“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~ George Eliot
This little-website-that-could is celebrating its 20th anniversary this winter, a rather impressive feat when you consider the average lifespan of a personal blog. Its length is not for any popularity or demand, but rather the singular self-focus of yours truly, and the way this has become a daily journal/diary which helps me sort out certain things in a very public fashion. Spilling such tea can be a messy business, but the messier things get, the more interesting they seem to be.
“He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
This is my playground, where I get to trot out playthings like words and photographs and whatever fancy feather that happens to drift my way. Far more than that, once I started keeping posts and archiving them (rather than simply revamping and erasing a year’s worth of posts, which is what I did for the first ten years or so of this site) this became a way of looking back at the overarching themes and trends of my life – what was working and what continually held me back or caused problems.
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” ~ Dale Carnegie
As my interests developed and changed, so too did the blog posts, and the way I wrote about myself and others. Focus shifted, gradually and gently over time, and while I still feel like the same person I was twenty years ago, in many ways I simply am not. That’s how it should be, and I’ve always been slightly suspicious of anyone who hasn’t exhibited the capacity to change or evolve over time. Adaptation is an essential component of survival.
“People like this are beautiful storytellers, breaking rules you didn’t even know were there, just so you can see better and maybe be better. Life is so full of rules and so full of predictable routines that one can almost forget that art and life depend on spontaneity. Enter the eccentric.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan
Eccentricity is a term largely used in negative fashion, designed to denigrate behavior that is merely unconventional. We too often associate that which is different with that which is negative, perpetuating the idea of difference as something dangerous. I don’t consider myself all that different from anyone else, but over the last twenty years I’ve heard many remarks to the contrary, and I’ve leaned into all that is contrary, if only to jolt myself into new ways of thinking.
Having a place to document and notate what my daily life is like, and heightening it for some aspect of entertainment and enjoyment (my own admittedly and selfishly above anyone else’s) has resulted in a space that forces me to face things I might otherwise tamp down or pretend away. Confronting such darker facets of a personality is not something most people enjoy or often employ, and for that I may be a little eccentric. To do so in such public fashion begs the question why, and part of it has been for accountability. Not everyone likes that either.
“That’s what makes a real eccentric: they really mean it, and they’re willing to suffer for it. Their social function is to explode our preconceptions about what beauty is and what good taste means. Eccentrics raise the bar on the impossible… The true eccentric gives us more mystery, more wonder about being human, a new side to beauty, while the faux-eccentric gives us less of everything.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan
As we embark on the 20th year of this website, I’m reminded to embrace my eccentricity, such as it may be, while owning up to my failings and flaws, and using them to better my future actions. I’ve made many mistakes over two decades, and while I usually find a way to learn from them, I also have my moments of refusing to learn. The process continues, the work endures, the journey begins again…
“They didn’t always get the life they wanted, but they knew how to dream… And maybe that’s the true definition of an eccentric – someone who can’t be slain by what lesser people might say.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan
