I haven’t much felt like blogging lately, nor have I felt that I have much (more) to say. I started this blog just over a year ago as a form of catharsis, as an outlet to vent my frustrations, but also as a place to disentangle my sometimes very confused thoughts and ideas. Somewhere along the way, the blog acquired a “persona” of its own and my postings “specialised” on the neurotic, existentialist musings of an insane and unsound mind. So much so, that a fellow blogger testified on my Friendster’s profile and:

beg all of you not to read his website unless you “think” you are more depressed that you “think” he is. If you are a happy person, it will bring you down.

One year on, I’m not quite sure why I even have a blog anymore. It seems that all I wanted to say, has been said, and not just by me - how many new takes can you have on dysfunctional relationships or fucked-up lives? How many more times can I whine about the injustices of the Gods and the heavens, before I am struck down by lightning (…actually, on second thoughts, that may not be such a bad thing to happen to me… note to self: must whine more about God being evil…)?

I suppose, as much as I have grown and changed as a person over the last year, so has my relationship with the blog. Perhaps the one thing that hasn’t quite made the full transition is the blog itself. But that begs the question: where do I take it? Or where will it take me?

I’ve been reading a series of novels lately. It started with Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro and then The Bride Stripped Bare. Now, I’m reading Love Remains by Glen Duncan. Despite their differences, they are books on pretty much the same topic: fucked up lives and dysfunctional relationships! When you think about it, there are tons of books out there that revolve around the same two topics. They are just different takes on the same thing. And yet, suckers like me will keep reading them, again and again. Why? Maybe because we’re bored and this satisfies a voyeuristic and vicarious need. Maybe because we’re just idiots. But maybe fucked up lives and dysfunctional relationships are two constants in each of our existence, and maybe, just maybe, we’re all hoping that somehow, somewhere, by visiting the same two topics again and again, we just might find the answers we’ve been looking for.

So where does that leave me and my blog? Well…. I’ll leave you to your conclusions while I keep looking for answers…

Posted on July 7th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: About this blog | 13 Comments »

Today is the first day of the rest of my life   the next chapter in my life … errrr …. the next phase of this blog?!??!!!@!!!

Posted on May 23rd, 2004 by jl
Filed under: About this blog | 4 Comments »

Maintaining a blog is wierd. Maintaining a blog where you say a lot is wierd. Maintaning a blog where you spill quite a bit, if not all, of your life is very wierd.

You never know who might “stumble” onto your blog. Or who actually reads it regularly. You never know who tells what to whom and how that might come back to you. Worse, you never quite know what impressions people will form from what they read on your blog.

While it’s alright to talk about it with close friends, you’re never quite prepared for those moments when a stranger, or someone you don’t know too well, mentions your blog in a conversation. You’ll always be a little startled, and not always pleasantly. What have they read? What did I write recently? What do they think they know about me?

There are days you get offended when people who know you have a blog, don’t read it and proceed to ask you how you are after you’ve just spilled your entire guts over the world wide web. Then, there are quiet, wierd moments when friends thread lightly and say very little because they have read your blog and seen the demons inside. And then there are days when no one says much because it’s all been said, and read, in your blog.

You never quite know what happens after you blog. And it can be wierd.

Posted on January 22nd, 2004 by jl
Filed under: About this blog | 11 Comments »

At what point do you start to bare too much in your blog?

When readers begin to think they know you from what you publish? When you start to obfuscate and dissimulate selected truths? When your friends stop asking how you are because they can just read your blog? Or when your entries becomes too much to bear because it mirrors life too closely?

Funny how a lonely day,
can make a person say:
What good is my life
Funny how a breaking heart,
can make me start to say:
What good is my life
Funny how I often seem,
to think I’ll find another dream
In my life
Till I look around and see,
this great big world is part of me
And my life

- Shirley Bassey

Posted on December 29th, 2003 by jl
Filed under: About this blog | No Comments »

At the end of July, I tried out an SMS/MMS to blog service called Phlogger. What Phlogger does is convert SMSes and MMSes sent from a mobile phone into a mini-blog. It was fun and fabulous for a while - I could send periodic updates from my mobile wherever I was and it would be almost like real-time blogging. A few others in the Malaysian blogging community took to it and signed up for the service as well.

However, Phlogger had one major drawback - I could not truly integrate my posts with my existing blog. All messages sent to Phlogger are posted onto a separate server as a mini-blog. I had to insert a java script in my site’s HTML to call up this mini-blog. Most of us ended up with two blogs running concurrently - our existing main blog and the mini-SMS/MMS-blog on the sidebar. This wasn’t a very satisfactory solution to me - I wanted to have only ONE blog and ONE blog only to collate all my thoughts, writings and life. I wanted all posts to “read” nicely in a chronological order - and not to have to refer to two separate blogs. And I didn’t like the fact that this mini-blog resided on someone else’s server and not mine. So, a month or so after testing Phlogger, I took it down.

Posted on November 21st, 2003 by jl
Filed under: About this blog | 4 Comments »