Old blogs never die

I've always lamented my inability to keep a regular journal of any kind.

Then, a year ago, I stumbled on to the very regular journal that I'd kept faithfully and vigorously for almost a decade and then completely forgot about.

It was disconcerting.

The main subject of the last entries was about the slow, soft death of my cat.  In her final months she wanted to be held constantly, so we held her constantly.  Within two weeks after her death I found I couldn't remember her.  I could remember facts about her, but I couldn't remember the smell and sound and sight of her.  A couple months after her death, I was dancing to live music in Jerusalem, and a window opened.  I was able to feel the empty space where she had been a weight in my arms, and to cry.  Within hours, the window closed.

Four years later, I stumbled into my old journal.  

I had forgotten that we'd had a cat.

According to Blogger's Dashboard, a couple times a year since then I recognize a great developing theme or project in my life and go to journal it.  For weeks I cherish the egg of an idea until I reach a window of calm where I can pull out all the stops, staying up at night, hiding out in the bathroom, inching the careful design along, setting up an initial framework of what's it all about, launching the first passionate posts...

And, then the next emergency hits and I forget it exists, until I hitch my wagon to the next star and go back to Dashboard and find the remains.

Sometimes I haven't noticed even then. 

Of all the things I've loved and lost, I miss my hair the most, because the portion of my mind that has departed clearly includes any capacity to evaluate how much of my mind has departed. 

It's taken five years for me to put together that this is a regular pattern happening.

Apparently I have an unstoppable need to get things out of my head but once I've made the initial hole for the words to fall out they fall all the way and get lost.

It's kind of like discovering that your life's been one of those time loop stories where the mad scientist keeps starting the same project over and over without realizing it.

I've started scooping up the bits of brain I've dropped all over the Internet and piling them here, both to be responsible for cleaning up after my messes and to try to gather enough for good reflection so I'm a little less "not gone but forgotten" in my own eyes.

Old blogs never die.  I guess I'm trying to track them down and eat them and regain my lost power.