2001-01-16 - 18:33 MST

January 16,2001

Housebroke

I suppose that even a diary must move on beyond the diaper stage eventually. I checked back in my so-called archives and find today, "The Wondering Jew" has survived the mal-administration of Bastion for ONE Whole Year. Wow.

Before I move on to matters of world shaking importance if I ever get there, I will have to pause and remember that I thought at the onset, this fluttering of dirty linen would only last a month or so. Now past "H" Hour and "Y" year I'm still blathering.

For my birthday in April 1999 I was given my Webtv set by my family, which introduced me to the world of the web. I surfed and found galleries of art to see, did the search bit too and stayed happy and entertained. I found forums which led me to mouth off about one thing or another. It was the ideal "letters to the editor" thing. After the discomfort of having my tail feathers almost pulled out I tried to avoid these childish, egotistical flame wars where it seemed the victor was the one who could shout the loudest, quote the craziest statistics and be the nastiest.

One day I stumbled onto someones journal, I can't remember whose, but from there I discovered many more. I was able to read, admire and understand how other people reacted to losses and adversity and admire their spirit and intelligent attempts to cope with the vagaries of every day life and the tragedies they were dealt. Al Schroeder of "Nova Notes" suffered the loss of his son, and is working through it, Kaycee Nicole in Newton, Kansas is a young woman who used to be a very vibrant, athletic young woman who has been fighting cancer and accompaniment chemo-therapy, its grave and painful side effects for the last nineteen months and fights on, she has named herself "The Warrior," and that she is, as well as facing her life realistically, with good humor and loving kindness for others.

Nova Notes is one that I ran into early on, and it fascinated me to the very bone. I read Al's Decajour along with its many branches also. There is a question at the end of each Nova Notes entry, which also gives access to the list of questions there. That is food for my thought and opportunity for me to comment and get in touch with people who interest me. I exchanged a few e-mails with Al Schroeder and received some down to earth advice. I consider him one of my mentors. Bonnie of The Chattering and Sandy of Dirt Road Ramblin' are two more of my mentors active in civilizing me a bit and trimming scraggly feathers on my ragged wingtips.

I began to feel that I had much more to say than just do the forum bit. Words and thoughts welling to the surface wanting to be heard. Even if the only ear was mine I needed to get my thoughts and feelings out on the table where I could sort them out. So I talked with my mentors and received great encouragement from them, I hope they are not sorry they left the gate open for me.

The idea of a secret diary open to whoever wished to read it entranced me. It seemed a cloud nine of communication and coupled with e-mail it seemed to be just what I wanted. I am hard of hearing and with age it has dulled things even more. Now I am in a new world where I can be heard and hear the responses. Also I felt that something like this would let me put myself on the operating table and see what made me tick and what made me boo-boo, which it has.

The year 2000 has let me look in a mirror and see that maybe there is hope for me and that a few of my ideas do have validity. On my course of daily entries I occasionally meet myself face to face having conflicting ideas about things and thus necessitating the sorting out of myself. Yesterday's entry on MLK day is an example wherein I found myself doing the same thing that was denounced earlier in my entry. So came the cogitation period and finding that, "Judge not lest ye be judged" applied to me too. I got up from under my thinking tree, dusted off and polished my ego a bit and proceeded to this day where I joyously celebrate the anniversary of my diary and shake my head in wonderment. I think that I am Housebroke . . . . . .

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