| | I had meant to have a productive day today. I imagine it will be a moderately productive evening, at least, but for one reason or another, the former didn't happen.
Instead, I felt compelled, as often happens, to revisit a flurry of my old Xanga entries.
All of them, in fact, from 2004-2006.
I started this journal on Thursday, April 29, 2004. The song I was listening to was "The Background" by Third Eye Blind. I was the producer of a local theatre company called Still Waiting Productions, and had just finished beating the Playstation 2 RPG Xenosaga with my roommate Brad. I was dating Ellen - we had just crossed the six-month mark, and she was in London and due to arrive back home in about two weeks. I had no idea I wanted to become a cinematographer; hell, I probably couldn't tell you what a cinematographer even was. And, by peer pressure or just out of the will to keep track of my life somehow, I decided to start a weblog.
What a thing. I haven't counted, but I'd estimate I was a subscriber to almost 150 blogs on the site, a great deal of them started by my Toledo-based friends but some of whom I would discover via searching later. It was a massive network of whatever the hell we wanted it to be. I made announcements about shows, meetings, and times using Xanga because everyone checked it. All the time. At moments, it became one huge venting session, fueled by vague statements and cryptic comments about who said what or who did what at this party or at Open Mic Night. Other times, it was the ultimate unification of what bound us together as friends: theatre, film, art, sympathy for a failed relationship or for a lost friend, hilarious links and random videos, and so on. I kept a film blog and even a blog about a novel I was writing, and later suggested Xanga to one of my professors as a way to keep journal entries for our final productions. I remember becoming friends with certain people simply as a result of our shared connections through Xanga. Hilarious, but honest.
Xanga is definitely a shell of what I remember it being for us. Really, aside from Chad, Sarah, Kelly, Erika, KRoss, and Pineapple, no one else frequents their blogs anymore. I wonder if it's because we grew out of them, or because we found other, better sites to blog with, or because we simply had less drama to dispense. A fair portion of us are engaged, married, or living with significant others. The rest simply grew out of the trivial complaints and gossip that Xanga seemed to foster among our crazy group. To me, in an odd way, it was a symbol of the Five-Year Summer. ("One of us...")
It's amazing how I can track the past five years of my life and the various stages of growth I went through, thanks to this blog. How specific events, even if some of them aren't mentioned directly, resonate throughout certain passages. The opening night performance of The Magician's Nephew. My breakup and falling-out with Ellen. Mark Hannigan's death. Becoming an RA. My realization that I wanted to be a cinematographer. The first two-hour phone conversation I had with Kathleen in LA. The first time I got drunk. The first day of production on Glass City and the subsequent premiere. So many random moments. So many movies I've seen. So many other trivial things that I thought were so...important.
I think I've finally grown out of this. I'm considering buying a Premium account for one month, just so I can archive the past five years...and then I'm going to delete my Xanga account. It's been a long time coming. Maybe I'll start up a blog elsewhere.
Or maybe I'll just be content with Facebook and - God forbid - Twitter.
Thanks, all. Goodnight.
what is past is prologue
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| | Posted 10/5/2009 4:07 PM - 94 Views - 18 eProps - 9 comments
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