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In the beginning.

2004-10-07 - 10:06 a.m.

It�s two days before my 32nd birthday and today is the one-year anniversary of Talpidae. I almost can�t believe I�ve kept on writing frequently for a whole year now. This entry is #213.

Before I started this journal, I kept in touch with people the old-fashioned way � by emailing them directly. Every time I had enough news to justify a page or so I would send it out to my �update list�. This could have been every couple of months, or possibly a year could go by. The earliest entries in Talpidae are, in fact, copies of some updates I sent prior to last October which give sort of a Readers� Digest version of the year or so of my life leading up to that point.

Over the years this list has grown. Every time I left a job (and I change jobs every year), if there was someone I wanted to keep in touch with I�d add them to my update list. If I made a new friend? On the list they went if they wanted to. It�s not like you�re on the list for life automatically either. Every time I send one of these emails I comb through the list to see if there�s anyone to eliminate. If I haven�t heard back from you for a long time, or if I haven�t been actually talking to you for a long, long time, off you go. If you seem to belong to a totally different era of my life, you may get cut. Three times people have expressed a preference to not get them anymore and to only get email just to them if I felt like writing, and I�m cool with that.

Sometimes people stay on the list because once, two years ago, I heard from them and they said that they really loved my updates and they�re sorry that they haven�t written back in the preceding several years. Okay then, I�ll cut them some slack and keep them on for now. Even reviewing and cutting as I do though, I haven�t been able to weed out enough people to keep the list to under a hundred in quite some time.

Here�s the funny thing; I could just let people know about this journal and decide for themselves if they want to read it or not. Yet, like many journallers and bloggers I�ve seen, I�m loathe to let people who actually know me have access to this kind of window into my day-to-day life and my personal thoughts and musings. There is only a very small handful of friends who know about Talpidae and fewer still have my url. My family (except for J who sometimes reads this) doesn�t know it exists and that includes both my blood relatives and my Outlaws.

Instead I keep sending out the updates. And I�d have to say that, in terms of people that read them in a 24-hour period, they have a wider audience than any single entry here. Here�s the really cool thing about the updates though, I always hear back from at least one person I wasn�t expecting to. There was a guy I didn�t know that well in second-year university who was on an exchange program from Australia. We spent a night making out just before he went back and exchanged email addresses. Over the years I�ve sporadic news from him (he�s got an update system of his own) and even gotten pictures of the two kids he has now. I just heard from him this morning in response to my latest update. Thanks to my updates, I�ve stayed friends with people I probably would have drifted apart from otherwise. And sometimes that continued contact allowed the friendship, which might have burned down to just a bank of coals, to be stirred back up into a fire again. I certainly credit my updates with the fact that I was at my friends� wedding on the east coast last month.

Why am I writing this? Well, partly to marvel at the power of connection electronic media allows in these times. Partly because I am always a little bit in awe of the cool people I know and am lucky enough to hold onto as part of my life. And the other reason, I suppose, is that I�m trying to say that maybe this is part of my hope for this site.

I interact with people online that I have never met in real life because we both have this compulsion to put ourselves out there online. We read each other�s sites and maybe exchange the odd email. Unlike many journallers or bloggers I�ve never developed a personal connection strong enough this way to start up a phone friendship or actually meet anyone, but that doesn�t mean I would back away from ever doing so. If I were heading to the hometown of some of the folks linked to on my �Older� page (especially Jessamyn, Sparkler, Zoot, and the no-longer-writing Jenfu), I�d definitely drop them a line and see if they wanted to get together.

I like the thought of Talpidae bringing people into my life, even electronically, that I wouldn�t have otherwise met. I find that I care about what happens to people who I just read and don�t actually have any contact with at all, and I like the thought that out there, there are people who are reading about me and maybe even caring a tiny little bit about what happens to me.

And if no one reads me at all? I still like the thought that they could and that someday my future kids might have this part of me; the part that doesn�t have to concern herself yet with discipline and nutrition and worrying over whether I�m making the decisions that will bring a healthier, happier, better life for them. This is my electronic footprint in the internet sands; long may the tide wait to come in.

Before - After


All content � Shawna 2003-2010
That means no swiping my stuff - text, images, etc. - without asking.

P.S. If you're emailing me, replace the [at] with @ in the "to" line. Oh, and if you put the word "journal" in the subject line it'll have a better chance of making it past my junk mail filters.

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