you don't win friends with salad

Thirty-something

Gosh DiaryLand, it's been a while.

I wanted to start writing again. I'm not really sure if this will be for a short or long period, time will tell. I had a look through my older entries, which dated back to 2002. I was a different person then, and what I had written was quite embarrassing. So perturbed was I by the juvenile rants that graced my diary 17 years ago, that I spent the best part of an hour deleting every last one of those entries. I don't think I'll miss the ramblings of 19-year-old me.

So yes, those of you with strong mental arithmetic skills will notice I am in my mid-30s now. What's a thirty-something man doing writing in a DiaryLand journal again, you might be asking yourself. I can honestly say that I don't know for sure. I feel as though I'd like to have an outlet for myself, and maybe there might be someone out there somewhere that cares enough to read what I write. I have always enjoyed writing, though I don't exactly have a captivating way with words, a perfect turn of phrase, or rule-abiding grammar. The other creative outlet that I had 17 years ago was web design. The reason I chose to house my journal at DiaryLand over, say, LiveJournal, was for the freedom they gave you with the look of your diary. You were utterly unrestricted, save for a link back to their landing page. I sit here smirking to myself, re-living the memories that have risen the surface. Learning HTML from my battered Who's Afraid of HTML? book, adapting "Lex Designs" to my own style, and the whole Beautify movement that a group of girls who had diaries here championed... the hours and hours I must have spent tinkering with coding, crossing my fingers, and hoping for the best.

Back then, I always thought my life would head in the direction of one of those two outlets: writing, or web design. It turned out that it was neither, and I ended up getting a job in a bank. Several years, two companies, and a handful of promotions later, I'm now managing a team of 17. There's that number again.

It feels good to be writing once more. I see DiaryLand itself has undergone a facelift - or partial one at least.

previous / next