Friday, November 21, 2014

A Lighter Soul

12 years ago, I started my first “blog.”  It was kind of goofy really (and it’s actually still online, but I won’t tell where).  My first girlfriend’s best friend had one, so we both got one too.  I wrote every day for awhile, with her as my primary audience.  There’s maybe 2 posts after we broke up, then I stopped writing it at all.  

A year or two later, Xanga became all the rage among my friends in high school.   I wrote in that, every day, for a couple of years- until October 2005, actually.  I remember being a little saddened by losing my streak, but also a bit pleased that the chore it was at times had been lifted.  That blog was directly continued by this one, but, perhaps thankfully, Xanga and anything on it is effectively defunct these days.  

During my senior year of college, I wrote here about once a week.  After graduation, that was maybe a little increased as I struggled through fund development and my first year of staff.  
But eventually, we moved to Cleveland and everything started to change.  At first, I wrote more to try to put my new home town into words.  I wrote to process marriage and life around it.  I wrote to process my protracted break-up with InterVarsity.  Near the beginning of the year, I thought I could rekindle this public writing by a wholesale rebrand toward nothing but Cleveland coverage.  

Short of a few decent outlets while LeBron kept us all on the edge of our seats in July though, there wasn’t really much to it.  There never could be, because blogging just isn’t a part of me the way it used to be.
I used to need it to process all of life.  It helped me cope with leaving home for college and the adaptation to college life.  Indeed, at every step, it was a great way (for me at least) to cope with and process the transitions in my life.  
But my life is transitioning a lot less these days.
It’s true, we’re adapting to having a baby.  It’s true, I’ll be graduating from law school soon enough (but not actually soon enough, I admit).  Those are transitions.
But for the longest time, I never knew enough about me to handle the transitions on my own.
Nothing really changes you like becoming a parent- but there’s a lot less about me open to change these days. 
My first blog was really a foray into first loves.  That’s a new territory for someone very much still finding who they are.
My second blog was primarily about leaving home and adapting to Wooster.
This blog has been largely the pre-graduation meditations and the denoument of post-college life.  
But I’m married and have a kid now.  I’m settled on at least the type of career I’ll have (perhaps my continuing to blog during InterVarsity was a red flag, in retrospect), and, perhaps most importantly, I’ve got a home in Cleveland that won’t be changing for a very, very long time.  I even have a retirement place picked out, in Savannah, Georgia.
So much of my life has come together in these past 5 years.  Like before, I needed this to express myself, while I tried to figure it all out.
I’m far from finished and I’ve far from figured it all out.
But I’ve got enough figured out that I don’t think I need this anymore.  
So, for the very much foreseeable future, this is my last blog post.  If I ever write another, it won’t be on this site.  The dulacian.blogspot.com era is over.
I’ve always felt like I blogged because I had to more than I wanted to.  I needed a place to write, to get something out.  Knowing there could be someone reading it was the motivation that got me to sit down and just do it.  But I never did it for anyone else.  
Lately, I’ve not needed it, so I haven’t done it.  Ultimately, I don’t think I need it much at all anymore.  If there’s something I absolutely need to write about, I can do that, or just talk about it with someone.
Because I’m decently who I’m becoming now, at least compared to who I used to be.  I know I’ve still got a long way to go, but I know, for the time being, that I don’t need this to get there.  In fact, if anything, this might be holding me back.
-Zack
“Futures will never keep their promises if all we hold is yesterday”

-Anberlin