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unretiring

I’ve been sitting here for twenty, thirty minutes, going through old documents, desperate for a slack idea. I’m scrolling through my ‘unfinished’ folder, double-clicking icons and reading their contents.

The problem is that I can’t remember if I turned them into full-blown slack articles or not.

Some have that tip-of-the-tongue taste where I know I’ve used them, or at least parts of them, in full-blown articles. Some are simply yearbook photos, unrecognizable and yet somehow familiar. If I were to rewrite them, craft them into some sort of coherent jumble of words, I’d still have that nagging feeling that I’ve written this one before.

I know that I have a tendency to reply the same ideas over and over, just dressing them up in different clothes, using a different phrase or two, adding a new thought or twist to the end. But now I fear I’m being truly redundant.

In fact, haven’t I written this exact article once before?

Maybe I should retire.

Maybe I’ve reached the end of the road, and it’s time to hang up my keyboard. Maybe it’s time to walk away with my millions (okay, 1004) of fans, only returning for a best-of album here and there, and to quell rumors that new material is on the way. Maybe it’s time to stop being a circus attraction, an attention whore, maybe it’s time to stop parading my person life in white script across a black screen.

Maybe it’s time to stop assaulting people with pithy phrases and bad HTML.

But I can’t.

Something keeps me coming back. I remember that first article I wrote for the slack, when it was headed by my then-boyfriend G., who used the site to list what he had in his power-briefcase. (A pen, a notebook, and a copy of Fast Company. I remember odd things.) I told him that people didn’t care about what was in his briefcase unless it was a severed head, and suddenly the gauntlet had been thrown.

You write something, then, he said.

So I did.

He said his friends liked it. So I wrote some more. And some more. And then G. and I broke up and he handed the slack to me. It’s really yours now, anyway.

That was 1997.

I’ve had three serious boyfriends since then.

Two discussions of marriage.

One big break.

Over the past seven years, I’ve lost sixty pounds and gained fifteen back.

Over the past seven years, I’ve gone from seven readers to over a thousand.

Over the past seven years, I’ve had two dogs die in my arms and one boy who changed my life.

I was having dinner with A. last night, telling him a story about some past friends.

He said you have so many lifetimes I don’t know about.

I nodded.

I have people who’ve been reading me longer than you’ve known me.

I remember after my first date with A., after it had gone so well, thinking well, now you’ve got to tell him. How would he react to my dirty little secret? Would he devour each article, looking for clues to my behavior, discovering reason after reason that he shouldn’t date me? Or would he ignore it completely? Sweep it under the rug, make me promise never to tell anyone?

Or would he simply look at me and wonder what’s wrong with you?

There are those of you who have been here since the beginning. Some of you have witnessed the change in person. Some of you have witnessed the change on the screen. I remember one day thinking there are more people who read the slack that I don’t know, than those who I do know. Most of you don’t have a clue what I even look like.

I have formed virtual friendships. I have gotten in arguments. I have offended people who I have never met. Some write me frequently, some only when they’re hurting, or angry. Some never write at all.

But there’s something so delicious in knowing you’re out there. Not just for the good stuff, but for the bad stuff, too. There’s something inherently freeing in taking some of your most personal, scary thoughts and committing them to a screen where a thousand strangers will read and judge.

And that’s why I’ll never retire. But I’ve been doing this more than half my adult life. It’s just a part of me now. It’s part of my vital stats:

Five foot seven and a half.

Type a negative blood.

Writes the slack.