07-18-03 @ 6:23 am EDT

My online journal is two years old today. I still can't get over the fact that I managed to maintain the attention span required to keep a journal for two years, let alone one.

Obligatory history lesson & recap: Skew originally started out only for "Griping and gripes. Negatory! Negatory! Will Robinson!" I remember that when I started it, the Dreamforest (back then known simply as "Dreams") had already been going on for about a month or so, but I don't really count that as a journal; it's simply a summary of what goes on in my head while I sleep. No personal reflection or anything. Skew itself was not intended to be a regular personal journal either. I really did start the thing with the full intent of just bitching, and only bitching. Yes, bitching does still take up like 70-80% of Skew, I'm guessing, if not more. Even non-bitchy entries contain some level of bitchiness. But over time I just started posting regular things in here, too. And a few happy things, as they came along. Somehow Skew turned into a personal journal, and it's the very first personal journal I have ever maintained beyond about two or so months. Before Skew, I did try, but I just was never able to make it go anywhere. It's like why I will never write an autobiography--who would WANT to read the damn thing? "I woke up, I went online, I ate, I went to bed." The things I consider interesting are rather dry to others (witness long entries about archetypes in Manitou Island and character lists from my sequels, etc.), so even what I would consider "interesting" parts of my autobio would suck. And IMO only people who have accomplished something great or noteworthy, or else those who are exceptionally witty or literate or have had very intriguing lives, should write autobios anyway, since why else would anybody want to read about them? Any old person can write a memoir; not everybody can write an INTERESTING one. I'm not one such person.

And truthfully, I don't care for biographies anyway. Unless they're of my characters, har. ^_^

So that was the primary reason I could never maintain a journal. I just never cared to write about ME. To an extent, you can see this is still true. There's a reason I don't write nonfiction. But I guess over time you just grow used to popping into a journal and typing things up, and...before you know it, there it is, a personal journal. Go figure. People can tell me all they want how self-centered I am because of what they read in here, but the truth is, if you look at the bulk of my writing you won't find much self-centeredness (except in disguise, and how many of you are willing to look THAT deep?). Skew is my little self-centered playground so of course I'll look self-centered in it. I don't exist in the rest of my writing; why shouldn't I be able to blather constantly about myself in here?

That's what everybody else does in their personal journals, anyway. :P

I kinda wish I could have my old psychologist read my journal. I would like to know what she thinks, all the things I never got to tell her. And it would be so cool, I think sometimes, if I got back in touch with Mya and if she had an online journal of her own and we could browse each other's. I never run into people I knew once in real life online; it's like they've never heard of the Internet or something. The online person closest in proximity to me was not interested in writing on a friendly basis anyway. I seem destined to be friends only with long-distance people. *sigh* Oh well.

Random tidbit: Get this, about 1/10th or 1/11th of all Skew's entries are from one month: September 2001. I seem to recall I had over 100 entries that month alone. Cripes, I was busy.

Happy birthday Skew!

And now unrelated stuff.

I found a semi-interesting site...I don't know how long I'll stick around it as my moods always change depending on how much interaction there is or not. (Basically, if there is zero interest in me, I leave. I already warned you about this being my self-centered playground, so if you're thinking of saying something...) You can upload only one photo a day. But it's an interesting concept, that of a photo log. The only real problem is too many people uploading total crap and proclaiming themselves great photographers/artists. I actually saw a picture of a gash in the sidewalk and everyone was commenting on it and drooling over it like it was FANTASTIC! *gag* Come on, anybody could have taken that shot; there wasn't even anything inherently artsy about it. Not even mood lighting. Most of what I photograph is total crap, but at least I don't try to pass it off as art; I take a pretty nature picture and for the most part that's all I'll say it is, a pretty nature picture. The same way as my poetry, when I had it posted here, was meant to be pretty trifles and nothing more. Just because you take a picture or write a poem does not make you a photographer or a poet, but bla bla, anyway...

http://www.fotolog.net/

Check it out if you want, or not...

I've again also taken up browsing the Online Books Page, which I put on hold a while back.

Skew got only three hits yesterday (I hope that was only because there were no updates), but the Ameni Chronicles have been getting upwards of 20 a day. I wonder if it's the person who wanted the URL for them. I hope they comment sometime. I'm not sure if they will like them or not as they're so different from my regular writing. :/ Speaking of the Chronicles, I finished Part 9's revision and posted it yesterday, and started work on Part 10 even before I had done that. Part 10 is going to be WAY different from before. For one thing, Djuta's and Resikh's first appearance was already pushed up from Part 10 to Part 9, and in the new intro to Part 10 there is much dialogue between Djuta and Ameni, in which Djuta's character is described through his actions. It'll be completely at odds with what he still does in that scene (the original version will be part of the full text), but that's the way Djuta is. (Anyone who's read further into the story will know why.) Resikh, on the other hand, is a bit of a problem; now that I know his character much better, I can't reconcile his actions in Part 10 with that. While I CAN envision him possibly physically injuring the robbers, I can't picture him doing the rest. There's just this upright streak to him that would prohibit it. Perhaps he'll just take part in the beating and humiliation and leave it at that. Djuta himself is morally opposed to such actions, but considering his background I think he has more of an excuse for acting against character; but Resikh doesn't have that excuse. Even in the whole trial storyline the worst thing he does is perjures himself, and for a long time that remains the worst thing he's ever done. (And he does a crappy job of that too since nobody believes him anyway.)

This was one of the major changes I had hoped to make to the entire series, the introduction of Djuta and Resikh in Part 10. So after this it's almost like cleaning up the little pieces or something. I expect there to still be very big rewrites, but this was the actual scene I had hoped to change, out of the whole; it's the one that kept sticking in my head. I didn't like the way Djuta and Resikh first appeared, as these two shallow characters just as brutish as the bad guys, so wanted that to change. Well, at least it's on its way.

I'm still reading The Ojibwa Woman; I had seen it at Amazon a long while back but didn't care for it as it's the mythology I'm interested in. But I bought it at a bookstore in Petoskey (I prefer to be able to page through a book, to see the contents and writing style and page layouts and such, before buying--Amazon does allow this for some of their more popular works, but not for all of them), and it's very interesting so far. There are so many customs they have, yet so many more ways they had of breaking them. Reading about the ways they went against custom is intriguing. It's kind of like reading a worldbuilding exercise and makes me think of all the things I learned about the Apsiu's customs while writing. I may actually have to start rewriting "Antakh Of The Apsiu" a THIRD time because of all I've learned since putting that project on hold! (Even the update is now woefully out of date. I think that's why I never work on it. -_- )

The thing is I just can't grasp the concept of the levirate/sororate marriage custom. It's just beyond the comprehension of my little brain. o_o; It gives me flashbacks of the weird tangled family systems in anthropology class...I read it over a few times but just couldn't get it no matter how hard I tried. *sigh*

Oh yes! The book came yesterday! :D Egyptian Magick. It has some colored plates of the major gods (interesting artistic renditions), and lots of modernized transcriptions of different spells and rituals. *drool* There IS one part I browsed, which mentioned the reader needing a throne for the ritual. I sat there and thought, "Now how many of us have thrones just sitting around that we can pick up and use in a ritual?" But I had to tell myself to shut up then, because when I was a teenager I actually had my dad turn some chairs into thrones for me and put them in an Egyptianized room in the basement. *o_o* So, if even I have some spare thrones sitting around, surely others can make do also.

Anyway, I still have more browsing to do through it. Thank you Medussa! ^_^

Well, I think I've said about all I can in one entry; as I always say, maybe more later. I can't say that Writing.com will be around for yet another year, but I hope that Skew will. Tar...