It’s been a little over five years since I started blogging here in earnest. I thought this would be a simple extension of the journal-writing I’d done off and on for years. The main difference, I supposed, was that I would be less likely to write about the minutiae of my life, that I would omit mundane details in an effort to keep things interesting. I imagined my audience would be small and obscure. 1,760-odd posts later and my readership is indeed small, though bigger than I imagined, and not nearly as obscure. I know many of my readers, and many friends and relatives keep tabs on me through this blog. Which is great, only it gives the lie to my early naïveté. Writing here is not the same as writing in a private journal, not by a long shot. I’m no longer worried about being boring. My primary worry is being too honest. My parents read this blog. Nuff said? My years of writing here have overlapped Katrina, a big story arc which I am glad to make public. But there are plenty of personal details that I won’t put here, and generally speaking those are the juiciest parts. Sex, drugs and acrimony. Get the picture?
Once I started this blogging business, I stopped keeping a private journal, but I’m realizing the limitations of this approach. So now I’ve started journaling again. I will keep blogging too, but perhaps less frequently. For quite some time I’ve aimed to post here daily. But there are only so many hours in a day, and my current challenge is to find a way to juggle my several writing projects, to discern what goes where, and find other means to give vent to the peculiar pressures that drive me on.
Speaking of anniversaries, it’s been ten years since Xy and I moved to New Orleans. Most of those years were pre-Katrina. It sure doesn’t feel that way, though. These post-Katrina years seem heavier, they weigh on me more, and they tip the balance toward the present. I know Xy and I lived here for six years before the storm, before the flood, but those years seem so distant and faint. The damage to the city feels like damage to my brain. But that, after all, is why I keep a journal, and a blog.
Here’s to another five, and another ten.
“Most of those years were pre-Katrina. It sure doesn’t feel that way, though.” I know the feeling.
I know that feeling, which I think is one of the sadder though unstated psychic tolls of the storm. It’s almost impossible to remember what New Orleans was before the storm. Something of her essential character remains, but obviously a great deal has changed. Before the storm, New Orleans was a once-grand now regionally significant, unique city, a city whose cultural influence on the rest of the nation was comparable to cities ten times its size. Now, I’m sad to say New Orleans is a charity case, and its inept government, which had been coasting off of the city’s early grandeur for centuries, seems slowly to be killing off what the storm could not. I hope I’m wrong on that last sentence.
Anyway, don’t mean to bring things down on your anniversary.
Not at all, David. That’s exactly what I meant. Thank you for articulating it so well. I hope you’re wrong too, about that last part.
The Grand Dame will return B. It’s people like you and XY, the crazy Bloggers and the person who runs a curio shop who will bring Her back.
Yes the Flood almost wiped us out, but I see so much hope in the faces of those trying to put life back together. Yes we have an awful group of fools running our city, but their time is coming (or term limits).
Just hang in there Darlin’.
I try to blog as much as possible too, but as you stated – there are only so many hours in a day.
You have been an inspiration to me in many ways, and a source for great discoveries as well. I hope this continues into the future as well.
Can’t wait to see ya again!
I think the thing I’m most proud of after nearly 6 years of blogging is that my parents still don’t read it. You’d think I’d be too old to care if they do or not… but you’d be wrong.
“I’m sad to say New Orleans is a charity case, and its inept government, which had been coasting off of the city’s early grandeur for centuries, seems slowly to be killing off what the storm could not.”
This is the most insightful thing I’ve read in a long time about New Orleans. I would change the phrase “coasting off of” to something more accurate, though: “whoring out” or “leeching off of” or the like.
I started reading your blog as one of about 10 that appeared on a post-Katrina list of New Orleans bloggers. I dropped each of the others one at a time but have stuck with you because I enjoy your writing. Now you are an everyday stop.
The above entry by Brenda H. literally took the words from my mouth. I look forward to updates on my old neighborhood and the occasional picture of the precious Persephone Everpax.
[…] this seems more significant than marking ten years in New Orleans. Not sure why. Maybe because we’ve moved around to different houses and neighborhoods in the […]