I didn't realize that I've passed the half-year milestone in my journal. Three months ago I was amazed that I had kept up with my journal for three months. Three months later and I'm doubly amazed. Somewhere around 650kb+ of data and 131k+ words. Totally freaking amazing to me that I've been able to write so much about myself, what I think, and what I've seen and experienced. And there's so much more to write about.

You can take a simple description of a person, and drill down to focus a certain aspect. Drill down to focus on a sub-aspect and so on. People are infinitely interesting, because the world in infinitely variable. When you think about your life and your opinions, you tend to gloss over a lot of things. Try to describe who you are to someone -- there is always more to talk about, more things to say and express. You just have to take the time to think about them and say them.

Back in August 3rd of 1999 I wrote down three reasons for writing a journal. Reason one was to practice my writing. My style, my grammar and spelling. To get used to expressing myself in words, making myself understood in this medium. Pictures can say a lot of things, and they can even show some of the things that you are feeling or thinking -- in your expression and body posture and what you are doing in the picture, what the other things in the picture are. But pictures can't really show what you are thinking. Words do that. I still know that the written word is important, and our mastery of its form is one of the first baro- meters that people use to judge us. Especially on the Internet, where people don't see each other (with a few exceptions) and only communicate with words.

So do I think I've improved my writing. Probably. Sort of. There is a bad habit that some people have, that I've fallen into at times. And that is to write the same way that you speak. So you tend to have too many sentence fragments. Short sentence fragments. Too many colloquialisms, not enough variation in vocabulary. Sometimes it helps me write if I imagine I'm talking to a person. And in fact, I tend to speak the words as I write them. Good think I live alone. I still have a long way to go to improve my writing style.

Reason two for writing a journal was to express and nurture my creative side. This is one of the points that I haven't done much to accomplish. I've written about what I think, what I do, what I've done. But I have yet to write any piece of fiction, any flight of fantasy, any conjunction of rhymy words. I've thought about it, and almost started to write a story a week or so ago. But I realized that writing off the cuff leads to bad stories on my part. I have to think over the plot before I write it, and that takes time and effort, which I don't have enough of to spare for a low priority project like writing a story. I don't know, maybe later.

Reason three for starting a personal journal was to was to use this a forum where I could write about myself and in doing so find out more about myself. A lot of things I do are because of internal rules or just because that's the way I am. And that's where I usually stop. I really need to find out what I really think, and why. And I think I've done that a bit in these pages. As I reflect back on my life I can see when I started thinking a certain way, when some of my personal rules were established.

The journal has helped me remember who I am and why I am. There are still lots of things to explore, if I remember to write about them. There are times when I think I haven't done anything in my life, that it's kind of pointless. Writing about myself and my past, I see that I do have a rich background, one that I've been ignoring for years. I'll be exploring this more, and maybe it will help me be a better person, or at least understand why I'm not.