December 02, 2003 @ 1:40 a.m.
A 1904- word goodbye letter. Really. It's exactly 1904 words. I counted.

I've been thinking a lot lately about whether I want to keep doing this page.

It's not an issue I've been taking lightly, and thus, it's not an issue I've reached any easy answers over.

The big problem, the thing that makes me feel as though it might be worth chucking it all in, is that I don't feel I can entirely be myself on this particular site anymore. It's tough to articulate that thought properly because at the same time, I am being myself: I've never created an artificial persona for this page, I've never pretended to be something I'm not. But now I feel like I'm pretending to not be a lot of the things I am. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, so let me explain. I feel like my readers have a certain expectation of who I am, particularly people who've been reading Nude Twister for a long time, or newer readers who've made the effort to go and read my entire archives on the basis of the first few entries they read (and to those people, thank you: that's something that truly warms my heart). Of course, having a perception of who I am is part and parcel of being a web journaller, and I'd argue that it's essential if a writer wants to build up any sort of a readership. That's why writers like Shanmonster are popular, and few people read things written by fourteen year olds who decide who they are based on which pop star they want to lose their virginity to this week.

The problem comes with the fact that I currently feel restricted by what I think people expect of me. I am "Rev" in her entirety, there is no artifice there. It's just that "Rev" isn't entirely who I am. It's not that I want to write some deeply personal balls-out journal that's a drag to read, but I feel like I can't write much that's personal here because it's not what people come here for. This has been proven to me time and again, when I've decided to write a personal entry anyway. With the notable exception of the entry on body image I posted several months ago, every personal entry I've written here has gone pretty much ignored. That probably sounds like tantrum throwing, demanding you to care about my life. Well, I spill this stuff out for your entertainment, week after month after year. The Internet may be a passive medium in a lot of respects but it annoys me that entries I consider to be well-written and interesting go ignored because they don't contain references to porn or my sex life or my breasts. I know they're being read, guys, but it makes me think it's not worth trying to come across as a multi-faceted human being (something I occasionally delude myself into believing I am).

I don't want to be The Girl Who Used to Be Interesting Because She Worked in a Porn Shop and Wrote About Vibrators But Now She Doesn't So She's Boring. To those who think like that (and I know there's at least a few) I have this to say: fuck you. Perhaps you could do us both a favour and stop reading. Yes, when I worked in the porn shop my life was interesting for a while, there's no way I'll pretend it wasn't. I learned a lot, about people and porn and the nature of sexual desire, and I made some really good friends. Then my job started to suck, all my friends were transferred to different stores or quit, I had guys coming in threatening to rape me when I locked up the shop for the night, I was afraid to walk the three metres to my car at the end of my shift, and I got absolutely no support from my employers over this, in addition to already being paid minimum wage with no benefits and being sexually harassed by one of the senior managers. I was fucking miserable for the last year I worked there, and it was compounded by not being able to get a job anywhere else.

Needless to say, I'm a lot happier these days, for a variety of reasons. If that makes me less interesting to read, well, I apologise, but I'm not going back to a shitty existence for anyone's sake. My days of suffering for the sake of my own and others' perverse enjoyment are over.

I know that in a lot of ways I haven't written with the same vivacity that I used to; reading my archives, I had a sort of breathless enthusiasm, even when I was writing about something I was angry about. I can only put that down to some of the novelty value of this diary wearing off, and the fact that I genuinely had more time to write then. Nowadays I have more boring grownup concerns, all of which impact on my inclination to write. I believe, though, that the biggest problem I'm facing from a writing perspective is that I know I have an audience, but I feel they're not interested in what I have to say unless I'm being flippant and/or crude. And, you know, I am a flippant and crude person, and my friend Sonya calls me a hooligan all the time, and I get strumpet and trollop and deviant a bit too, and today Deirdre compared me to Robert Johnson (more for the connections to Satan than the singing). Flippant and crude isn't all I am, and I find myself not being able to express other aspects. From an outside perspective, the physical details of my life might not be as interesting: I work in a library now, I don't sleep with married men anymore because I'm in a monogamous relationship, and some of the people who used to influence my life a lot aren't in it anymore. But my life feels interesting to me. I have a lot to say about a lot of things; I write a lot of stuff that never makes it on here. I have a lot of opinions and ideas I want to share but this doesn't feel like the right place anymore. And if I don't feel like I can write about my opinions and ideas about anything that takes my fancy on my own goddamn web journal, then what's the point of even having it?

Maybe it's just a case of those old cliches, familiarity breeding contempt and things running their course. In February, I'll have been writing this journal for three years. That's a long time. That's longer than any of my sexual relationships (hell it's longer than most of my sexual relationships put together, but that's beside the point). It's longer than I've been at Uni. It's longer than I've known many of the people who are fundamental to my life now. It could just be that Nude Twister in the Alpha Beta Parking Lot and Rev need to be retired. I'd prefer to do it gently, rather than taking them out into a paddock and shooting them. This site has brought many things into my life. It's brought many people into my life, some of whom have changed me irrevocably. If I stop writing here, I'll probably transfer a lot of my entries onto whatever new page I start.

Because, you see, I'm addicted to having a web presence now, even if I'm growing tired of this one. I can't imagine not having my own little corner of the Interweb to post things in. Although I've already mentioned above that the Internet can be a really passive medium, I love it when it isn't and people contact me as a result of reading my page. I love that I've made honest-to-Jeebus friends with people through this page. And I have to be honest, if that guy I had a crush on for six months hadn't stumbled across this site one day and liked what he read and joined the mailing list, and if I hadn't freaked out and nearly deleted everything, then agonised for a while over whether to tell him until he made the decision obvious by emailing me....well, dear readers, if that had never happened, then you wouldn't have been hearing so much about that Stuart guy I've been banging on about for the past oh-my-god-it's-nearly-two-years-how-fucking-freakish.

Yes, folks, writing about my tits in my online journal not only got me laid, but got me laid by the guy I'd been too chickenshit to ask out on a date and had decided was an arsehole because he couldn't read between the lines of my emails and see how much I was pining for his hot man love through scintillating emails along the lines of "Hi. Thanks for your email. How are you? I'm pretty good. Yeah, that zine is cool." It's possible I'm slightly emotionally retarded. Hell, it's entirely probable. But after all that drama, Stuart still has the audacity to claim he's not my groupie. Pshaw. He first heard about me through my writing (in zines), he wanted to meet me because of my writing, he thought I was really cool when he met me, mostly because of my writing, and then he fiiiiiiiinally got around to talking about asking me on a date after reading my writing online and discovering, among other things, that I have big boobs, like to have sex a lot and take it on the face (and The Rules says you shouldn't talk about your own interests too much. Don't listen, girls!). Sounds like groupiedom to me.

But I've gotten far off the track, as is my wont. At this stage, I'm still deciding what I'll do. I'm still pretty attached to this puppy, I don't necessarily want to put it to sleep just yet. But there's a couple of other web-based projects in the works that, when/if they get up and running, will probably take precedence. There's the issue that I want some space I can really feel is my own. I want a fresh start. I want to write what I want, be more expressive of who I am, and not keep in mind all the time that people will come, read the first paragraph of an entry, realise it's not about how I've seen the error of my ways and have now gone back to work in the porn shop, and leave. I kind of like the idea of being okay with letting my close friends read this - and the reason I'm not now is because I haven't for so long that to do otherwise feels really wrong, not because I'm bitching about them.

I’m not going to stop writing entirely for now. I’m weighing up my options and seeing what decision feels right, so I strongly doubt this will be my last entry here (plus, those projects I mentioned earlier are still in blueprint form, and I think I'd go batty without some sort of immediate outlet for my puerile little thoughts). I’m not taking this lightly at all, and the reason for that is that this page means a hell of a lot to me in a lot of ways.I'm not entirely sure what I want out of my presence on the web at the moment, but I do feel like this page isn't it anymore.

Edited on 03/12 to add: I've decided to take a couple of weeks to think about this. I'm really conflicted about it (the exact words I used yesterday were "I feel like I've lost a limb"), plus people keep bringing up good arguments on both sides. I'll post in a few weeks with a definite decision. Thanks to everyone who's sent words of wisdom and support.

<<|>>