Week 0: Introduction
Jan. 20th, 2013 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cobaltazureFact #1: I am a practicing attorney.
This summer, it occurred to me that I updated my journal so infrequently that many of my LJ friends had no idea how I lived my life. To remedy that situation, I started the 365 Facts series. Every day, I would update my journal with one random fact about myself. The series served a dual purpose: it gave me a reason to update my journal more often, and it allowed my friends to get to know me better than they would with regular entries that assumed everyone already knew everything about me. I may write for myself when Idol isn’t going on, but I don’t want to write an entirely nonsensical journal.
Ambitious? Yes. I failed to post a fact for the two days following the launch of the series. But I bounced back with three facts the following day. I had made a commitment, and I planned to see it through. Surely I was an interesting enough person that I could come up with 365 different things to say about myself.
Did you want basic background information about me? You got it. I talked about my boyfriend, my car, and my dog. For a pet who had joined the family in 2003, why did Miss Puppy and her adorable baby face wait until Fact #13 to turn up? Miss Puppy was definitely more important than my ancient car. On the other hand, my boyfriend’s appearance as Fact #2 made sense. After months of having a long-distance relationship, we would shortly live a short enough distance away from each other that we could take the train to see each other on the weekends.
What about facts with a tendency to slip through the cracks? Fact #9: Lily is a pseudonym. I adopted the name Lily for use online sometime in 2001 after robbing it from my Mary Sue self-insert. It suits me so well it doesn’t always register to people that my name is not actually Lily.
Or I could just tell you something random. Fact #38: I don’t get zombies. I’m sorry. So don’t expect to see any zombie stories from me during Idol. On the other hand, if you do have a working plan for the zombie apocalypse, let me know. I hope I won’t be too much of a liability if it happens (but it won’t happen).
One month into the series, I decided that I liked its results. Although I had discovered nothing new about myself, each fact still made me feel like a more interesting person. After all, I was a jack of many trades (Fact #7), but expressed my dislike of large social groups (Fact #5) and yearned to be a better cook (Fact #14). Who knew how interesting I might seem after eleven more months of facts?
Yet the cracks had already started showing. LiveJournal stopped cooperating with my internet connection. I had to start asking my friends for facts to include (Fact #25: I went into law on a suggestion from my parents). Then, my need for a journal began bleeding into the fact-selection process. Fact #39 involved a recitation of my fall TV schedule, fitting into a trend in which I repurposed the content of other journal entries as facts about myself. At the end of September, I entered a string of business trips and failed to update my journal for eight days. When I did post, I wrote no facts. I had other news to discuss.
I ended the series on Fact #67 (I can’t roll my tongue). When I wrote that entry, I was eleven facts behind, but still hoped to write a full complement of 365 by the time July 2013 came around. I never resumed it. By then, presenting my friends list with pieces of myself felt like nothing more than an obligation, for a new fact had snuck up on me that I desperately wanted to deny.
Fact #68: I am single.
I gave my friends list sixty-seven tesserae of a mosaic about me, but it had to end there. After breaking up with my boyfriend, I barely had the will to get through a day of work. I had to put the pieces of myself back together, not take them out and reveal them to my friends list one by one.
Maybe—just maybe—I’m a whole enough person now that I can present myself again.
[Edited to add: I was nialyind and competed under that name for two seasons.]
This summer, it occurred to me that I updated my journal so infrequently that many of my LJ friends had no idea how I lived my life. To remedy that situation, I started the 365 Facts series. Every day, I would update my journal with one random fact about myself. The series served a dual purpose: it gave me a reason to update my journal more often, and it allowed my friends to get to know me better than they would with regular entries that assumed everyone already knew everything about me. I may write for myself when Idol isn’t going on, but I don’t want to write an entirely nonsensical journal.
Ambitious? Yes. I failed to post a fact for the two days following the launch of the series. But I bounced back with three facts the following day. I had made a commitment, and I planned to see it through. Surely I was an interesting enough person that I could come up with 365 different things to say about myself.
Did you want basic background information about me? You got it. I talked about my boyfriend, my car, and my dog. For a pet who had joined the family in 2003, why did Miss Puppy and her adorable baby face wait until Fact #13 to turn up? Miss Puppy was definitely more important than my ancient car. On the other hand, my boyfriend’s appearance as Fact #2 made sense. After months of having a long-distance relationship, we would shortly live a short enough distance away from each other that we could take the train to see each other on the weekends.
What about facts with a tendency to slip through the cracks? Fact #9: Lily is a pseudonym. I adopted the name Lily for use online sometime in 2001 after robbing it from my Mary Sue self-insert. It suits me so well it doesn’t always register to people that my name is not actually Lily.
Or I could just tell you something random. Fact #38: I don’t get zombies. I’m sorry. So don’t expect to see any zombie stories from me during Idol. On the other hand, if you do have a working plan for the zombie apocalypse, let me know. I hope I won’t be too much of a liability if it happens (but it won’t happen).
One month into the series, I decided that I liked its results. Although I had discovered nothing new about myself, each fact still made me feel like a more interesting person. After all, I was a jack of many trades (Fact #7), but expressed my dislike of large social groups (Fact #5) and yearned to be a better cook (Fact #14). Who knew how interesting I might seem after eleven more months of facts?
Yet the cracks had already started showing. LiveJournal stopped cooperating with my internet connection. I had to start asking my friends for facts to include (Fact #25: I went into law on a suggestion from my parents). Then, my need for a journal began bleeding into the fact-selection process. Fact #39 involved a recitation of my fall TV schedule, fitting into a trend in which I repurposed the content of other journal entries as facts about myself. At the end of September, I entered a string of business trips and failed to update my journal for eight days. When I did post, I wrote no facts. I had other news to discuss.
I ended the series on Fact #67 (I can’t roll my tongue). When I wrote that entry, I was eleven facts behind, but still hoped to write a full complement of 365 by the time July 2013 came around. I never resumed it. By then, presenting my friends list with pieces of myself felt like nothing more than an obligation, for a new fact had snuck up on me that I desperately wanted to deny.
Fact #68: I am single.
I gave my friends list sixty-seven tesserae of a mosaic about me, but it had to end there. After breaking up with my boyfriend, I barely had the will to get through a day of work. I had to put the pieces of myself back together, not take them out and reveal them to my friends list one by one.
Maybe—just maybe—I’m a whole enough person now that I can present myself again.
[Edited to add: I was nialyind and competed under that name for two seasons.]
