January 1, 2009
Thursday

“Today is the day I start the new me!”
                 — George Booth,  b. 1926, American cartoonist
                     from a 1991 New Yorker cartoon showing a man in a bathtub sipping a martini
                     and talking either to himself or to the twenty-five cats in his living room
                     pasted in my private paper journal at January 1, 1999 (Volume 8, p. 10)

From my paper journal:

“January 1, 1999
Friday

An old copy of the “new me” cartoon, copied and pasted in over and over. What does the “new me” do?  She writes every day, never misses a friend’s birthday, a deadline, or an opportunity, has a clean, orderly, and attractive home to which she frequently welcomes guests for simple suppers of soup and bread, is slim and beautiful, and is beloved by everyone — a combination of Martha Stewart, the Princess of Wales, and Mother Teresa.”

I’m coming up on the tenth anniversary of the start of my online journal. On February 13, 1999, what would have been my mother’s eighty-eighth birthday, I posted an essay called “Keeping and Holding the Rapture” in which I quoted Sylvia Plath on her reasons for keeping a private diary. I didn’t know then that I was joining a small but growing community of journallers (not journalists) who would become known as bloggers. I didn’t know that I was in the vanguard of a trend. I was only trying to do what the editor of Plath’s journals said the poet was trying to do, “to chart a life, to pique a memory, to confirm inner life and perhaps to dispel the doubt that one exists at all.”

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. After nearly thirty years I’d left the classroom and was determined not to use the “R” word to describe my status. I had more than enough interests to occupy my time — I was the mother of a seventh grader involved in many school and church activities, I was active in the Emily Dickinson scholarly community, and, of course, I had my writing. I had a well-begun novel about domestic life among the Pennsylvania Germans of nineteenth century Berks County as well as some other fragments of fiction. I also had some autobiographical material and a box of letters that Ron’s uncle had written to his family during World War II that needed to be transcribed and studied.

And I also had weight to lose, clutter to clear, art projects to complete, family administrative details to manage, and friendships to maintain. I had, in essence, the Six Goals of a Quality Life I have been pursuing ever since.

And I’ve been pursuing that “new me” since before 1991. The publication of the Booth cartoon only gave me a visual reminder.

So here I am on another New Year’s Day, still trying to meet the Six Goals of a Quality Life, still trying to keep and hold the rapture that is my life, still charting a lot of it online.

In my first post I quoted Sylvia Plath on her belief that she was doing the best work of her life, writing the poems that would make her name. I invited readers to follow me while I made my name. Plath gave herself only four months after that pronouncement to do the work that indeed did make her name.

I’ve been at this ten years. I’m a better writer than I was when I began. Two years ago I said I was at the beginning of the ten best years of my life. I still believe that. Come with me again, into the new year and the new me.

A year ago, I visited the crèche at the church of my early childhood.

Two years ago, I did not post on the first of the year.

Three years ago, I took another photograph for my “A Tree Grows in Harrisburg” project.

Four years ago, I wrote once again about longing to visit Wyoming.

 

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