Update

When I finished that last blog entry I realized I'd finally pushed from the main page the last of my bad, deleted entries from October-November. It made me look at what I'd done. In two months I'd written 16,000 words, and when I looked at them as a totality it felt complete - the story of me and a season, of rediscovering writing, the city, the thoughts and memories those things brought out. I liked quite a bit of it; it had been good for me to write it. It raised the question of what next - did I want to keep doing it? I could have gone on, but I felt sooner or later - probably sooner - the quality would drop. I felt I was starting to develop a particular voice for it and a sort of template that I could use over and over again, and if I did that it would start to become less truthful, more fictional. And I was still uncomfortable with so much public revelation. I've twice had people come in to the shop and say "Are you Nicholas? I read your blog." That's an unsettling moment - to be staring at a stranger who knows so much about you and has all these preconceptions about you, and you know nothing about them...

I thought of making a zine of what I'd written, putting it back in chronological order, tidying it up and making it a unified whole. I felt it was more significant than just a series of blog entries, and deserved to be its own thing. But I've always felt there was something not quite kosher about making zines from blog entries - a bit like novelizations of movies - so in the end I didn't.

It was a product of a time, a bunch of feelings, a frustration at myself for not having written as well as I would have liked. I guess it belongs to the ether now. I hope people liked it.

I haven't forgotten the lessons, but I'm still thinking about what I want to do now with this blog. Still, I felt I should update. We've started packing up the store, and by the start of May I won't have a retail shop anymore. It raises some complex feelings in me - it is so clear a demarkation of the end of one part of my life and the start of a new one. Despite my often expressed frustrations and desire for change, Plup has been good to me and there are things about it I'll miss. I might write some more about this soon. At the moment it is difficult, there is lots to organize and it's the sort of administrative stuff I'm not particularly good at. I don't feel quite as good as I did in January, when my head felt clear and my course certain, and I'm awfully tired - apart from administrative things the main thing I seem to do is move heavy boxes of books - but I'm still swimming at night, and writing, when I can.

posted by Nicholas @ 2:06 PM