Over the last little while I’ve been contacted by some people who have noticed that I’ve more or less dropped off the face of the Earth during the last year or two and they were wondering why. Questions like these come out of nowhere for me because I don’t know to whom I’m replying, where they know me from, what they know of me and my life etc. so I never know how to answer even the simplest things like “so, what have you been up to?” I simply don’t know where to start. This is very frustrating.

The fact of the matter is, because of growing up and certain life events and the fact that I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I’m not sure who I am anymore and what I want. I don’t know if I want to have a site anymore and even if I do, I don’t know what to put on it or how much to share.

Furthermore, things have gotten a lot more complicated than they were a few years ago with this WordPress shit vs. making a website in Dreamweaver that was comprised of mostly tables and because of this, maintaining a site - what you’re reading right now - isn’t something I feel I can do myself. Of course I’m capable of it, if I wanted to learn, but I don’t want to and if I’m not doing it myself, then do I really want to do it at all? Currently Blake (my husband) and I are trying to find a happy medium. Really, as far as I can tell, WordPress is just a template system, so all we need to do is come up with a template that I can edit and update myself. We’re working on it. It’s probably going to take a while.

But then the other problem I’m trying to work out in my head, and have been for a while, is which content is for my site and which content is for Live Journal? And really, what IS the point of having both? Do I even really need both? Why not just point my domain to Live Journal? But the thing is, there are some things that don’t feel right in a Live Journal (or a personal blog, I guess), such as articles, product reviews or endorsements, 3rd party content (YouTube videos like the one above etc). Basically I have no idea what to write or where anymore and I’ve completely lost track of why so many people even follow what I write, create and do to begin with, so it’s hard for me to figure out how to keep everyone happy.

And speaking of keeping everyone happy, there’s another problem. Back when I started doing whatever it is I do, the Internet was still sort of an underground thing. Everyone and their mother (certainly not MY mother) wasn’t potentially reading every word I wrote and that allowed me a certain freedom to be as honest and open as I’m known for being and have sort of built a reputation on. Well, some people don’t like truth and honesty. Some people get upset when you write about them, even though it’s all truth and facts and honesty. Some people don’t like the whole world knowing what they did on a Sunday afternoon and some people feel as though I’m trying to hold up a mirror so they can see something they perceive as being there when I’m merely being honest, but with a writer’s eye. This makes it very difficult to write about one’s life and if I can’t do so honestly, then I can’t do it at all.

It just seems like on all levels of life, I’m stuck. I have no refuge. I used to “write it out” when I was feeling badly or trying to process something and that outlet’s mostly been taken away by people who don’t understand me or what I do. I absolutely resent them for it and I’ve racked my brain searching for happy mediums and work-arounds, but I keep coming up short.

Truthfully, though, I’m a little bit sick of writing about my life for an audience anyway. For friends I’ve met through this technological journey who are also writing about their own lives, say, via Live Journal? Sure. But thousands of strangers? I dunno anymore. Especially not when I’ve been increasingly bombarded with anonymous folks over the years who trigger my paranoia and contribute to my shaky mental health and waning self-esteem.

I had to disable anonymous commenting in Live Journal recently due to troll activity and comments have been disabled here (along with “pings”?) for a long time because I don’t know how to control the posting of spam. I don’t know how to make this two-way communication between the many of you and the one and only me work anymore.

While parts of me are still the same, and the core of me is still the same, the last few years have been pretty rough on me and I’ve done a lot of changing and growing as a result. Unfortunately some of you, it seems, wanted me to stay the same, so to those of you who fall into that category: I’m sorry I let you down and I’m sad to see you go. (Except that’s a lie because if you honestly expected me to stay a scantily clad 20-something year old on a webcam forever, you’re probably an asshole and good riddance.) For the rest of you, I hope you’ll stick around long enough for me to figure out whatever the fuck it is I’m doing because I have a feeling that whatever it is and once I get all of this shit figure out, it’s going to be interesting.
Things can only get better.

So while comments are disabled and will remain so for a while, feel free to e-mail me at Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com or snail mail me at the address below. Give me suggestions, tell me how you found me, tell me why you’ve stuck around, tell me what you’d like to see more of (you lose points for saying “tits” *eyerolls*) or what you think I should stay away from. I’d really like to know what all of you strangers are getting out of this whole thing, it’s always been a mystery to me and finally having some perspective from the other side of the screen would probably help immensely in sorting out the mess that is my so-called internet life.

Sunny of the Great White North

PO Box 3042

Elmvale, ON

L0L 1P0

CANADA

Edit (08/12/08): Not to discourage the e-mails (they’ve been great so far!) comments have been re-enabled, so feel free to register and be heard! :o)