...

I started writing this weeks ago.

As someone with multiple debilitating mental illnesses, many things are very difficult for me.

Anything social, anything which involves making myself or my presence perceptible to other people, anything which involves expressing myself in a way someone else might observe and think about: these interconnected things I avoid like the plague, and have for well over a decade now. So I am not someone who posts much, though I am just about always online and lurking, reading other people's posts.

It doesn't help that the last time I posted online on a regular basis I acquired a (relatively mild but nevertheless alarming) stalker amidst a flurry of real-life drama at college, which rather put me off the whole "putting myself out there" thing.

I can think of a lot of reasons not to blog, or to post, or to do anything at all. I think about that sort of thing all the time, in fact. Not being able to stop thinking up reasons not to do things is a big problem for me.

Sometimes, though, I have thoughts about things longer than one or two sentences, and I do get something out of organizing them and expressing them. I often write posts, journal entries, and comments, and then delete them once I feel I've worked through what I wanted to work through. This is not very satisfying and leaves me without any sort of log or documentation of those thoughts. "I certainly won't forget," I think, and then promptly forget.

So, a blog would be good for that. It would be something I could look back on and think, "ah, yes, this is what I was thinking at that time...!"

Also, despite my belief that no one could possibly ever be interested in looking at anything I have to say – I am a gossip and a snoop myself, and do enjoy looking at other people's blogs even when they are sort of boring or not really about anything. There is probably at least one other person in the world like that out there, right?

And even if not, there's still me in the future, who will get a kick out of nosily snooping on the current me.

There you have it.