitalization back then, not to mention the obscene amount of dots in between sentences and the use of improper English - and we are not even talking about vulgarities, since I deem them to be pretty proper when used appropriately. Anyway, I cringe whenever I get the chance to go back, and I tend to keep that URL to myself for as long as possible. Even the template used back then was pretty childish and immature as well, with the picture of a couple of wolves staring at you in a dark forest, it looked a little too "emo" for the person that I am right now. I suppose the identity crisis back then really got to me as a first year junior college student, and it was very well and completely reflected on my choice of template and, well, words. It became better as I continued to blog about things, but the later entries still gave me the shivers when I read about them. Three hundred and ninety six entries later, I stopped blogging altogether. Why? The army. 

Oh, it was a delicate time for blogging, and for some reason I stopped completely for a year or so. That was what I feared before I got into the army, just as I was gearing myself up for the whole blogging thing. By then, I was already on a row when it comes to blogging, posting something once everyday, or at least that is what I tried to do and still trying to do ever since. Then this army thing came along in my life and screwed up my schedule, kind of like running down a reindeer on the expressway while trying to send your wife to the hospital because she's about to deliver. You know, shit happens, and there weren't a lot I could do about it. I tried to post a few entries in regards to the first days of the army, and I do regret that I didn't find more time or motivation to do so. I found myself exhausted by the end of every week, and every word in this white rectangular box felt like an attempt to squeeze milk out of a rock. It was horrible, which was why I resorted to writing poetry and short entries in notebooks during the army. I suppose it could have been better, and perhaps helpful, to have blogged about those first days in the army. It'd be great to give everybody else an insight to the hell that is the army. But hey, I needed a break, and I needed a reboot. My entries weren't going anywhere back then, and so is this entry if I do not kick it back on track again. 

In the last days of 2005, I had the sudden urge to start writing again. It came just like that, one morning, kind of like how I woke up that morning a few years ago and figured out how to strum properly on a guitar. I swear, there are some things that the morning brings, which is why George Carlin's worshipping of the sun makes so much sense. Anyway, I woke up one morning and decided to blog again, and that was exactly what I did. That was also when I started this very same blog, and you can check out the first couple of entries in the sidebar to your right. I started off shaky, as you would expect from a person who hasn't blogged in a long time. I feel like a patient that was straight out of a year long coma, trying to find my way around the room with both my feet and trying not to give in to the pull of gravity. I was an amateur all over again, despite having nearly four hundred entries under my belt, I was afraid to begin all over again. Still, I gave it a shot, and it felt pretty good to be standing up all over again. 

I think the first entry was inspired by a line from Khaled Housseini's book, The Kite Runner. From there it kind of went on and on in a fashion that I do not remember. I started venting out my frustrations in regards to the army in the subsequent entries, once in a while speaking of my life in there and other matters. I tried to stay away from army matters, as in the real details in regards to everything inside, because I didn't feel like I want to bring my "work" home with me, if you call that "work" at all in the first place. I only had the opportunity to blog in the weekends, and I'd usually blog a couple of entries that have accumulated over the week. If there is a chance for anybody to find my notebook during the army, a large part of it would be dominated by entry ideas, or short little phrases and quotes to pass time. Though, that notebook is really for writing military-related notes. How many rounds per minute does the machine gun fire at, or the procedures in doing a CPR on a dying friend, stuff like that. I suppose if there is a grade on the kind of things we write in our notebooks, I'd probably fail rather tragically. 

So, I love blogging, and I have a couple of reasons why. First of all, I have developed this love for writing in general, the idea of putting my thoughts into words. Initially, it was just me talking to myself in the shower or stuff like that, but that didn't suffice because words came out and was gone in a matter of nano seconds. So I thought, writing things down became more permanent and real, kind of like writing it down in a diary but not really. I tried writing a diary, but that lasted for about two weeks when I was in primary school, mainly because I didn't have anything better to do, and because writing was just too much work - though I'd really prefer to have everything in my own handwriting. Anyway, another reason is that I feel closer to my blog, you know? It's strange and, perhaps a little twisted, to say that I have an emotional attachment to my wordless friend here - the blog. I have had reasons to move away from here a dozen times, for blogging sites much better than here. I mean come on, LiveJournal has the filtering function, how awesome is that! And, Wordpress has way better templates, who wouldn't like that? But it just seems like I am going to be stuck here for a while, full disclosure with my entries and no way to filter anybody out. 

At least, I learned about HTML here, and I learned what "br" and "div" means, making me somewhat of a HTML expert. It all began with wanting to change the size and picture in a template once, and it just kind of got kick started from there. Chandran's assignment during those dreadful CSE lessons didn't bring me down, because at least I knew what in the world he was talking about with all those HTML coding. That is one of those unexpected things I got from using blogger, apart from the fact that it has been my silent friend all these years. This little white space has been there whenever I need someone to talk to, and has been trustworthy so far. It doesn't judge, it doesn't talk back, and it doesn't give you useless advices that you don't need. It just exists, listens to you, and remembers everything that you want to say in the form of words you can revisit over and over again. It's strange how I sometimes get sentimental over inanimate objects, kind of like James the lion slash monkey that I have. Anyway, I suppose there are things to blog about even when there aren't anything to blog about. I'm probably going to have a thing or two to say after tomorrow, when the person I talk to every night leaves for Australia. It's going to be lonely around here but, I know this white rectangular space is always going to be here. In truth, it isn't about to go anywhere, are you?