This morning I did a timed writing exercise — writing about my first car — and when I finished, it occurred to me that the results would actually have made a pretty good blog entry.

And then it occurred to me that I’ve been waiting all my life for blogging to show up.

Last night in the van I was asked about my journaling, and I said I’ve been writing them since I was 9 years old, which is 22 years now. Whew. (Okay, it’s not like I’m an old lady, but that still feels like a really long time.) I’ve done more of this sort of writing — thinking aloud, freewriting, doodling with words — than any other kind of writing. Ever. Full stop. I started with poetry, because of school, before the journal, but I have nowhere near the volume. And fiction has always been a start-and-stop endeavor, even in the best of times.

But the journal is always there. In fact, I know that a depression is particularly bad when I can’t even write in my journal.

And somehow it’s always like I’m writing *to* somebody in my journal, even if it’s just some other segment of my own head, or the future. Which is why I loved Anais Nin’s diaries when I was in college.

*And* I kept an electronic journal, years ago, although it got stolen when that house was robbed.

So weblogging shows up, and it just meshes perfectly. Sort of like this whole web thing in general, for me. I honestly don’t know what the hell I’d be doing with my life if it weren’t for the internets.