twenty-something

A few months ago, I thought I was. Of course I thought about writing. Every day. On the T. While composing some mundane email at work. During Sox games. While reading, hanging out with friends, or watching television. Before bed. I had some ideas, some inspiration, but I could hardly bring myself to put anything down, with pen and paper or keyboard, not to work or finish on an old story, not to start a new one. Not even to write a blog post.

In November, I began a piece called "Epilogue of a Blog," which was to be my final post on this website. Rather than keep the site hanging on a MySpace forward, I was going to pull the plug. But the only words I could commit to screen were these two lines:

"This storyline is complete, this character arc is finished. Twenty-Something (the blog) is over."

But in trying to write its obituary, I realized that there was still life in this here blog, in me as a blogger and as a writer. I am, at 27, still very much a twenty-something and to pull the plug on this site would be like pulling the plug on the next three years of fumbling towards... whatever it is I am fumbling towards. Though I'll be quite ready to embrace the milestone in 2010 -- I'm not a thirty-something yet.

I got the first part right, though. This blog had a very distinct storyline, and it is over. It's been over, for over a year. It ended the moment I got in my aunt's packed-to-the-gills Suburban with all my worldly possessions and started the drive to New York City. Twenty-Something (the blog) was all about a lovesick and lonely gay boy living in Vermont, clinging to a three-and-a-half year relationship with a bad boyfriend, trying to build a new life in an old place he didn't have any distance from, all the while dreaming about starting over in Boston. That's clearly not my life anymore, clearly not me, but it was very much what the identity of 20sum was tied to. Couple that with the end of the blogosphere as I knew it (R.I.P. almost all of the sites I used to know and love)...

Logging into Movable Type to begin an entry reminded me of all the posts I had made about Matt or my life in Vermont and, good or bad, that was a life I had left behind. That, I finally realized, was why I didn't write about my adventures in Manhattan, my move to Boston, or the many experiences I've had in the last year-and-a-half. Since my move, I've been living too much to write -- while in Vermont, I was writing too much to live.

Wow. That was dramatic.

*ahem*

I do hope to find a balance in the new year. I need to push myself to write and to live, to get inspired and to not fall into complacency. Like always, I want to pull it apart and put it back together. I need to rediscover and redefine myself as a twenty-something, happy in Boston and fumbling towards... whatever.

So I have three real resolutions for 2007, and they much are the same as they are every year.

To live better. To love better. And to write (perchance to blog) more.

2007 - you were... a year. And you are over. Just like the years I spent in Burlington after graduation, the years I spent in college, and all the years before that. You were a year of baseball and beer, whiskey and weddings, bad boys and nice guys...

And 2008 is a brand new year.

What is my storyline now?